Will County Gazette

Republican state Senate candidate Thomas McCullagh isn’t buying Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stated reasons for threatening to move several counties backward in the fight to safeguard the state from COVID-19.

“I firmly believe he’s trying to show the worst impact of COVID that he can so he can get the federal bailout he wants to address all the state’s other problems, like pensions,” McCullagh told the Will County Gazette. “He’s trying to politicize the moment by using people’s suffering to get the bailout that he wants.”

Citing rising infection rates that have moved a least 11 counties to “warning levels” for the spread of the virus, Pritzker recently pronounced the state is at a “danger point” for some level of shutdown being reinstated.

“I think that’s a terrible idea,” said McCullagh, who is now running against state Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (D-Shorewood) in the 49th District. “People should be left to follow established guidelines. I don’t think the governor has the power to retroactively shut down the state again. He has no legal authority and is trying to be a dictator.”

Besides abusing the powers of his office, McCullagh argues the governor moving to take such actions would have far more dire consequences.

“The economic fallout that would come to this state from another shutdown would be unimaginable,” McCullagh, a Shorewood resident, said. “So many businesses are barely holding on as it is. On top of that, the federal unemployment money is no longer there as a safety net. Anyway you look at it, it’s just really a scary situation.”

While Pritzker and his top health officials have been crisscrossing the state urging residents to adhere to such guidelines as wearing face masks, social distancing and hand washing, McCullagh argues in the end all the governor sees and hears is what he wants to.

“The virus is real and it’s a real threat, but I believe that the governor lives inside some sort of sounding cage where everyone is only feeding him what he wants to hear,” he said. “All the info he seems to operate from isn’t filtered by anyone else and only seems to come from his own insiders.”