The Democratic Party of Illinois has its work cut out for it [View all]

Last month, Rep. Christian Mitchell (D-Chicago) was interviewed by Chicago Public Radio about his new role as interim executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois.

Mitchell was asked at one point about what the state party planned to do to counter Dan Proft’s newspaper empire. Proft, a conservative activist and radio talk show host, operates about 40 news websites, from the Lake County Gazette, to Rock Island Today to the Carbondale Reporter. They all run stories with a decided tilt toward Proft’s favored Republican candidates, who are pro-life, anti-union and pro-gun. Proft receives millions of dollars from ultra-wealthy businessman Dick Uihlein (Proft’s Liberty Principles PAC reported receiving another $3.5 million just last week from Uihlein).

Rep. Mitchell called Proft’s papers “fake news,” and clarified that he didn’t mean to use the term the way President Donald Trump employs it to describe The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and other established national news outlets. Mitchell said his party intends to counter Proft’s pro-GOP, anti-Democratic Party messages with its own messaging.

I use Google to automatically track news stories published about every contested legislative race in the state, and for weeks now, maybe 90 percent of the coverage of all those candidates is coming from just a single information source: Dan Proft.

Read more: http://illinoistimes.com/article-20284-the-dpi-has-its-work-cut-out-for-it.html