Rick Heidner casts himself as ‘Trump Republican’ in bid to unseat
Pritzker
[February 13, 2026]
By Ben Szalinski and Brenden Moore
SPRINGFIELD – A businessman-turned-politician who made his name in real
estate before trying his luck in the gambling industry.
No, it’s not President Donald Trump. It’s Rick Heidner — a Barrington
Hills real estate developer and video gambling mogul who is one of four
Republicans seeking to unseat Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker this fall.
Since launching his campaign in earnest last month, Heidner has worked
to position himself as the MAGA candidate in the race. His first
campaign ad even branded himself a “Trump Republican for governor.”
“I think it would be a major plus, rather than every single word that
comes out of a governor’s mouth to be demeaning to our president, I
think would be helpful to have someone that we could have a good
relationship with them,” Heidner told Capitol News Illinois in an
interview earlier this month.
He’s the third GOP candidate for governor to sit for CNI’s election
podcast series. Capitol News Illinois will publish a feature and full
interview with each of the four GOP governor candidates in the coming
days.
Heidner is betting that his alignment with Trump, business background
and outsider status will persuade enough Republican primary voters to
make him their standard-bearer against Pritzker.
Gambling mogul
Heidner, 65, has been a player in the state’s business community for
decades. His real estate firm manages more than 280 properties across
the country. He also owns the gas station chain Ricky Rockets Fuel
Center and wholesale fuel supplier Prairie State Energy.
He founded Gold Rush Gaming with his wife, Alisa, in 2012, and it is now
the third-largest video gambling terminal operator in Illinois. The
company’s machines are in nearly 800 bars, restaurants and gas stations
across the state, according to Illinois Gaming Board records.
Heidner’s plans to expand his gambling empire with a proposed racetrack
and casino in south suburban Tinley Park were axed in 2019 when the
Pritzker administration refused to sell the state-owned site he and his
business partner — Hawthorne Race Course President Tim Carey — had been
eyeing.
It came around the same time that the Chicago Tribune reported that
Heidner partnered in some real estate deals with a banking family that
had alleged mob ties that helped sink a proposed casino project in
Rosemont in the early 2000s.
The newspaper also found that Heidner had a similar partnership with a
suburban strip club owner convicted of an illegal bookmaking and money
skimming operation.
Heidner’s name also surfaced around this time in a federal search
warrant executed on now-former state Sen. Martin Sandoval’s Springfield
office as part of a sweeping public corruption probe. Federal
prosecutors later confirmed Heidner wasn’t a target of the
investigation.
During a candidate forum last month, Heidner blamed the Tinley Park
project’s derailment on “optics.”
In an interview with CNI weeks later, he lamented the project’s failure
and the money he lost as a result. But he said settling a score with
Pritzker wasn’t a motivating factor in his decision to run.
Heidner also denied any association with organized crime. He blamed the
news media for wanting “to play their own narratives.”
“Nobody ever wants to be wrong,” Heidner said. “Even when you’re 100%
vindicated of something, they still want to keep regurgitating and
regurgitating the same stuff that’s just ridiculous. I have no ties to
the mob, I could tell you that for sure.”
Why he’s running
A few weeks before the filing deadline in October, the GOP field for
governor appeared set with the party’s 2022 nominee Darren Bailey
running it back and conservative policy wonk Ted Dabrowski and DuPage
County Sheriff James Mendrick placing their hats into the ring.
Then Heidner filed paperwork forming a campaign committee, poured $1
million of his own money into it and spent two weeks in a mad dash to
collect at least 5,000 signatures needed to secure a place on the
ballot. Despite the truncated timeline, Heidner got the requisite
signatures, and no objections were filed.
Heidner said he did not want to see Pritzker win a third term. But once
he sized up the Republican field, he came away with the belief that none
of Bailey, Dabrowski or Mendrick could defeat Illinois’ billionaire
chief executive.
“So, my heart and my soul just kept dragging me into it and saying,
‘Rick, you have to do this. Rick, you have to do this,’” Heidner said.
“And that’s when I decided to run.”
Alignment with Trump
In the weeks that followed, Heidner’s campaign existed in name only.
There was no campaign website, and the businessman did not return
reporters’ inquiries.
But Heidner emerged in mid-January, with his inaugural campaign ad
touting his record in business while promising to pass term limits, end
wasteful spending and cut taxes.
Beyond the parallels in their professional backgrounds, Heider has
sought to tie himself politically to Trump. On social media, Heidner
portrays himself as a staunch supporter of the president, echoing his
positions while bashing Pritzker’s resistance.
Like Trump, Heidner has shared unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud
on social media. He posted on X on Jan. 26 that former Vice President
Kamala Harris won Illinois’ electoral votes in 2024 by about the same
number of new voters who registered online. Though he provided no
evidence of fraud or noncitizen voting, Heidner wrote, “suspicious,
isn’t it? Makes you wonder what’s really going on in our state.”
Pressed to explain his claim, Heidner ducked the question.
“I don’t even remember posting that, so I apologize, but I could tell
you this, I’m 100% for in-person voting,” he said. “I’m 1,000% for
voting ID. I don’t like mail-in ballots.”
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Rick Heidner, a Republican from Barrington, speaks to voters
following a candidate forum in Tazewell County on Jan. 15, 2026.
(Capitol News Illinois photo by Brenden Moore)
Though he’s tried to win over voters by siding with Trump, Heidner said
he isn’t always in lockstep with the president.
“I can’t say I’ve agreed 1,000% with everything, no single thing, he’s
ever said,” Heidner said.
Heidner said he supports creating a path to citizenship for immigrants,
particularly those who have been in the country for many years and
contribute to the economy. However, he said he supports Immigration and
Customs Enforcement’s work.
Positioning himself as the Trump candidate could help in the short run
as he competes for votes from a GOP primary electorate in which the
president remains deeply popular. But it could result in long-term
blowback in a state Trump lost three times by wide margins and, as of
last month, registered just a 39% overall approval rating.
While largely in alignment behind Trump’s positions, Heidner said it’s
also transactional. He argued that Pritzker’s adversarial tone with the
president hasn’t been good for Illinois and that he can be the one who
smooths things over.
“It seems like Illinois got favor when we had a Democratic president,”
Heidner said. “It certainly seemed that way to me, and hopefully having
a Republican president, I think I could have good conversations with the
president about our state of Illinois. I think that would be a positive
thing.”
Trump backed Bailey in the 2022 election. He has not formally endorsed
in the 2026 race, though he encouraged Bailey to “keep fighting” and
stay in the race following a helicopter crash that killed his son,
daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.
Policy vision
Heidner leans heavily on his business background to guide the policy
focuses of his campaign. Asked how his governorship would benefit
farmers and rural residents, Heidner talked about horse racing.
“I was the hero for the southern Illinois people, okay?” Heidner said,
pointing to business investments he made in horse racing, particularly
in Chicago’s south suburbs. He went on to lament the decline in horse
racing in Illinois, arguing he “was revitalizing the entire horse racing
industry.”
Heidner added he also respects corn farmers after briefly owning the
Field of Dreams movie site in Iowa alongside White Sox hall of famer
Frank Thomas. He did not say what sort of agricultural policies he would
push as governor.
Like other candidates in the race, Heidner has also voiced support for
lowering taxes and auditing the state budget. He said repealing
Illinois’ immigration policies would save the state money.
“We turn over all those illegal criminal aliens to the federal police
and get them out of our state — we’re probably going to save the state
some money there,” he said.
He added that Illinois also needs to focus on growing its tax base to
allow the state to bring in more revenue without raising taxes.
On education, Heidner said his solution to funding problems at public
schools is to provide vouchers “so that a parent and a child can have a
choice in case they’re not happy the way that their children are being
taught so that they could move their child.”
On energy, Heidner worried that data centers are straining the state’s
grid. He suggested they should pay more for the energy they use, which
Pritzker also supports.
“They need to pay more for the energy, then we divide it up into our
residents and our other businesses,” Heidner said. “They’re really
creating a problem with energy and, you know, they should have to step
up and pay a higher rate.”
Political donations under scrutiny
Heidner has also faced scrutiny for the Democrats he’s donated campaign
cash to.
That list includes Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, former Cook County
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle
and Illinois Senate President Don Harmon.
Heidner’s $25,000 donation to Johnson came shortly after the mayor’s
election win over Paul Vallas. Heidner said he supported Vallas but
agreed to help the new mayor pay down his campaign debt at the as a
favor to a friend.
Heidner, who has business interests in Chicago, said he thought he’d
“have the opportunity to get an appointment with” Johnson as he’d “love
to have a conversation with him about gaming.” But, that meeting never
happened, Heidner said.
He similarly chalked up his donation to Johnson as the action of a
pragmatic businessman when pressed by Dabrowski during a candidate forum
last month. But on his $2,500 donation to Foxx, who was one of the major
proponents of ending cash bail, he called it “a mistake” and apologized.
Pressed on his long history of bipartisan campaign donations, Heidner
said he’s “never asked anybody to do anything for a donation.” He cited,
for example, a $5,000 donation he made in 2015 to then-Chicago Ald. Deb
Mell as a favor to her father, retired Ald. Dick Mell. It turned out
that Deb Mell opposed permitting video gambling in city limits.
“I never even asked her,” Heidner said.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
