As November nears, the Republican hopeful for Illinois Lieutenant Governor, Aaron Del Mar made a stop Thursday in La Salle County.

Darren Bailey’s running mate stopped off for a private lunch at Halftime Restaurant in Ottawa as one of his stops through the Illinois Valley ahead of November’s election to address the main issues of the race.

Following his stops in Ottawa, Del Mar took a private tour of Illinois Valley Community College, followed by a visit to a local gun range.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The state legislature was able to come up with a cell phone ban for schools. Where do you stand on this issue?

A: I happen to support a telephone ban for schools. As a dad of six kids, I think that they should have access to them for an emergency situation, but I don’t think you’re going to have a good learning environment when you’re on your cell phone, when you’re supposed to be learning reading, writing and arithmetic.

Q: A big issue in this area is data centers. What would be your administration’s position on them?

A: If you’re in La Salle County and your county board that was duly elected by your people doesn’t want to have a data center here, or they want to regulate that data center in a way to keep them accountable for the increased cost of the water usage or how much it’s going to be on the power grid, I think that those local communities should be able to do it, instead of Springfield, JB Pritzker and the Democrat majority trying to take control away.

Q: What’s the biggest thing that’s challenging residents right now that your administration would aim to address?

A: Property taxes, no question. Under JB Pritzker in the last seven years, most property taxes have gone up 67% and they’re unsustainable. That, mixed with increased utility bills and the costs associated with keeping power and water to your home are pushing people and families out of Illinois. It makes Illinois less competitive. That’s why we lost a congressional district, and we’re projected to lose another congressional district in 2030 because we’re losing population.

Q: What’s the topic that’s on the horizon in the next four years that maybe we’re not thinking about right now that your administration would be better at handling than the current one?

A: The three biggest things about our administration are going to be affordability, education and safety. That takes us into property tax relief and redoing how we assess property taxes. Right now, most of your property taxes go to the local education system. That’s how we fund schools. So anytime you talk about property tax reform, everyone starts screaming that you want to start defunding schools. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about doing it in a responsible manner, and attaching it to other different governing bodies and revenue streams. You can do it on sales tax, you could be doing it on rental tax, you can be doing it in other places outside of it. If we don’t figure out how to make Illinois affordable and competitive, there’s not going to be anybody here in four years or eight years.

I think that we’re going to need to really look at our education system, which is part of that with taxes, and then also our safety. We need to reform and rebuild how we look at public safety from an educational standpoint. Nobody wants to get into the law enforcement profession because they don’t feel like they’re supported and that ultimately makes us less safe.

Q: What’s the impact of Colin Corbett’s campaign going to be on this race?

A: He doesn’t have any impact yet because we just challenged his petitions. Me and my team are objecting to this petition of 38,000 submitted signatures. I challenged 20,000 of them. We are having our first court date with the Illinois Board of Elections to set our judicial schedule, and then we’ll be going through a full audit, all 20,000 that we objected to. If he survives that and keeps 7,000 of the 20,000 that we objected on, he will be a candidate, and then we’ll dispatch him accordingly, just like we are JB Pritzker.

Q: What’s the issue that’s going to ultimately push your administration over the edge in November so that Bailey and Del Mar are in charge?

A: The difference is four years ago when Darren Bailey ran, I wasn’t on the team. Actually, I was running against Darren. I was Gary Rabine’s Lieutenant Governor candidate, so this is my second time running for Lieutenant Governor.

I don’t think [Bailey] understood as much as he does now, because he’s had a huge evolution of understanding of the state of Illinois, which campaigning makes you do.

But more importantly, this is also a referendum on JB Pritzker and the last seven years of failed policies. So you’re going to say, ‘Well, we’ve balanced the budget.’ We didn’t balance the budget. You tax people more. You said, ‘This is how much we’re going to spend, and then we’re gonna tax you until we get there.’ That’s not balancing a budget.

So what can you point to? Are we safer? Is it more affordable? Are your property taxes down? Are your kids smarter?

Q: What ultimately made you want to join up with Darren Bailey in this campaign?

A: Just like Democrats, we’re not a monolithic group. We don’t all believe exactly the same thing. There are differences. We’ve been a little unkind to each other. He’s said some negative things about me and I’ve said some negative things about him. But when we actually acted like adults and put our egos aside and took the chips off of our shoulder and sat down and had a chill conversation, we realized that a lot of the same issues that he’s pushing against are the same issues that I’m pushing against.