Sen. Sam McCann won the hotly contested Republican primary race for Illinois’ 50th Senate district yesterday, earning 52.6 percent of the vote to challenger Bryce Benton’s 47.3 percent. The race was one of the most expensive ever in Illinois, with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner dumping millions into Benton’s campaign – mostly indirectly through a “dark money” political action committee. Rauner wanted to make an example out of McCann, the only Republican who voted for a union arbitration bill that the governor opposed. How did McCann, who is facing allegations about his campaign fi nance disclosures, pull off the victory? Word around the Illinois Statehouse was that labor unions would push their Democratic members to pull Republican ballots in the primary and vote for McCann. It’s not clear yet whether that happened or not, but there are other possibilities. One is that Republicans who voted in the 50th Senate District are angry at Rauner. That may sound like an appealing theory for the Democrats, but Rauner’s honeymoon with the Illinois Republican Party isn’t over quite yet. Another possibility is that McCann is simply popular enough with Republicans who live outside the “Statehouse bubble.” As evidence, consider that we’ve seen yard signs supporting McCann all over the district, right next to signs supporting state representatives Avery Bourne and Sara Wojcicki-Jimenez, whom Rauner appointed to offi ce and backed with lots of money in the primary. Those of us who think about politics 24/7 would do well to remember that not everyone shares that morbid fascination.