North Cook News

Bull Valley businessman Gary Rabine is set to formally launch his challenge to Gov. J.B. Pritzker at a noontime gathering in Schaumburg on March 30.

Rabine, a Republican, has already taken on the job of speaking out about some of the state’s most pressing issues, recently expressing teachers “leery” about in-person instruction should be terminated.

Rabine has also taken a position on the state’s long struggling economy, asserting "You go over to the South Side or the West Side, and you're going to see some people say in certain areas 30, 40 percent black unemployment. It's a huge problem. And when we abandon a community like we have in the urban environments of Chicago, it's a sin."

Rabine has also been vocal about the lockdowns enacted by Gov. J.B. Pritzker as a defense mechanism against the spread of COVID-19. He said he’s convinced it’s more than mere coincidence that the states where the shutdowns were most stringently imposed also had the most violence.

“Why? Because people are home, kids are home, people are not at work,” he said. These poor people losing their jobs because of the ignorance of a few. That's not acceptable. And until we have real law and order, that's going to happen.”

Rabine hinted he thinks law enforcement’s hands were essentially tied during the riots, making the scenes more chaotic than he thinks they needed to be.

“I listen to the police forces in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle,” he said. “They were weak. I mean, it wasn't the leaders of the police that I saw. It was the mayors instructing them, their governors guiding them. It's not who we are in America. We're a country of law and order. We didn't allow them to enforce the law.”