WASHINGTON, Ill.— In Rick Heidner’s very first campaign commercial, the Barrington Hills businessman dubs himself a “Trump Republican For Governor.”
But in his very first public forum as a politician, the onetime-embattled video gambling operator did something President Donald Trump would never do: He apologized.
Participating with the three other major Republican candidates for governor running in the March 17 GOP primary, Heidner found himself on the defensive Thursday night when opponent Ted Dabrowski criticized Heidner’s business operation contributing $2,500 to the campaign of former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and $25,000 to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson — two progressive Democrats frequently targeted by Republicans.
Heidner, who has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats and Republicans over the years and does a lot of business in Chicago, told the audience in a central Illinois auditorium that he contributed to Johnson’s campaign as a favor to a friend who, in turn, could get Heidner access to the mayor. But as for the money to Foxx, who Republicans have criticized for spearheading efforts to vacate wrongful convictions and end cash bail, he said that was “a huge mistake.”
“So, that I apologize to everyone for and, yeah, that one there I really can’t even forgive myself for, so, I apologize for that,” he said.
Heidner and Dabrowski, a conservative policy analyst, were joined onstage by former state Sen. Darren Bailey and DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick. The four spoke for roughly 90 minutes at the event organized by the Tazewell County Republican Party.
Aside from Dabrowski’s criticism of Heidner, the four candidates expressed their united dislike of Gov. JB Pritzker‘s leadership. But Heidner, who drew headlines years ago after Pritzker scuttled Heidner’s plans to build a horse racing track and casino on state-owned land in Tinley Park after a Tribune investigation revealed his long-standing business ties to people connected to organized crime, said he thinks he’s best suited to prevent the Democratic governor from winning a third term.
“You know, this machine that is there, it’s so incredibly bad, it’s bad for all of us,” Heidner told the crowd. “This is not the smartest thing I ever did. This is a dangerous thing that I’m doing at the business that I’m in. But it’s definitely the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
After Heidner quietly entered the race in October with $1 million of his own cash, he went radio silent. There was no sign of him giving interviews to the media or courting prospective voters. His campaign has only put out its website in the last few weeks.
“My heart and my soul drew me to this,” Heidner said in an interview with the Tribune after the forum. “I waited to the end there because I looked at who was running for the Republican Party, and I saw no path for anyone to win. I saw no path. And when I think that this man’s (Pritzker) going to be our governor again, it literally makes me ill.”
Some Republican observers appreciate Heidner’s personal story as described on his new campaign website — a kid from a working-class background in Chicago’s western suburbs who performed odd jobs to help out his hard-working mother before growing up to become a wealthy entrepreneur.
Over the years, he created businesses such as Gold Rush Gaming, Ricky Rockets Fuel Centers, Prairie State Energy, and Heidner Properties, a commercial real estate business with over 280 properties across 12 states, according to the campaign site. The website for Heidner’s real estate business lists his wife and four of their five children as business associates.
But the 2019 Tribune investigation revealed that for nearly two decades, Heidner owned numerous commercial properties via shell companies in several states with Rocco Suspenzi, the longtime chairman of a suburban bank who the federal government alleged had ties to reputed organized crime figures.
The Illinois Gaming Board and the FBI in 2003 exposed Suspenzi and his son for concealing their own ownership stake, as well as that of a reputed mob figure, in the infamous, never-built Emerald Casino project in Rosemont. Suspenzi and his son invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in 2005 when the Gaming Board sought to question them about their role in concealing the ownership stakes of two reputed Outfit-linked investors.
Heidner, at the same time, had a similar real estate partnership with convicted bookmaker Dominic Buttitta. They both owned a building in Elgin that was leased to a bar licensed for video gambling that used Heidner’s Gold Rush machines. Buttitta pleaded guilty in 2012 to federal charges of running an illegal sportsbook from the South Elgin strip club he controlled.
The revelations led in part to Pritzker’s decision to cancel the sale of the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center property, which Heidner had sought to purchase for a horse racing and casino facility. Heidner and state gaming regulators reached a settlement in 2021 after the state withdrew allegations that he had offered an illegal $5 million inducement to purchase a rival video gambling chain.
In the latest interview, Heidner downplayed suggestions his past dealings with individuals connected to illicit activity would hurt his campaign. During the forum, he also lamented losing the right to build the southwest suburban horse racing and casino facility.
“I was building the safest, biggest track pretty much in the country, and a racino, a hotel,” he said. “And everything was taken away from us because of optics.”
WGN-TV Ch. 9 released a poll earlier this month showing Bailey with a commanding lead among prospective GOP primary voters with over 34%. Dabrowski placed second in the poll with 8.2%, followed by Mendrick with 5.4% and Heidner with 1.1%.
But perhaps the most telling metric to some GOP political observers was that more than 46% of likely voters remained undecided. Does this mean Heidner could still have a chance, despite the abysmal polling numbers and his lengthy delay in public campaigning?
“It’s an unusual approach,” former Illinois GOP Chair Pat Brady said before Thursday’s forum about Heidner’s quiet campaign up to this point. “But it appears from the last poll that almost half the voters are undecided, so maybe there’s a lane for (someone) with a new message and new idea, and different than what we’ve seen over the last several months.”
Still, Brady said, “nobody’s going to vote for somebody (if) they don’t know their name.”
State Sen. Terri Bryant, a Republican from Murphysboro, said Heidner could still have a chance given the number of undecided voters and Bailey supporters who could be convinced to vote for someone else.
But it would take Heidner spending millions of dollars on negative ads about Bailey and positive ones about himself.
“I happen to think he’s a relatively attractive guy. He’s got an awesome personal story and he’s got good hair,” Bryant said.
At the forum, the four candidates appeared to agree on most issues. They each said they want to address what they think are soft-on-crime policies and wasteful spending and want solutions for costly pensions, high taxes, and what they view as harmful policies concerning immigrants in the country without legal permission.
Heidner said he wants to incentivize more businesses to come to Illinois.
“If they need help to come here and they’re going to create a tremendous amount of tax for us then there’s no problem with giving some of (it) back to them so they make these investments,” he said.
Bailey is the most battle-tested of the four. He won the 2022 GOP primary but then lost to Pritzker by about 13 percentage points in the general election. In 2024, he lost the GOP primary for Congress after challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro.
In the current primary race, Bailey’s time on the campaign trail was delayed by the deaths in October of his son, daughter-in-law and two of his grandchildren in a Montana helicopter crash.
At the forum, Bailey said affordability with property taxes and energy costs were key issues and said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2022, when too few Republicans voted. He encouraged voters to cast ballots by mail, even though Republicans have often claimed mail-in voting is rife with corruption.
“We encourage people to vote early if they need to, if we know you’re going to be out of town to get their mail-in balloting in,” he said. “We’ll fix all that later, but right now we must use that if we’re going to beat JB Pritzker.”
To ease costly pensions, Dabrowski, who once headed the conservative policy research group Wirepoints, called for state government employees to move to a 401(k) system, which he claims can be achieved even though the Illinois Constitution guarantees pension rights to state employees. He also discussed his upbringing and family history as the son of Polish and Ecuadorian immigrants and the importance of assimilating in the U.S.
“I don’t like this, you know, teaching kids in Spanish in our schools. That doesn’t make sense. We’re in America. So you have to get rid of that. That’s got to go,” Dabrowski said.
Mendrick, who has served as DuPage County’s sheriff since 2018, decried Illinois’ status as a sanctuary state, which generally prohibits local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. As governor, he said he’d want to work with the Trump administration to give the federal government better access to the county jail system to pick up criminal suspects who are non-U.S. citizens.
For Heidner, he said he’d want to work with members of both parties if elected governor. But for now, like Bailey, he implored more Republicans to get to the polls.
“I do realize that we are the underdog. And that’s why if I become governor, which I’m planning to be in November, again, I’m going to have an open-door system. And I’m going to be working with the Democrats and working with the Republicans and common sense, that’s what’s going to prevail,” Heidner said. “When it comes to Republicans, we need to get out and vote.”