>> Voters in next month's election only see JB Pritzker and Darren Bailey is their choices for Governor Colin Corbett is a longtime political strategist who's worked with Republican candidates.

Now he's running as an independent, describing himself as fiscally conservative and socially moderate Corbett's called out the Democratic and Republican parties for becoming too extreme and is hoping to draw voters eager for an alternative.

And Colin Corbett joins us now to talk more about his campaign.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

So we Sui said, you know, you worked in politics for many years, but you haven't mounted a campaign of your own more what you want to be.

Governor?

I became so frustrated with the lack of activity in the lack of focus on making people's lives better.

Political process has become one where >> the candidates each other, the parties each other and nothing actually gets done and working families not right now are really, really struggling.

And so I want to put the focus on that.

How do we actually help make life more affordable for working families?

How do we get the state growing again?

So we can raise everybody's wages.

We're hyper-focused on that note.

The partisan circus.

you know, you've acknowledged that running as an independent can be an uphill battle, you know, hoping to 15% of the vote.

If you don't necessarily expect to win.

What's what's driving you out in this campaign?

Yeah, we're going all in here and I've put everything into it.

So we're running to try to win.

But I'm also a realist.

I understand that that's unlikely against a billionaire incumbent.

>> But what we know we can do is start something in this election.

Can we start to put the focus on the fact that we deserve better?

vote for me isn't just a vote for good policy for mainstream positions.

It's also a vote to say, you know, we've had enough with what we're getting out of these primaries have been too many people are showing up at the ballot box and going.

This really is what I have to choose between.

And it's because over 77% of Illinois don't participate in the primary because they're just they're fed up with the choices that been provided.

And so it's not just a vote for common sense and mainstream policies.

Would you vote for us?

It's also vote to say, you know what, we'd like better in the future because we're gonna be building this independent majority for the long haul.

Yeah.

Something that you're looking to for the future, not necessarily just this one race.

You know, as we mentioned, worked for Republican candidates, including Senate candidate Don Tracy in the primary earlier this year.

How did you make that decision to kind of leave the party been aligned with versus staying in the GOP in trying to effect change from within.

>> Yeah, I've been frustrated within the Republican Party going back to 2011 and I've been sharing those frustrations.

I worked really, really hard and >> we've invested most of the profit from our companies into trying to fix that party and but it became clear to me not only were the problems on fixable and my own party, but also in the other part I realized that it's not the people in the party star really good people on both sides get the system itself that's broken.

And once I came to that realization that was clear, I could spend another 50 years and one party.

It wasn't going to fix that.

And this is an anti any think there really good people still in that fight.

But because the system is set up to pit us against each other.

It puts good people in positions where you're just going to hate the other side instead of focusing on how can we actually moved the ball forward and help people?

Let's talk about some of the ways you're hoping to help folks.

I know affordability is the top issue for voters across the country.

Basically every election at every level this year, day one.

What would you be working on to make life more affordable for Illinoisans?

Yeah.

So it's going to take time.

And that's only kid out here who's admitting that this will take time.

I don't have magic pixie dust that I can spread out.

If you do you, can you share?

I mean, wish I had some for myself, but ultimately we've got to lower property taxes that is going to be the first place we go because it hits everybody.

Even if you don't own your property, you're paying rent and you're paying those property taxes.

And so we've got a whole plan, but it will take over a decade.

The problem is the Democratic candidate in this race is saying that there's nothing the state can do, which is untrue and the Republican candidate is making promises that he's got that magic pixie dust that you wishing we can't.

We had which is also not true.

I think the voters are sick and tired of promises from politicians that can't happen to my running mate.

And I have put out over 20 pages of solutions, actual policies on how we're going to make life more affordable.

3 or 4 of those are just on property taxes.

How do we actually make this happen?

Respecting your time?

I'll pause there, but I can talk property taxes all day because we've got to lower those property taxes for families.

Well, you mentioned there are things the state could do that it's not doing right now.

What are some of the key points there?

So one of the key things is we don't fund education in the state the way that we're supposed to when JB Pritzker took office, the state provided 27% of the funding for local school districts snow down to 24 and a half.

So we're going the wrong direction right now on this.

And the problem is that causes 2 things.

One, our schools aren't getting the funding they need to to adequately educate our children, but to because those local school districts aren't getting what they need, they have to turn to property taxes.

The national average is 45%.

The state's only providing 24 and a half here that Delta is massive and your school district.

The only place they can turn to that is going to your property taxes.

So this is where it's a dual benefit.

We could fully fund our schools in Illinois.

We can improve education and start the process of lowering property taxes.

While in Illinois does have, you know, the evidence base funding model that's puts, you know, 3 billion additional dollars over the last 10 years toward schools.

Although, of course, the state is not on track to meet its goal of full funding by 2027.

You know, it's been some extremely tight budget conditions the last several years.

Are there particular approaches you would propose to boost state funding for schools?

Yeah.

And Pritzker like using that 3 billion dollar number.

But the truth is because of inflation over the last 3 years, those ebf increases haven't kept pace with inflation.

And so school districts are even further behind their adequacy targets today than they were 3 years ago.

So we're not keeping pace at the state level.

And that's a major problem.

And so what we want to look at doing is freezing discretionary spending in your one.

We've got bombed rolling off in 2030, 2033, let's not waste that on more spending.

Let's roll that into taking care of our expenditures that we need to make.

We also want to modernize the sales tax to make it less regressive, which will result also in revenue for the state.

Want to take all of that funding that invested in paying down our pension debt, fully funding, education and GDF, which is our funding to our municipalities or counties.

We can do those 3 things.

It's not.

If there's a ribbon cuttings, there was no press releases with that.

But if we can do the hard work of being fiscally responsible, that's how we can get the state of growing again.

Number one.

And number 2, finally get that tax burden lowering for working families.

Well, into your point about eliminating the sales tax on, you know, sort of these essential everyday items, groceries, diapers, medicine, how do you, you know, kind of account for the loss in revenue that that would mean yeah, that's where you're shifting that to services.

So ultimately you're trying to lower than those everyday essentials that working families really rely on.

You mentioned most of them, but people don't realize over-the-counter medicines, medical supplies, you know, school supplies.

We got a 10 day holiday on school supplies.

You've got teachers that are buying the supplies for their for their schools and further for their kids because their kids can afford and their families can afford it.

This is the kind of thing that we shouldn't be charging extra.

It's highly regressive.

You shift over to services, especially higher and services.

People realize that our tax system in Illinois was set up for a 1950's manufacturing economy.

It's 75 years later.

It's time to evolve.

You know, President Trump has loomed large in the contest between JB Pritzker and Darren Bailey.

If you are elected, how would you try to handle the president you've taken issue with in the past?

Yeah, we've got to find the right balance.

I think with my 2 opponents the checking of the too far in one direction.

Darren Bailey is obviously a big fan of the president and that's fine.

I think it's reciprocated JB Pritzker signed.

I think that the President Trump could solve cancer in particular, find some reason to be unhappy with that.

And listen, as you said, I've been unhappy and I'm sure happiness.

But you've got to have a relationship where you say I will oppose you when you're wrong, but I'll have your back when you're And actually does this quite well in New York.

He's the president of the United States.

I will happily work with anyone in Washington who's going to work with me to make people's lives better in Illinois when you're wrong, gotten pretty blunt.

I'm going to say you're wrong, but you're not always wrong.

And you know what?

Maybe I can influence you to be less wrong.

I wasn't just constantly taking pot shots at you on social media like Pritzker is because he wants to be president.

And you know, another big issue.

Another major question mark in this race is the future of the Chicago Bears Stadium.

What do you think?

You know, Illinois is elected official should do to try and keep the team here.

where do you draw the line on things going too far in terms of incentives?

I draw the line at paying no property taxes, which is, by the way, what JB Pritzker said a year and a half ago that he drew that line at billionaire sports owner shouldn't be given deals that that provide $0 in property tax payments.

Well, now Pritzker's actually negotiate a deal that would allow them to pay $0 in property taxes.

The Bears are willing to pay 15 million dollars a year in property taxes.

Why are we saying let's take that revenue to our schools in our local communities, that tax burden that they would pay would be among the highest of any NFL stadiums in the entire country.

Let's capture that revenue.

There's a plan to do it.

But playing game simply because Chicago still wants a seat at the table, which I respect.

I'm a purist.

would love to keep the Bears at the lakefront.

That's a beautiful view.

It's the only view like that in the NFL, but we've been told that's not possible.

So it's time to accept the reality that it's Arlington Heights or Hammond and I don't want them going to him.

because all the economic benefit around the stadium, in addition to the tax payments in the revenue for government, we would lose all of that.

We need to keep that here in Illinois.

You know, you've proposed freezing the gas tax, capping sales tax on gas and said putting in place a road usage charge based on GPS data data from Interstate commercial character carriers.

>> One of the privacy safeguards that need to be in place for those GPS data you had on the exact thing that while we're being careful about this proposal because people have privacy concerns and they rightfully do have privacy concerns we see in this era flock everything.

Tracking your phone tracking you now to your car tracking you.

>> We've got to be really careful.

And that's why we have proposed a comprehensive privacy plan and a lot to protect people's privacy.

That is the shortfall here of this plan.

But the reason why we have to start talking about it is because you've got electric vehicles and other vehicles that are paying into this fund to repair and take care of our roads because it's all funded through nft through the motor fuel tax.

And so we've got to modernize how we invest in our roads and take care of our roads that there's there's no solution yet to this because of those privacy concerns.

We've got early start to have the conversation.

All right.

Well, we appreciate the