SE Illinois News

Republican State House candidate Paul Jacobs knows from personal experience the impact of Gov. J.B. Prizker’s statewide shutdown policies.

“I’m completely against the governor keeping the state on lockdown and more importantly this very slow process that he wants to return the state to normalcy with,” Jacobs, running in the 115th District, told the SE Illinois News. “As I’ve said before, the governor had 30 days that were legally given to him by the state legislators during a single disaster.”

Jacobs argues the governor’s threats to strip the federal funding of counties and prosecute small business owners that move to defy his statewide stay-at-home order by prematurely restarting their economies sets the wrong tone for what he thinks should be happening.

“I believe the state legislator made the 30-day limit for a good reason,” the Carbondale resident said. “There are lawsuits that are in the works that I think through this next week are going to shed a lot more light on what’s legal and not legal for our governor. We must go through the courts. You must use an attorney.”

Jacobs added he holds out hope that the governor will soon see the light in terms of what’s in the best interest of the entire state in terms of how chooses to battle the virus.

“I worry about the increase in suicides, drug overdoses, spousal abuse, child molestation and alcohol abuse,” he said of so many being forced to remain idle for too long as a way of mitigating the spread of the disease. “We must worry about our people getting back to work, our business owners opening their businesses and bringing our economy back as fast as we can.”