Quinn trying to turn legislators against Illinois House and Senate leadership

It might not sound like a revolutionary concept, and it certainly has the potential to backfire.

Yet Gov. Pat Quinn may very well be on to something with his latest tactic in trying to sway the General Assembly to support something resembling the significant income tax hike he wants to close what he says is a $9 billion gap in the state budget.

WHAT IS IT that Illinois’ governor is on to? He’s actually taking the individual legislators seriously.

He spent part of his day earlier this week meeting with about three dozen legislators from the Chicago suburbs, and the Associated Press reports that he is scheduled to meet with another group of senators and representatives – only this time it will be a gathering of lawmakers from rural Illinois.

This comes after he had a similar meeting with legislators whose common characteristic is that they are female. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he will eventually have gatherings with the Legislature’s black and Latino caucuses, and perhaps he’ll even have a sit-down with the legislators who emanate from Chicago proper.

I’m sure that to people who don’t pay much attention to the mechanizations of state government (and who may even resent the idea that such practices are involved in the making of state laws), it sounds stupid to think that there is anything special about a governor talking to legislators.

AFTER ALL, HE wants these people to vote for his proposed tax hike to close the budget gap. Why shouldn’t he be talking with them?

It’s just that I know from the seven years I was a reporter-type on the Statehouse scene (and in the two decades that I have watched it), I know that it is rare the governor bothers to get gritty, so to speak, with the regular legislators.

Yet Quinn is not only talking with the legislators, he’s recognizing them by the same sub-groups that they recognize themselves by.

Usually, it is the governor with the four legislative leaders (the ranking Democrat and Republican each from the House and Senate).

EVEN WITHIN THAT group, there is the tendency for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to overshadow the group, and turn government negotiations into a political battle between himself and the governor.

That is part of the advantage of having been around the Springpatch Scene since the early 1970s and having held the top leadership position among Democrats since 1982.

I remember one time asking a legislator from Chicago’s South Side about the last time he had direct contact with the governor about a particular issue. The look on his face made it clear to me that the very concept of direct contact was an alien one.

But then again, we’re talking about an official in Quinn who apparently had no direct contact with Rod Blagojevich for about a year-and-a-half – even though Quinn was the lieutenant governor and theoretical second-in-command of state government.

SO PERHAPS QUINN remembers what it feels like to be isolated, and wants to include the legislators who will have to actually cast the votes in support of whatever proposal he and the four legislative leaders wind up concocting to eventually approve a balanced budget for the state fiscal year that began last week.

Or perhaps he’s just so disgusted with running into stone walls against Madigan and John Cullerton in the Senate, with Republican leaders Christine Radogno and Tom Cross showing they can be just as stubborn and politically partisan as their Democratic Party counterparts.

So doing the end run may create an audience of people so desperate to be paid attention to that they will consider doing something along the lines of what Quinn wants.

Then again, maybe they won’t.

THE SIMPLE FACT is that many of these people get elected because of the legislative leaders’ support financially. I remember a representative once telling me that Mike Madigan never tells her how to vote on issues, and that the only thing she had to promise him in exchange for campaign cash was that she would support him for House Speaker.

I’m sure some of those legislators will use the opportunity for face time with the governor to try to convince him how wrong he is to even think the words “income tax hike” when it comes to trying to fix the fiscal mess.

The fact is that I have always had the perception of the Illinois General Assembly as being a body of people whose purpose is to band together as a group. Individually, they are worth little.

There are times when it seems like out of the 177 members of the Legislature (59 in the Senate, 118 in the House), there are about 20 who are significant – either because of seniority or some special knowledge on a particular issue or because they are Bill Black, the longtime Republican from Danville who has a fiery temper and can easily be aroused to a tantrum on virtually any issue before the Legislature.

OTHERWISE, WE’RE TALKING about people who deserve the title of “mushrooms” (Springfield-speak for a legislator who is kept in the dark on things until absolutely necessary to enlighten him).

So in a sense, Pat Quinn is picking through the mushrooms.

Will it help him gain strength to pass his proposal into law? Or will it poison him by stirring up future resentment among the Legislature’s four leaders that he would dare to talk to their minions?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I’d thoroughly enjoy the sight of Pat Quinn meeting with the Illinois Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus (http://nwi.com/articles/2009/07/07/news/illinois/doca6355b23256c2764862575ec000b4006.txt), which is how a subgroup of rural legislators prefers to identify themselves based on their opposition to every gun-related piece of legislation that Mayor Daley has wanted the General Assembly to pass in recent years.