Racial lawsuit against Pritzker a lame attempt at political misdirection

What kind of world is it where a political aspirant can put $88 million of his own money into his electoral campaign, and be grossly outspent?

PRITZKER: Under fire from own staff

That’s the case these days for Bruce Rauner. The Illinois governor tried the same tactic that worked in 2014 when he first ran for office – he invested his own money into winning.

BUT NOW THAT he’s seeking re-election, it doesn’t seem to be enough. It’s now plainly obvious why Democratic establishment types were eager to have J.B. Pritzker as their gubernatorial nominee. He has put $146.5 million of his own money into an opposition campaign – which is a record for political spending.

So the Republicans who want to avoid becoming politically irrelevant in Illinois following the Nov. 6 elections are now behaving like magicians – to whom the secret of their acts isn’t any real magical powers, but a strong ability to misdirect.

Get people to focus their attention on one issue or aspect – and not notice some action that really explains their trick.

In this election cycle, it seems that “discrimination” will be the issue that Rauner-backers will want us all to pay attention to.

A LAWSUIT FILED late Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago tries to make it claim that the Pritzker gubernatorial campaign is discriminating against its workers who happen to be black, or of Latino ethnic origins.

RAUNER: Can this lawsuit help him?

“J.B. Pritzker for governor has a serious race problem,” the lawsuit states. As though we’re supposed to believe that all non-white voters ought to cast ballots for Bruce in order to look out for our interests.

It seems that the bulk of non-white campaign workers are used by the Pritzker campaign in non-white neighborhoods. The campaign supposedly has but one actual field office based in such a neighborhood, and it supposedly is so unsafe that Pritzker himself has yet to visit.

All of this may actually be true. But it strikes me as being a batch of hooey, rather than any kind of legitimate campaign issue.

IF ANYTHING, I’D be surprised if the Rauner campaign has any stronger physical presence in similar neighborhoods. Or actually, if ANY Republican running for office is bothering much to campaign in ways to try to appeal to non-white voters.

OBAMA: His old staffers amongst those suing

I suspect the Republican strategy in general is to make electoral politics as unappealing as they possibly can to non-white voters. If not many actually bother to vote, then the GOPers can focus on their preferred element of the electorate – and it could possibly be large-enough to win an election.

In this case, stirring up some doggie poop to try to build resentment against the Pritzker campaign won’t get any significant number of votes for the Rauner re-election bid. But I’m sure he hopes it will make his hard-core GOPers a large-enough faction to prevail on Nov. 6.

So when I read the statement from Illinois Republican Party executive director Travis Sterling that says, in part, “Pritzker’s actions don’t back up his words. Here we have his own staffers, seasoned political operatives, alleging racial discrimination and harassment,” I can’t help but be skeptical.

AND WHEN HE says, “It’s finally time for J.B. Pritzker to answer for his actions,” I have to cackle sarcastically.

How many lawsuit fans are also Trump backers?

For many of these Republican operatives are the same kinds of people who are desperately trying to ignore so many of Donald Trump’s inane comments and actions that are nothing more than appeals to the bigoted nature of a segment of the electorate. In large part because they have little objections to such ideals themselves.

Now I’m not going to be naïve enough to claim J.B. Pritzker is high-minded and moralistic; although I have noticed that throughout the years of his political financing, he tends to give his money to candidates who do fight for such ideals.

We can only hope that gives him some sense of what is right and what he should strive to achieve if he actually wins political office himself. Irregardless, we still need to dump Rauner, who can’t even appease the ideologues amongst us and still has all those anti-labor hang-ups that brought about his stubborn actions that have made a total mess of Illinois’ government in recent years – a fact that no amount of money can cover up.

  -30-