State Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, spoke in front of the Hallene Gateway at the University, Wednesday, to announce his bid for the Republican nomination for governor in the 2006 election.

“The people of Illinois need to understand what Rod Blagojevich and his adminsistration has cost us,” Sen. Brady said. “They need to understand the culture of corruption, and I’m going to focus on that.”

Champaign-Urbana was the final destination of Sen. Brady’s 11 city state-wide tour, where he promoted his platform, which includes job retention, attacking political corruption and education reform.

“This governor has turned his back on the students of Illinois and the institutions of higher education. He has cut funding to bare bone levels,” Sen. Brady said. “As governor, higher education will be a priority of mine, I won’t ignore it.”

When asked about Urbana State Sen. Richard Winkel’s proposal to use a “tax swap” program to change education funding from property taxes to increased income taxes, Sen. Brady disagreed.

“I believe we ought to go about increasing state support for education through natural revenue growth,” Sen. Brady said. “I don’t believe we should increase the income tax.”

College Republicans President Gregory Meves and Internal Vice President Rebecca Vercillo introduced Sen. Brady.

“As an organization, we just try to help out everyone that we can during the primary,” Meves said, saying that they support all candidates during primaries.

“It’s pretty general right now,” said Vercillo about Brady’s speech. “but I think he has a good message of fighting corruption that’s going on.”

Bloomington native Ron Wolfgang travelled to hear Sen. Brady speak in Urbana.

“I think he’s got a good legislative background,” Wolfgang said about Brady. “Blagojevich has shown an inaptitude to work with the legislature.”

Sen. Brady joins Jim Oberweis, Ron Gidwitz and State Sen. Steven Rauschenberger, R-Elgin, in seeking the Republican nomination for Illinois governor. Sen. Rauschenberger is expected to officially announce next week.