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| DILLARD: Teachers love him (not really |
THE GOP FRONT-RUNNER for governor, Bruce Rauner, has made it clear that a major focal point of his campaign is to mess with organized labor. He wants to undo the influence they have with government.
So
the fact that the teachers’ unions do not want Rauner to become governor next
year means they want to undermine him now.
Hence,
they’re backing the Rauner primary challenger whom they find least offensive.
It
is telling that federation officials made it clear their endorsement – while one
of the few times they have ever gotten involved in a GOP governor fight – is purely
for the primary.
AFTER
MARCH 18, all bets are off. In no way does this mean the teachers’ union would
want Dillard to actually be governor. They’re just hoping that some of their
influence can help undermine Rauner’s chances of winning the big political
prize.
It’s
not like this hurts Gov. Pat Quinn within the Democratic primary, because the
challenger he has is one so weak that even all the endorsements in the world
likely would not give him a credible chance of achieving victory two weeks from
Tuesday.
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| LEWIS: Would Kirk want support? |
The
federation’s endorsement also isn’t all it could be because of the fact that
the most significant local within that union – the Chicago Teachers’ Union – is
separate from this action.
I
suppose it is possible that union President Karen Lewis could decide to hold
her own press conference in coming days to announce that she, too, is backing
Dillard and is instructing the teachers of the Chicago Public Schools to do the
same.
BUT
I JUST don’t think that there will be such an action. Not the least of which because I suspect Lewis' mind is more preoccupied these days with thoughts of teachers boycotting the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests.
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| RAUNER: The primary favorite? |
Because
I suspect most Chicago teachers, along with teachers in school districts across
the state, will just keep their mouths shut publicly and go into the polling
place on March 18 (or sooner, if they use Early Voting) and vote the way they would
have even if no endorsement had been made.
I
also suspect that the last thing Dillard would want is any kind of public
appearance by Lewis – whose gruff persona would probably scare away even more
potential voters than it would attract.
Dillard
already is having to live down the fact that he regarded Barack Obama as
something of a friend when the two served (and occasionally played poker)
together (1997-2004) in the Illinois Senate.
DILLARD
MAY BE the guy who has gone out of his way to spew some right-wing rhetoric to
make it appear he’s not really some sort of liberal-to-moderate guy (in hopes
of gaining votes from the socially-conservative elements of our society), but
he doesn’t have the campaign cash to try to buy that image amongst the
electorate.
2014
is going to go into the books as an election cycle that was able to be bought.
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| QUINN: Does he have 'dirt' on Bruce? |
Past
candidates who tried to use their personal wealth wound up having some personal
stink about their lives become known to the point where it became impossible
for them to continue.
Ultimately,
that is going to be what decides whether Rauner has a chance of actually
winning. Will the Quinn camp succeed with its finances where the underfunded
GOP-types could not in terms of staining the image that Rauner has bought for
himself?
IT’S
POSSIBLE. THERE will be another eight months to go before this is over. All it
takes is one moment that we don’t yet know about.
Which
means that in the end, all this babble about teachers’ union endorsements
probably won’t factor into the end result one bit!
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