They’re all a team, whether the Dem hopefuls for Illinois office like it or not

I almost feel sorry for David Miller and Robin Kelly. I say “almost” because no political official is truly worth our sympathy – they chose the political life, and the hassles that come along with it. 

Robin Kelly



But the Democratic party nominees for Illinois comptroller and state treasurer, to the degree that anyone has paid any attention to their races, are lagging behind their Republican opponents, Judy Baar Topinka and Dan Rutherford, respectively.

IT IS NOT because of anything Miller, a state representative from south suburban Lynwood, or Kelly, a one-time staffer to Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, has done wrong. Nor is it because either Topinka or Rutherford has done anything right.

It is just that in this election cycle, there is a Republican momentum that is going to cause them in all likelihood to take control of more government posts than would be standard on an Election Day.

People are focusing their attentions on the Illinois campaigns for U.S. senator and state governor. In many cases, they are going to work their way down the ballots by picking the candidates who are perceived as being allied with their picks for the top posts.

Which means many of the people who are so determined to dump on Chicago-oriented Democrats that they want William Brady for governor and are willing to stomach for one term the idea of Mark Kirk for U.S. Senate are going to wind up casting ballots for Topinka and Rutherford when they get down to the elections for comptroller and treasurer.

IT IS WHY I thought it was a big smug for Rutherford to use Facebook a few days ago to point out the fact that internal polls show him with a 10-point lead over Kelly, and ample funds in his campaign account to pay for campaign advertising that will further enhance his name recognition.


David Miller

 It’s as though Rutherford, a long-time state legislator from the area around Pontiac in central Illinois, thinks people are actually backing him, instead of just associating his name with that of Brady, the state senator from Bloomington. Just like the old cliché about George W. Bush – “born on third base, but he thinks he hit a triple.”

The reason I almost feel sorry is that there really is nothing that either Miller, who on Thursday had his wife sent out e-mails on his 48th birthday asking everybody to donate $10 to his campaign, in hopes that it will build up into a significant amount, can do to better his situation.

Neither can Kelly, who back in February paired up with Miller to give the south suburbs a significant place on the Democratic ticket, but now threaten to leave that region irrelevant if neither one can win.

FOR THEM TO bolster their chances of success on Election Day, it is going to have to be up to Pat Quinn to get off his campaign duff and start taking actions meant to bring down his Republican opponent a notch or two.

For the reality is that too many Democratic operatives have been waiting for Brady to “self-destruct” by having his ideological stances – largely conservative Republican and willing to advance an agenda desired by the ideologues – become more publicly known.

They’re going to have to accept that the mind-set of much of the Chicago-area electorate these days is that they don’t care, and they’re not going to take the time to learn about Brady’s flaws. Quinn has to go on the attack, both for himself and to bolster his party colleagues.

If he doesn’t, then Topinka gets her political comeback after losing the 2006 gubernatorial election to Rod Blagojevich, and Rutherford finally gets to move up from being a state legislator (having lost the ’06 election for Illinois secretary of state to incumbent Jesse White).

SO A LOT of people are going to be focusing their attention on Miller and Kelly to determine the long-range damage to the Democratic Party, and whether or not the Illinois Republican Party has truly regained influence, or if this truly is a bizarre fluke year for what is essentially a state of suburbs to the city of Chicago.

If anything, I think people should be paying attention to the campaigns of Lisa Madigan for Illinois attorney general and the re-election bid of White. The assumption is that the two incumbents both have significant political operations of their own and can win re-election against their GOP challengers – Steve Kim against Madigan and Robert Enriquez against White.

I’ll repeat now what I have written before – I think it was a cynical attempt by Illinois Republicans to make it appear to have an ethnic character (Kim is of Korean ethnic background, while Enriquez is from Eucador), but picking ethnic candidates for the slots they were convinced they had no chance of winning.

If even Enriquez and Kim manage to get significant numbers of votes – perhaps even enough that White gets pushed into retirement or Madigan winds up running for mayor of Chicago next spring because she has nothing else going for her – then perhaps there is something truthful about the idea of an ideological shift in Illinois.

UNTIL THEN, MILLER and Kelly are the people whose drawback is that the guy on top of the ticket is acting lame, particularly when he appears in their very own home region of south suburban Cook County.

Quinn didn’t help much by showing up at the long-defunct Dixie Square Mall in suburban Harvey – making jokes about how John Belushi is looking down from Heaven and saying “See Ya Later, Old Dixie Square” just because officials are finally getting off their duffs and moving forward with plans to demolish the mall that Belushi and Dan Ackroyd did a good start on back in 1979.

-30-

Has a perennial idea’s time come?

It has been a decade since I was one of the reporter-type regulars at the Illinois Statehouse, yet I can remember one of the perennial ideas people would latch onto if they wanted to gain some public attention for themselves was the concept of merging the state comptroller and Illinois treasurer into one single office.

To show how most political people didn’t take the idea too seriously, my lasting memory was of then-state Rep. Cal Skinner, a Republican from the Crystal Lake area, wisecracking that having a chief financial officer would mean Illinois would have a “chief f.o.,” a dull remark for which he actually got laughs from his colleagues.

BUT NOW, IT seems that Republicans are hoping to make this issue something a little more real. Their nominees for treasurer – state Sen. Dan Rutherford of Pontiac – and comptroller – former state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka – both said recently they would work together to ensure that one of their political positions no longer exists.

In an attempt to undermine the ability of Topinka and Rutherford to turn this perennial political issue into something of significance, Topinka’s Democratic opponent, state Rep. David Miller of Lynwood, said he is willing to back the idea.

Even Democratic treasurer nominee Robin Kelly says she could back the idea, saying, “leaders must pursue every avenue to save money,” and also claiming she had the idea first.

How can Topinka use this issue to bash Miller (or Rutherford to attack Kelly) if, theoretically, they support the same stance? In political-speak, Miller’s action “takes the issue off the table” as a campaign matter.

NOT THAT I expect this will cause Topinka to shut up about it. She wants to be able to use this issue, which on the surface sounds like something so incredibly obvious that we wonder why the drafters of the Illinois Constitution didn’t just do it that way when they put the current document together back in 1970.

Oddly enough, it was Illinois’ long-standing history of potential for political corruption (people like Rod Blagojevich are petty compared to Paul Powell or Orville Hodge) that made the good-government types who were part of the Constitutional Convention insist that there be two separate people of equal authority as state constitutional officers who have a say in state finances.

In theory, either one of them could “rat out” the other if something fishy were taking place. And neither one has complete financial authority, meaning that one’s ability to enrich themselves with some sort of scheme would be limited.

For the record, the state treasurer’s office is the one that oversees Illinois government’s financial investments. That person does whatever possible to try to make the state more money.

THE STATE COMPTROLLER’S office has no say over those investments, but has control of the state’s checkbook – so to speak. That person’s staff handles the actual payment of bills, and they are the ones who have to decide when there is a financial shortfall such as we are experiencing these days who gets paid late, and who gets paid ridiculously late.

So is it irresponsible to put all this financial responsibility into the hands of one official. The Topinka/Rutherford financial monster says that modern technology would make it easier for other people to track finances and serve as a watchdog, should a chief financial officer decide to try something funky.

Oddly enough, Miller and the Topinka/Rutherford two-headed beast are trying to spin the issue differently.

Miller wants to talk about government ethics, saying a streamlined government would be easier to monitor for ethical flaws.

FOR TOPINKA/RUTHERFORD, THEY want to cite cost-savings Twelve million dollars is the cost they estimate would be saved by turning two constitutional offices into one.

There’s just one problem. This isn’t something that a governor can just enact through executive order, or even the General Assembly pass into law by a mere majority.

This is a part of the Illinois Constitution, just like those provisions related to redistricting that wind up resolving the issue of control of the process by a purely-random lottery (which was another good-government idea that was supposed to encourage compromise because political people would supposedly fear a random draw and the possibility of getting nothing).

Which makes it easy for anyone to say they favor this idea now, because it doesn’t mean their job would suddenly disappear after Election Day.

WE’RE TALKING CONSTITUTIONAL amendment, which is deliberately a difficult (if almost impossible) process to navigate.

Sixty percent of the Legislature has to agree on the issue, then it would have to go on the ballot for voter approval. And there are restrictions for how many amendments can be on any given ballot, which means the powers that be could always decide to crowd up the ballot with other issues so as to squeeze this one off altogether.

Even if citizens concerned enough about the issue were to try to go the other route to pass petitions to force the issue on the ballot, there are restrictions on what kinds of issues can be addressed by that route. Illinois’ courts have historically shown a willingness to knock down just about anything that anyone tries to push for an amendment through that route.

My point being, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon – if ever – no matter who wins those particular campaigns come Nov. 2.

-30-