How red are we?

If Senator Bill Brady of Bloomington does not win the Republican nomination for governor he may want to look at Grundy County.

If geography and running against Chicago means anything locally, Brady should have done very well in Grundy County.

Instead he finished fifth here, as all but one of the candidates had similar vote totals.

Chicago businessman Andrew McKenna led in Grundy County with 829 votes followed by Adam Andrzejewski with 723 and Kirk Dillard, 720, Jim Ryan, 711 and Brady, 644.

McKenna ran numerous advertisements on Chicago television stations, touting his business background and claiming everyone else would raise taxes. He did not mention businessmen ran Lehman Brothers and AIG.

Andrzejewski was largely unknown, but then received some national publicity, including verbal support from Rush Limbaugh and the endorsement of Lech Walesa, former president of Poland. Some claimed polls showed Andrzejewski in second place last weekend, but that proved optimistic.

Dillard of Hinsdale is in the Illinois Senate – like Brady – and represents western suburbs like Lisle and Westmont.

Jim Ryan ran for governor before, losing to Rod Blagojevich in 2002.

This leaves Brady, who announced his candidacy for governor in March of 2009, as the only candidate

in the Republican primary who was not from the Chicago area.

He was appointed to the Illinois Senate from the Bloomington area in 2002 and has served since then.

Prior to that he served about eight years in the Illinois House.

During a stop in Grundy County last September, Brady said he was still involved in his family’s construction and real estate development business.

“I am a citizen legislator,” he said.

Dillard, who was within 450 votes of Brady Wednesday morning, said Brady was the stealth candidate and was therefore not subjected to a lot of negative television advertisements.

A map of the election results in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune showed Brady carried every county west of Grundy to the Iowa border and every county south of Grundy to Springfield.

Yet, McKenna carried Grundy, along with Kendall, Will, Cook, Lake and McHenry Counties.

Brady tried to tie the other Republican candidates to Chicago style corruption. Last September in Morris he said people tie corruption to Chicago so being from Bloomington gave him an advantage.