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| RAUNER: Can he take a punch? |
With
just one week to go before people can start casting their ballots (through Early
Voting measures), the polls show him with a solid lead.
NONE
OF HIS challengers has the kind of financing to close the gap. And probably the
only way that Rauner blows the Republican primary is if EVERY SINGLE UNDECIDED
VOTER were to unite behind one challenger AND if another candidate were to drop
out.
It’s
an unlikely combination.
There’s
just one thing that ought to keep Rauner backers (who really are just those who
have become so malcontent with the past decade of Democratic Party influence
over state government that they’ll vote for anyone with an “R” after his name)
from getting too giddy these days.
The
reality of the Republican primary is that it consists of Rauner’s personal cash
allowing him to buy public attention against two past gubernatorial losers AND
a guy whose statewide profile was so low that he can be taken down with all the
cheap talk going about these days about “sexual” harassment.
RAUNER
ISN’T EXACTLY beating a top quality field of candidates in his primary. They
might be more reputable than Gov. Pat Quinn’s lone challenger in the Democratic
Party primary, but not by much!
If
anybody thinks that the Rauner campaign can coast on the momentum it seems to
be building now, they’re misguided.
It’s
not that I think Pat Quinn is some overly-tough persona. He can be as
mealy-mouthed as any other political person, particularly when he tries to lay
on the populist rhetoric that claims he’s a man of the people and everybody else is the political "hack."
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| QUINN: Lacing up the gloves |
But
I got my share of amusement from learning Saturday that Quinn has hired for his
campaign Bill Hyers, a political operative whose most recent accomplishment was getting
Bill DiBlasio elected as mayor of New York.
ALONG
WITH PAST victories that helped get Barack Obama elected as president –
particularly running the Pennsylvania for Obama effort of 2012 that ensured the
president had enough of the Electoral College votes to actually win. And yes, he's an Illinois native -- albeit not one of Chicago.
Quinn
is putting his political future in the hands of people who know what a
competitive campaign is and how to win them. There won’t be any talk about “fighting
the good fight” in a noble defeat.
It’s
fortunate for him that Rauner has a significant personal financial wealth,
because he’s probably going to have to go through a lot of his own money just
to keep up with the attacks he’s now going to get.
In
fact, I wonder if Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis summarized the
theme last week when she criticized Rauner as “egotistical and rich.”
SO
AS TO differentiate him from herself. It could be the line whose essence gets
repeated over and over until by November we’re so sick of hearing about the
pompous boob that we vote against him just to be rid of him.
It
doesn’t help that Rauner seems overly touchy to criticism; such as the instance
involving campaign ads by the Illinois Freedom PAC. Rauner’s is the campaign
that sent intimidating-reading “cease and desist” letters to area television stations
carrying the commercials.
Personally,
I think WLS-TV should be commented for immediately having their attorneys send
Rauner’s campaign a letter refusing to give in to his request.
It
makes me wonder how intensely Rauner will blow up once the Quinn people start
smacking him about in ways that his Republican challengers never had the kind
of campaign cash to dream of doing themselves.
COMBINED
WITH THE fact that for many of the people backing the other three candidates in
the GOP primary, Rauner is the absolute last guy they want to see get their
political party’s nomination.
Even
if he is the one who has the kind of finances on his own to deliver political
blows – which will come across as the usual partisan tripe – to the incumbent
governor.
He
is perceived as being way-too Chicago oriented (a friend of Rahm Emanuel, and
he willingly had his daughter attend a school in Chicago). Much of the desire
to dump Democrat Quinn of Chicago’s West Side comes from those whose focus is
on rural Illinois.
The
fight for Illinois governor in the Nov. 4 general election could easily be
perceived as the Chicago battle – which Quinn wins easily because Rauner won’t
take enough votes from the governor in the city, and all those downstate GOPers
just won’t be able to get excited about to cast enough ballots for him to win!
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