Suburban man goes to State Fair, comes away GOP chairman

SPRINGFIELD - The Republican faithful who descended on the Illinois State Fair for their annual rally were surprised to learn they were getting a new party chairman - perhaps none more so than the new chairman, St. Charles' Pat Brady.

"I was going to take my kids on the rides," Brady said of his initial Republican Day plans. But within hours of Andy McKenna's immediate resignation on Thursday, Brady had been picked to serve out the remaining months of the chairman's term, which expires in March.

The day after taking over the GOP leadership post, Brady talked to the Daily Herald about how it came about, his ideas for the job and expectations for the party heading into the crucial 2010 election season.

Q: What were your original plans for Republican Day?

A: I was going to take my kids on the rides. We had the central committee meeting and I was going to go to Republican Day and we were going to go to the fair. Obviously it all changed quickly.

Q: When did you first hear that Andy was stepping down and at what point did someone come to you and say, 'Hey, wanna be chairman?'

A: I didn't learn Andy was going to resign until literally five minutes before he resigned. I walked in at five minutes until 9 and learned from one of the central committee members. That being said, I knew Andy was not going to run in March and several people had asked me to think about running for chairman. So I had thought about it. But I did not ever imagine it was going to happen (Thursday).

Q: Are you planning on seeking a full term in March?

A: Well, let's wait and see how it goes. My focus right now is getting ourselves in the best position we can to get through the primaries and have the strongest candidates in the general.

Q: What do you bring to the party that will be an asset in the upcoming elections?

A: First of all let's give Andy a lot of credit. He raised a lot of money, did a lot of technology infrastructure upgrades and he was there in some of the darkest days. He had to live through all the bad days. What I think I bring to the table that might be a little different, I think you're probably going to see, from the party, I think you're going to see an aggressive Republican Party going forward both in how we manage the party and how we raise money and how we point out as the loyal opposition the deficiencies of the Democrats. I think that's the formula that's going to propel us to win us elections, which the function of a party is to win elections.

Q: What goals do you think your chairmanship should be judged or graded on?

A: I believe any chairmanship of a political party should be graded on the number of elections they win. I want to run this like a business and our business is winning elections. That's our mission statement. To win elections you've got to get good candidates, you've got to raise money, you've got to support those candidates from beginning to end and you've got to identify voters and get them out. There's a lot of moving parts but it's not a complicated equation.

Q: It's Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010, the day after the elections, what do you think the morning headlines will be about the Republican Party?

A: Mark Kirk wins, our governor candidate wins, our lieutenant governor's going to win, our comptroller wins, and I think potentially we have a very legitimate opportunity at picking up two congressional seats - in the 14th and the 11th. And there still may be a couple strong candidates emerging for the 8th. And the 10th too, the 10th we can keep. I think we can pick up two of the three we don't have right now. Plus I think we're going to make some significant gains in our state House and pick up a few in the state Senate.

That's a pretty aggressive prediction but I do believe the Democrats are giving us such great opportunities both here in the state with the Blagojevich Democrats and Mike Madigan single party rule, and now you've got the national Democrats who seem to be really floundering right now with health care and other issues.

Q: You mentioned Madigan. So you're the new Republican Party chair and you look across this partisan aisle and there's Speaker Madigan the (Democratic) party chair. Is there anything you learn from his chairmanship, which obviously has been very successful?

A: Let's give Mike Madigan a great deal of credit. He's one of the greatest political operatives this country's ever seen, but the reality is now and has been for the last six years all about gathering power for Democrats and not serving the citizens of Illinois. Certainly I take a lot of lessons from the way he's garnered the power but I don't think the way they run their operation is necessarily in the best interests of the state and we've seen that the last six years. We don't even have a budget. They've borrowed us into the next century and they've fought with each other. My hat's off to his political skills, but those skills don't necessarily translate into the state being run any better.

<p class="factboxheadblack">Pat Brady</p> <p class="News"><b>Age:</b> 48</p> <p class="News"><b>Family: </b>Married with four children, ages 8 to 12.</p> <p class="News"><b>Employment:</b> Private law practice specializing in internal corporate investigations and compliance.</p> <p class="News"><b>Background:</b> Grew up in Bloomington, went to law school at Southern Illinois University, joined Cook County state's attorney's office in 1987, worked for Justice Department, moved to Fox Valley in 1999. Currently live in St. Charles.</p> <p class="News"><b>Past, current offices:</b> Past member of the Geneva library board, currently serves on Republican National Committee.</p>