Unlike the many other candidates who filed at the Illinois State Board of Elections last week, Gubernatorial candidate Jesse Sullivan filed his petitions yesterday.
Sullivan said he was turning in over 10,000 signatures. The minimum required for a statewide office is 5,000 for Republican or Democratic candidates. Sullivan also interviewed on The Morning Rush and attended a Cities Meet and Greet.
“I’m a political outsider. I really want to join with my fellow patriots to save our home that we love. I’m a 5th generation Illinoisan. I grew up about an hour southwest of here in Petersburg, Illinois… Lincoln’s New Salem. One of eight kids, grew up working on a farm. Learned these values of faith, family, and service. My Christian faith drives my entire life,” said Jesse Sullivan, a Republican Gubernatorial candidate. “My wife and I have children, and were raising them the way I was raised. Running around the cornfield of central Illinois. The service side sent me around the world, to do counterinsurgency work as civilian intelligence analyst over in Afghanistan. I also realized if I wanted to help people in need it’s about creating jobs, growing the economy. “
Sullivan has been accused of being “new to the right” but Sullivan said there’s a lot of misinformation and lies out there about him.
“I’m a political outsider and this is another reason I hate our politics. So much lies and misinformation out there from political operatives from both sides of the aisle. It’s because I pose a threat to that system. I’m a skeptical voter,” said Sullivan. “I’m a skeptical republican voter, who says I’ve been sold a bill of goods from people who say one thing and during another. Well, my life is my message.”
Sullivan said he doesn’t have a voting record, but he is the founder of the magazine One World. He founded this publication in 2006 while he was a student at St. Louis University. After Sullivan graduated, the publication later received funding from groups like the Center for American Progress. Sullivan announced his gubernatorial campaign in September with a $5 million contribution from San Francisco billionaire Chris Larsen.
“Whether it comes from the pro-life side, I don’t have a voting record. My wife and I are foster parents, because we want to live these values, not just talk about them. Capitalism, I’ve gone to Cuba and tried to bring capitalism to Cuba. I’ve lived these values. When you talk about being a business guy. Let’s talk about this on the donor side. Chris Larsen, one of the donors for me, we had formed a relationship by going and trying to invest in companies around the world,” said Sullivan.
Larsen has funded Democrat and republican campaigns. On Jan. 4, 2018, Forbes estimated Larsen’s worth at $59 billion, briefly putting him ahead of Mark Zuckerberg and into fifth place in their list of world’s richest people. Impressive, but he’s no Ken Griffin…. who’s also on the Forbes list with $16.1 billion. Griffin is the main donor of Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin. Darren Bailey’s, an early favorite, top donor is Richard “Dick” Ellis Uihlein and Elizabeth “Liz” Uihlein who are American billionaire businesspeople, founders of Uline and conservative donors. Dick is also an heir to the Schlitz brewing fortune. In the 2020 election cycle, the Uihleins and their company had, by April 2020, contributed $1.5 million to Trump’s “America First Action.”
McLean County Sherriff Jon Sandage was in attendance.
Larsen co-founded Ripple. The primary source of funding Ripple has been sales of the XRP cryptocurrency.
Sullivan said he thinks states, like Illinois, will be the experimentation labs when it comes to crypto currency.
Last week, President Biden signed the executive order on crypto oversight that urges the Federal Reserve to explore whether the central bank should create its own digital currency.
“The best governors are the one’s who are pushing back and saying, ‘Hey, not in my state!’ And then challenge the federal government in what they are doing. I think this is a perfect area for states to push back.
Sullivan said he is for shifting to Web 3.0, which is an internet form that uses Artificial Intelligence technology and work in tandem with Metaverse. Web 3.0 is the third generation of internet services for websites and applications that will focus on using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven and Semantic Web. Sullivan also believes the American dollar will remain in tact if crypto becomes the way of Illinois’ economy.
Photo courtesy to Elastos
“I think there are different use values…there’s Bitcoin, which is the store value…a replacement for gold. Then there are a lot of other use cases that have nothing to do with currency, even though they are labeled that way…it has a lot more to do with smart contracts, which is a way of taking all these industries that have made a ton of money off our backs, like international exchanges and remittances they take 10% of all the money sent between nations. For me it’s about these other use cases of technologies that we are going to create whole industries out of,” said Sullivan.
Sullivan said “hand on the Bible” he will not do the bidding of his big crypto currency donors or any others.
“I want to go to Heaven more than being Governor,” said Sullivan. “I owe no man anything when I step into office. So all my top donors, that I have gotten to know, have done this work with me around the world…trying to back companies and create jobs…didn’t even really know my politics. For me, the one area that I believe in that they also believe in is in the future of the internet.”
Over 120,000 people moved out of the state in the last year alone.
“It’s always taxing people more and spending more through the government and you don’t even get anything good for it,” said Sullivan. “No good outcomes. I also hate the value side. I’m a downstate Illinois guy. I’ve always felt like a one size fits all, Chicago dominating the entire state [policy]. That doesn’t work. You look right now at the current governor and the values he holds. Say abortion, we are a midwestern backbone of the nation. Good midwestern values. We’ve gone so far left to where its late term, partial birth abortions. Tax payer funded, with no parental notification for minors. That is ridiculous. We are becoming the abortion destination capital of the Midwest.”
Jesse Sullivan said he feels like he can truly be a bridge candidate
“Raising my family on a farm and I understand that downstate perspective, but I’ve also been doing this work around the world,” said Sullivan. “Where we’ve gotten to work on creating jobs and industries of the future. My wife is Hispanic, and I have a black foster daughter. We’re a diverse state and we’re a diverse family and that’s a beautiful thing. I think especially in Chicago you find these hard working people of faith with these conservative values, but they’d been voting democrat for so long.”
Jesse founded Alter with a desire to use entrepreneurship to combat global poverty. Sullivan previously served on a counterinsurgency team in Helmand Afghanistan, where he advised US military and NATO strategy.
Sullivan said his militia commander looked him in the eye and he said, ‘you see these young men over here they have no jobs or opportunities, if you can help us solve that problem we will have more peace here.’
“I was down in Haiti after the earthquake and all these young kids would say, ‘give me something good.’ I realized handouts are not creating solutions, long term solutions. We need to create jobs and grow the economy. I decided to take this on. I went back to business school after Afghanistan at Stanford. I ended up saying I’m going to try and create jobs all over the world. We find entrepreneurs with ideas. If you’ve seen the show Shark Tank then you know what I’m talking about. We find these early stage entrepreneurs and we help them grow their businesses. We give them the expertise, the investments. We’ve had some really good success doing it. I look at south side Chicago or downstate Illinois here where we need to create jobs in the industries of the future. That’s what I feel well prepared to do,” said Sullivan.
