West Cook News

GOP gubernatorial candidate Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) recently responded to a tweet from Village of Oak Park Public Health Director Theresa Chapple that talks about never having a birthday party for her daughter because of COVID. 

“Theresa Chapple is a poster child for medical tyranny in Illinois," Bailey said. "She has 'health' in her title to make her sound credible. But she isn’t a doctor but rather [a] political activist pushing to achieve her own Marxist political goals by force upon Oak Park citizens. One of them: making us all more dependent upon [the] government by keeping schools and our economy closed forever. That’s what Theresa Chapple wants — to control you with the threat that if you don’t follow her dictates, you will get sick and die. It’s nonsense and it needs to stop. Illinois needs a governor who will end the reign of tyrants like Theresa Chapple."

Chapple also supports a pro-mask position and has been verbal about her support behind Philadelphia's masking rules that have reinstituted the practice abandoned in other parts of the country long ago, West Cook News reported. In a tweet, Chapple mentioned that she "like Philly's metric of a 50% increase in COVID rates over a 7 day period as an indicator of putting masks back on." 

Bailey on the other hand has been a critic of mask mandates. He applauded a ruling from a Sangamon County judge that was against Pritzker's mask requirements for public school students, according to an SE Illinois News report.

“This ruling is another victory for freedom that confirms what we already knew and have been fighting for since the beginning,” Bailey said in a statement. “Pritzker is a failure and I will continue fighting against his tyrannical mandates and empty threats while standing up for the rights of parents, students, small businesses and every Illinoisan who has suffered under his unconstitutional and unilateral mandates."

Early this year, Bailey was also pleased with the bipartisan vote from the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules to override emergency rules from IDPH that would have reinstated the K-12 mask mandate for most schools.

"Today’s decision by JCAR solidifies what I have been saying for the last two years, that the Pritzker administration severely overstepped their authority by placing mask mandates on schools," he said.

Chapple continues to support masking requirements, saying, "Schools without mask required were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks as compared to schools with mask required."

She also called on the "communities and companies" that made public statements in favor of Black Lives Matter and the Marxist concept of "equity" to fulfill their promise. 

Chapple was also the health director who referred to "mothers" as "birthing people" when she tweeted "Prior to COVID, my work was on maternal mortality. About 700 birthing people die each year. The federal gov dedicated $100 mill to address this. We have a campaign-chasing zero, with a goal of eliminating maternal death."