Chicago Bears stadium becomes a political game as midterms near. Can it score for Republicans?

When the topic of a new Chicago Bears stadium came up in their face-to-face forum on Oct. 13, Republican challenger Darren Bailey delivered a shot at Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker: “I’m just glad I’m not going to be known as the governor that lost the Bears.”

Bailey later acknowledged the line was a “jab,” a sound bite meant for newscasts and social media. But coming from a Republican making his second bid to unseat Pritzker, the phrasing also suggested Bailey wouldn't be the one in the governor’s chair if the team left for Indiana.

In recent weeks, the saga over where the Bears will build a new stadium — Arlington Heights, Chicago or Hammond, Indiana — has become more than just a sports bar discussion. For Republicans, and Bailey in particular, it represents a political Hail Mary to find a subject that captivates voters and gets them to vote for GOP candidates.

Pritzker backs “policies that are forcing small businesses and the Chicago Bears to greener pastures,” Illinois Republican Party Chair Bob Grogan said in a statement Tuesday. And Bailey told the Tribune Editorial Board earlier this month that his “critique of Pritzker is that he’s done nothing” to keep the Bears in Illinois, while Bailey called Indiana, which has dangled a stadium entertainment district package largely subsidized by its local taxpayers, “a pretty amazing state.”

As it stands now, separate proposals to keep the Bears in Illinois are pending in the Illinois House and the Senate, as negotiations continue with the team. Both proposals deal with one of the top issues holding up an Illinois stadium deal: property taxes. One pending proposal would allow the Bears and developers of other big projects in Illinois to negotiate an annual payment to local governments in lieu of property taxes. The other would create a local stadium authority to allow a privately funded, publicly owned stadium, which would be exempt from property taxes.

Pritzker and top lawmakers say talks with team representatives are ongoing, symbolized by a recent meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Pat Ryan, a minority Bears owner and team board member. The governor has also said he thinks action will occur in Springfield during the legislature's upcoming fall veto session.

But using the Bears stadium as a political football raises several questions.

Does the passion of Bears fans translate into a tangible political liability if the team moves across the border? And does the GOP's desire for the state to help a multibillion-dollar professional sports franchise clash with the party’s longtime concerns about high taxes and government giveaways, and with its embrace of free enterprise?

And then there are questions about the sincerity of Bailey’s fandom in addressing the Bears’ fate.

The farmer and former state lawmaker is from downstate Xenia, 230 miles south of Chicago and in a media market where Bears games air only sporadically. Xenia is also only 180 miles from Indianapolis, home of the Colts, and 85 miles from St. Louis, which, though it no longer has an NFL team, still often receives TV coverage of the Rams, who moved from St. Louis back to Los Angeles in 2016.

In an interview earlier this month with Mark Maxwell, a reporter for St. Louis' KSDK-TV, Bailey was asked to name his favorite Bears player. The Republican candidate fumbled.

“Ah, it may be Staley. Staley the mascot came up, and we had a fun time with him on the opening day,” Bailey said, referencing his attendance at the Bears' Sept. 20 home opener against the Minnesota Vikings. Asked again for a specific player, he cited the team that won the Super Bowl in January 1986 and the “days of Jay Cutler, the days of McMahon and currently, yeah, my mind’s blank. Is it Williams, No. 18?”

For the record, Cutler played for the Bears from 2009 to 2016. Jim McMahon was the Bears’ “punky” quarterback who led the team to its Super Bowl victory. And the current Bears quarterback, No. 18, is Caleb Williams.

At a news conference outside Soldier Field on Sept. 18, Bailey outlined his proposal for a new stadium, privately funded by the Bears, that roughly mirrors what Illinois lawmakers have already put on the table, including support for about $800 million in taxpayer-funded infrastructure work.

“If JB Pritzker refuses to act and the Bears leave, he will own that failure,” Bailey said. “As governor, I will never step back and watch Indiana take any team of ours without putting up one hell of a fight.”

But Bailey’s plan comes with one big caveat. What he didn’t say at the time, but later disclosed in interviews, is that the state wouldn’t put a dime toward the project until it rolls back gasoline tax increases and enacts relief for local property taxpayers.

Bailey has said that, if elected, he would use an executive order to roll back the state’s motor fuel tax, which rises annually based on inflation. But unlike Indiana's governor, Illinois governors do not have the power to suspend a state law such as the gas tax.

And because property taxes are levied locally to fund schools and municipalities, a substitute revenue source would be needed to provide relief. That would likely mean a significant hike in state sales or income taxes, which would be politically difficult to enact.

“Our offer is a beginning. It’s a start,” Bailey said. “Actually, most importantly is I’ve said that there will be nothing without taxpayer relief. So taxpayers must have relief at the gas pump and with their property taxes before we move forward and do anything else.”

On the day he unveiled his proposal, Bailey called on Pritzker to order the General Assembly into special session to address the Bears stadium issue. But the conditions Bailey attached to his own proposal, and the political obstacles they would face, would tie up the issue for a long time if he were elected.

It’s not the first time Bailey has shown some inconsistency on the stadium front. Even as he called for efforts to keep the team in Illinois, he has said Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, has assured him a team move is “already done.” And in one social media post, he indicated support for an open-air stadium even though the team and its supporters favor a domed stadium because it would likely generate revenue from nonfootball events.

Bailey has accused Pritzker of trying to run out the clock to defer any action on the Bears stadium decision until after the Nov. 3 election to avoid any political fallout if the team decides to move to Indiana.

But in a recent interview with the Tribune, Pritzker has said he believes a Bears move is not “going to happen” and has expressed confidence lawmakers will act when the legislature reconvenes in Springfield for two separate weeks in mid-November and early December.

“Obviously, this is a negotiation. I think there are a lot of people sniping, including my opponent, who don’t — they’ve never been in a serious negotiation before. I have been in many,” the billionaire entrepreneur and Hyatt Hotels heir said.

The Bears' stadium saga has dragged on for years, but the lack of action in Springfield this past year was most notable, and the team pivoted publicly, saying its interests were across the border at sites in Hammond.

In February, Braun signed a bill outlining a financial structure for a Bears stadium in Indiana, and in June, Bears leadership said in a carefully worded statement that its board of directors had voted to proceed with plans for a new stadium in Hammond. Under the Indiana deal, the team would invest over $2 billion to build the stadium, and the state promised to invest $1 billion through various taxes.

But since then, little has moved forward in the Hoosier State, and Illinois has stayed in the mix. The in-person meeting on Oct. 1 between Pritzker, Illinois legislative leaders, Ryan and Goodell was the latest sign that the team hasn’t given up on a possible option to keep the Bears in Illinois.

In the Tribune interview, Pritzker pointed the finger back at the team for a lack of action in Illinois, saying the Bears “did a terrible job of lobbying” earlier in the year and that the team needed to focus on individual lawmakers for support rather than count on him to lead the charge.

“I’ve got enough challenges,” he said, referring to his dealings with lawmakers on other issues. “When you want to get a bill passed, if it’s a bill that’s good for you, you should be talking to the legislators.”

State Rep. Kam Buckner, a Chicago Democrat and the House's point person on the stadium issue, said “we have been working through this pretty vigorously” on final legislation and that the team has “been responsive.”

“In a perfect world, I would love some legislation that works for obviously the taxpayers, No. 1, and works for the football team and that gives both Chicago and Arlington Heights an opportunity to compete to keep our hometown team here in the state,” Buckner said.

As for whether losing the Bears would carry a political price, Buckner was skeptical.

“I know people are saying like, ‘Nobody wants to be the people to lose them.’ But I tend to think that sounds kind of as a sound bite,” he said. “When we get down to the brass tacks, if the messaging is that the Bears left because the state wouldn’t give them whatever the sweetheart deal is, and then, on the heels of the next budget and whatever else, (not giving the Bears a stadium deal) becomes a responsible thing to do.”

Buckner acknowledged that the Bears trying to use Indiana as “leverage was a smart play.” But he said the way the team kept touting Indiana without announcing anything new may have cost the Bears some of that leverage.

“The average Chicagoan, and the average Illinoisan, is so used to (the Bears promoting Indiana) that they’ve already had their grieving process about the Bears being gone,” he said.

Citing regular internal polling over the last 18 months, he said, “Overwhelmingly (people are) wanting the Bears to stay in Chicago. But then a little bit higher, more overwhelmingly, (they say) we don’t want to pay for it.”

Tribune reporter Dan Petrella contributed.