SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Republican Darren Bailey (pictured, right) is sprinting around the state in these final days before next Tuesday’s election. It’s a bus tour called “Blueprint for Victory.”

“All of Illinois is hurting,” Bailey said with supporters Tuesday afternoon in the beer garden at Boone’s in Springfield. “When you look at my Blueprint for Illinois, you see all my plans to lower taxes, reduce government, return the power back to the people, and that is exactly what Illinois is hungry for, so we’ve got to get out and vote. That’s our theory of winning, that if people leave here today, and they go out and replicate themselves. then we’ll come up with what we believe are 300,000-plus extra votes that we didn’t have four years ago that will carry us over the finish line.”

Put another way, Bailey said he believes too many of his supporters stayed home rather than vote in 2022.

Asked to compare Gov. JB Pritzker‘s second term to his first, Bailey mentioned covid – and how, he says the covid money was “misspent, misdirected.”