It’s all about money, except it isn’t

I wish there was a lesson we could learn from Tuesday’s primaries about the effect that big bucks can have on turning an otherwise-unknown political dreamer into a government official.

Because what we can see from the apparent results of the primary season is that it is possible to “buy” oneself the nomination of a major political party for a government post. Except in those occasions when money just isn’t enough to get an Election Day victory.

WHERE SHOULD WE start? The election results remain close, and I suppose there’s a chance that the absentee ballots yet to be counted could shift the winners. But it seems that our state is going to be saddled with a lieutenant governor with no prior electoral experience who only managed to beat out people who do understand the ways of government because he had enough money to buy the television airtime that made his name better known than the pols who have worked in public service for some time.

Scott Lee Cohen is the pawnbroker (he prefers to talk about his other business interest, the environmentally-friendly cleaning substances company) who came up with a campaign fund of $1.9 million to pay the costs of getting the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

That doesn’t mean he managed to capture the imagination of the electorate in Illinois in such a way that people felt compelled to donate money to his campaign. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform earlier this week noted in a study that 98 percent of his campaign fund came from his own personal wealth.

Now I expect that during the course of the next nine months, we’re going to hear countless wisecracks about Cohen and pawnshops and whether he knows enough about anything to be considered a government official.

BUT THE ONE thing that his Republican opposition can’t do is try to lambast him for “buying” himself a government post. For their own apparent lieutenant governor candidate, Jason Plummer, had a campaign fund of $1.1 million – of which 95 percent came from loans he was able to obtain because of his family’s business (they own lumber yards).

No other candidate among the 10 other people who tried seeking the post that puts one in line to become governor in the event of an unfortunate circumstance depriving us of our legitimately elected chief executive had as much as $350,000 to spend, and some had much less.

In short, we’re going to have someone that proverbial “heartbeat away” from the Executive Mansion who could theoretically be called upon to take over state government who got the post because he could afford to pay for flashier campaign ads promoting his name – and put them on the air in better television timeslots – than any of his opponents.

But if things remain stable (and in this week’s election results, that is a long-shot), it would seem that the guy who tried to use the same strategy to buy the Republican nomination for the top post appears to have fallen short – although for the first couple of hours after the polls closed Tuesday night, it seemed ever so possible that we’d be pondering the possibility of “Gov. Andrew McKenna.”

WITHOUT MONEY, THE dynamic of the Republican primary for Illinois governor would have been a two-way fight between two state senators. Bill Brady of Bloomington and Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale would have been the guys to take seriously, with some people who have a sense of recent history giving their support to one-time Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.

Brady is the candidate who voters outside the Chicago area think of as the front-runner, while Dillard has that same aura within the Chicago suburbs that account for nearly half of the state’s population.

Ryan’s chances of winning would have hinged on whether or not a particular region’s “distaste” for “the other guy” would be so intense that neither Brady nor Dillard could take enough votes.

Instead, McKenna (the one-time chairman of the Illinois Republican Party whom some GOPers blame for the party’s downfall of recent years) was able to use personal wealth to get his campaign commercials on the air “early and often,” just like the way Republicans want to believe that Chicago Democrats vote.

REMEMBER THOSE GAG ads with the “Blagojevich hair” being put on top of everybody and everything (including the Statehouse in Springpatch)? All his nasty accusations against everybody in sight?

Somebody had to pay for them. It appears it was McKenna, or actually, his wife.

The Campaign for Political Reform study showed that the largest contributor to any campaign was Mary McKenna, who used her wealth to lend her husband’s gubernatorial bid just over $2,280,000 – which made up about 40 percent of his $5.6 million campaign fund for the past year.

I’d like to think the fact that McKenna appears to have finished fourth in the GOP primary (albeit only 3 percentag e points behind the possible Brady/Dillard winner) is because the electorate of Illinois was intelligent enough not to be swayed by campaign cash converted into political advertising spots.

BUT THAT WOULD make me as delusional as a Chicago Cubs fan.

That money made him competitive by making it possible for his name to be burned into the brains of would-be voters (although I wonder if the fact that some three-quarters of registered voters across the state chose NOT to vote at all is something that we can blame McKenna for).

Without that cash, his campaign would have lagged lower on the primary scale – possibly somewhere in the “single digits” with candidates like Dan Proft, the conservative ideologue who knows how to run campaigns but may not exactly be candidate material.

Then again, I probably shouldn’t slander Proft by comparing him to McKenna, because I suspect that when it comes to the passion that one has for issues, Proft would probably kick Andy’s butt in a one-on-one competition.

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The un-prediction

I don’t know who is going to win come Tuesday’s primary elections in Illinois. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.

I look at the same polls everybody else does, takes in the same comments from the candidates and tries to make some judgments based on people I actually come into contact with. While it is clear that everybody is angry with the current state of the economy, it seems to me that most people think it’s somebody else’s fault.

IF ONLY ALL people could think just like they do, then everything would be fine.

If it reads like I’m saying that there isn’t much rationality behind the thought process being put into deciding who to vote for come Election Day, you’d be correct.

Which is why I don’t have a clue how things will turn out Tuesday night (or perhaps even the early hours of Wednesday).

Take the campaigns for governor – both of which seem to be tied up. The Chicago Tribune polls show incumbent Pat Quinn with a slight lead, while a poll conducted by Raleigh, N.C.-based Public Policy Polling shows opponent Dan Hynes leading that primary. Of course, both of those leads are so slim that they fall within the margin of error – which is what the political professionals like to call a statistical tie.

CONSIDERING THE ADVANTAGES that Quinn had over Hynes a month ago, the fact that the Illinois comptroller has even been able to make this a competitive political fight is something that Quinn ought to be ashamed of.

Should Hynes be able to get the Democratic nomination, how willing will Democrats be to unite behind him? Could this turn out to be the repeat of ’76, when establishment Dems fought hard to dump incumbent Dan Walker and succeeded in the primary – only to have a candidate weakened by the fight so that he lost to GOPer Jim Thompson (beginning that 26-year streak of Republican governors that some Illinois Republicans thought the office was their party’s birthright).

Will it turn out that the real winner of the Democratic primary for governor will be Lisa Madigan, who reportedly wanted to run for the post but did not want to sully up her reputation with a nasty fight against an incumbent political ally?

Of course, the Democratic nominee’s chances of winning the November general election will depend heavily upon who the Republican nominee turns out to be. That primary is an even bigger mess than the Democrats – and the more ideological types who make up a significant part of the GOP base are exactly the types to have a tantrum by refusing to vote if their preferred candidate doesn’t get the nomination.

ANY TIME YOU have candidates claiming they are doing well because polls show them getting close to 20 percent support, you know it’s a log-jam.

It would appear that former state Attorney General Jim Ryan is no longer the front-runner. Of course, that early status was due to the fact that most people hadn’t paid much attention to the campaigns, and his was one of the few familiar names.

It’s just like all of the most recent campaigns of another former state attorney general. Now U.S. Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., ran campaigns before for the U.S. Senate and for Illinois governor and usually had the lead in the early polls, only to wind up finishing far behind the pack as would-be voters realized they wanted somebody (anybody) else.

Of course, that same poll showing the Democratic gubernatorial campaign as a virtual tie favoring Hynes shows Ryan lagging only six percentage points behind the so-called frontrunner, fellow DuPage County resident Kirk Dillard.

THIS IS THE bizarre primary from my perspective, since Dillard appears to be the favorite of those Republicans of the Chicago suburbs (there aren’t enough devoted GOPers in the city proper to amount to much), while opponent Pat Brady is the preference of those Republicans who live outside the Chicago area and would prefer to have a candidate with no urban ties whatsoever.

With the Chicago area accounting for two-thirds of Illinois’ population, that normally would make Dillard the favorite, except that he loses a chunk of that support to Andrew McKenna, who has some establishment Republicans favoring him and other GOP supporters detesting him because they remember his stint as chairman of the state Republican Party (he didn’t make any headway in terms of winning elections, which is why Illinois has a government that is controlled entirely by Democratic Party members).

To me, that Republican side seems like a mess – one that has the potential to create a lot of dissention come Election Day in November.

The U.S. Senate campaigns seem less confusing. Public Policy Polling’s latest study released Monday of that campaign seems to show the candidates who were thought of as frontrunners before the campaigns maintaining solid leads.

SO IT COULD become Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias running against U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., for the right to represent all of Illinois in the Senate. Kirk backers are making much of the fact that this poll shows Kirk leading with 42 percent support, while none of his half-dozen challengers has more than 10 percent.

But I couldn’t help but notice the truel second-place finisher is not Patrick Hughes (9 percent). It is “undecided” at 39 percent. Having that many partisans this close to Election Day unable to commit makes me wonder if the Kirk campaign has the potential to stir up apathy and resentment – similar to what Democrats experienced in 1998 when then-Congressman Glenn Poshard of Southern Illinois won the nomination for governor and many Democrats from the Chicago area never got over that fact.

Which makes me wonder if Giannoulias is destined to follow the fate (thus far) of his one-time basketball buddy, Barack Obama, who won his presidential campaign in part because of apathy among conservatives toward Republican challenger John McCain – only to have those same conservatives now watching Obama’s every move and doing whatever they can to thwart him.

Will the day come that Giannoulias will wish he had stayed in the Illinois treasurer’s office for another term or two?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The cliché is most definitely accurate this time around – the only “poll” that matters is the one (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_Ill_126.pdf) taken on Election Day.

Tax rhetoric not only blatantly partisan, but also reminiscent of the political past

Andrew McKenna, the newly-minted gubernatorial favorite of the Chicago Tribune, went on the attack against primary opponent Jim Ryan this week with a statement that sounded all too familiar.

McKenna had his campaign issue a statement that was a re-issue of the Americans for Tax Reform group, which has a problem with the fact that candidate Jim Ryan refuses to sign their “Taxpayer Reform Pledge.”

THE GROUP PORTRAYS its pledge as a simple demand – politicians promise not to support tax increases if they get elected to federal office.

Yet only a complete simpleton believes the issue of taxes and government funding is that simple. Ryan, who served eight years as state attorney general and previously ran for Illinois governor, knows better. That’s why he’s not about to commit himself to the group’s politically partisan stunt.

He went so far as to tell the Daily Herald newspaper of Arlington Heights that the group’s pledge is “phony.” So they’re trashing Ryan, and McKenna is more than willing to pass along that attack – hoping that it gets the ideologues of the GOP worked up enough to consider voting for him in numbers significant enough to overcome the Ryan lead in early polls that was as much past name recognition as anything else.

To further reinforce this message, McKenna’s campaign is taking out radio advertisements that trash both Ryan and Kirk Dillard (who on Friday bercame the GOP gubernatorial favorite of the Chicago Sun-Times).

ILLINOIS: OVERSPENT, NEARLY broke. Yet Jim Ryan and Kirk Dillard won’t rule out tax hikes, the radio spot goes.

What is my problem with this? I have noticed that many Republican candidates are going out of their way to sign the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, in hopes that this stunt gains their campaigns some attention.

Because that ultimately is all this is. Some cheap rhetoric that is totally unrealistic, but meant to provide a punch line for voters when looking for someone to back on Election Day.

Why do I call it a punch line? Because the joke will be on those voters who seriously think that someone can automatically think “no” whenever the issue of taxes or revenue comes up for government.

THE REALITY OF the situation is that the Americans for Tax Reform is a misnomer. The group headed by long-time anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is a conservative organization that has its problems with many government programs, and figures the best way to eliminate those functions for which it has ideological objections is to reduce the amount of money the federal government has to the point where it can no longer afford to do anything.

Norquist is the man who once literally said he wants to reduce the federal government down to a size, “where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Unfortunately, government has obligations that must be met for the protection (if not the betterment) of society. Which means that people who automatically want to say “no” without giving the issue or circumstances any thought are absurd, if not downright irresponsible.

Personally, I think anybody who signs this pledge and gives it any legitimacy ought to be someone we specifically cross off our lists of candidates we would consider voting for.

IF I WERE inclined to pick up a Republican ballot come Feb. 2, Dillard is a candidate I would consider backing. Although I have to admit, I may have gained a little bit of respect for Ryan after learning of McKenna’s attempt at an attack.

I also have to admit the whole issue reminds me of 1994 in one aspect.

That was the year that Republicans were able to play off rural objections to the Clintons and their attempt at health care reform to win an exhorbitant number of Congressional elections – thereby giving them Congressional control that pretty much thwarted any serious governing that the Clinton Administration was capable of doing.

That was the year of the “Contract with America,” which consisted of a series of goals that a GOP-dominated government would use its partisan muscle to impose on the nation. As a political agenda, it went far beyond the Taxpayer Reform Pledge.

BUT MANY POLITICAL people running that year on the GOP side of the equation were eager to use the contract’s rhetoric to campaign with.

Yet I remember one official who didn’t.

Ray LaHood, who at the time was chief of staff to House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill., was running to replace his boss in representing the Peoria area in Congress. As someone who had been a state legislator before going on a congressional staff, he was more aware of the daily realities of managing a government that lives up to its responsibilities to the people.

I can remember he specifically refused to sign the “Contract with America” even though he admitted there were parts of its rhetoric he agreed with and that could have been useful to his campaigning.

ADMITTEDLY, THERE WERE some people who never forgave him. There was always a subsect of the Republican Party in Illinois that didn’t trust LaHood. For all I know, the fact that he now serves under a Democratic president as Secretary of Transportation probably reinforces their mistrust.

All I know, however, is that LaHood won that election, and wound up getting re-elected to serve 14 years in all in Congress. In the end, it didn’t seem to hurt him.

Could it be that this latest round of cheap rhetoric about Ryan and Dillard is just the same, coming from someone who’s counting on an ideological minority of our state’s population to exceed its influence and somehow magically elect him to office?

I’d have an easier time believing that the Tribune endorsement is going to sway a significant number of voters to McKenna’s side – and I fully realize how impotent individual newspaper endorsements have become in terms of turning out the vote on Election Day.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: You figure whether the Americans for Tax Reform rhetoric is worth anything more (http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge-a2882) than empty rhetoric.

It appears that the Chicago Tribune’s editorial page endorsement policies have reverted back to tradition (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/chi-100108gop-endorse-link,0,3243757.story), which makes me wonder if the Sun-Times endorsement was more about being different (http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/endorsements/1980076,CST-EDT-edit08.article) than anything else.

Terrorism turns to partisan politics

Call it the campaign strategy for 2010 – any Democrat who doesn’t play along with the GOP attempt to scare Chicago with talk of terrorists hitting the Willis Tower or O’Hare International Airport is going to get attacked anyway.

Now I understand that campaigns are about criticism and trying to differentiate oneself from the opposition. I also realize they can get nasty pretty quick. People who are too sensitive ought not to be running for elective office.

YET THE TYPE of criticism that is coming from the proposal to put inmates from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba (the so-called terrorists who act in a perverted take on Islam) to the vacant state prison at Thomson, Ill., is so shallow as to be offensive.

What I’m referring to is a series of press releases I have been receiving in my e-mail in recent days in which GOP officials are using interchangeable rhetoric to dredge this issue up against anyone who dares to go through a political life with a “D” rather than an “R” after their name.

Some of these releases have come from the gubernatorial campaign of Andrew McKenna, while others have come in the name of the Illinois Republican Party.

The statements I have seen have been critical of Democratic Senate hopeful Alexi Giannoulias, and Reps. William Foster and Jerry Costello. None of them have been quite so quick as to state a stance on the issue of the inmate shift.

SO THE REPUBLICANS are going out of their way to criticize them for being quiet – claiming that a real candidate would have jumped the gun and shot his mouth off, just like they have.

But the thing about all these statements I have seen is that the rhetoric is nearly identical in each statement, which makes me think it is a party strategy that is being earmarked for use against all Democrats.

Which means that there probably are many more statements in circulation criticizing other Democrats, across Illinois and the nation, for this very same issue.

It bothers me to think that anyone has the gall to think that rational people would be swayed by someone who wants us to believe that thinking before opening one’s mouth is a negative trait.

NOW AS I wrote earlier this week, this issue involving the fate of the Guantanamo inmates is one that has become a partisan mess – Democrats generally are supportive because President Barack Obama has touted the idea, while Republicans don’t want Obama to get anything that might be considered a positive achievement.

So they’re trash-talking the idea, even though it makes sense and is a solution to a problem that has to be addressed.

It is sad to say that at least some Democrats are taking the rhetoric that moving such inmates to Illinois makes Chicago a bigger target on the international scene too seriously.

Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., has made some statements in recent days that imply she has problems with the idea of the so-called terrorist suspects being brought to Illinois. She represents a district in the outer Chicago suburbs that once was considered a Republican stronghold, and is one that the GOP would like to have their candidate win back come the ’10 elections.

SO SHE WENT so far as to make the statements in line with the Republican rhetoric so that they can’t use the issue against her in their campaign leaflets and television spots once the general election cycle picks up next fall.

It is the same logic that caused then-Sen. Obama a few years ago to vote for construction of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, even though the Democratic Party “position” was that such a wall was a waste of federal funds, in addition to being a generally stupid concept.

The Illinois GOP went so far as to issue a statement praising Bean for taking a GOP-like stance on the issue, which means they’re now trying to stir up resentment amongst Democrats against Bean.

Anything that helps weaken her, it could work. The fact that Obama was on the record as backing that border wall was one of the reasons that Latinos were more inclined in the Democratic presidential primary last year to support Hillary R. Clinton instead of the concept of Obama-mania.

IF NOT FOR the general disgust of Latino voters for the GOP these days, it probably would have hurt him in the general election too.

This tactic is more about Republicans trying cheaply to define an issue on their terms. I’d like to think the electorate is too sensible to fall for this.

Otherwise, my e-mail box is going to be overflowed with the same stupid statement sent over and over, with the only variable being the “fill in the blank” for the name of yet another political person to be criticized.

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