No one's running yet

The political lesson that I'll take away from these last few months is that until nominating petitions are filed at the Illinois State Board of Elections, there are no official candidates.
Joe Birkett didn't drop out of the attorney general's race because he was never in it. For that matter, incumbent AG Lisa Madigan isn't officially a candidate for re-election, yet.
We got another example of this with Matt Murphy deciding he wasn't running for governor but will now pursue lieutenant governor.

I'm assuming voters and the general public are sincere when they tell the media every election season that they hate horse race coverage and want to learn more about the issues. I can also only assume that they really enjoy the coverage so far this year of which horse is being led into what trailer that will then be driven to the track and be loaded into the starting gates so the horse race can begin.

So, if between now and Oct. 26 you're approached by someone who says "Hi, I'm running for governor" my advice would be to say "Hey, me too." At the moment, anyone can be an unofficial candidate for anything.