EXTRA: Trump could have learned lessons from Rauner example in Illinois

I’m not getting all worked up with excitement at the notion that the “shutdown” of federal government came to an end Friday at 35 days – largely because I’ve seen just how stupid political stubbornness can be in my home state of Illinois.

TRUMP: Losing? Or plotting new strategy?

For the deal President Donald Trump is agreeing to is that he’ll sign off on a measure that re-opens the federal government for three weeks, with a congressional committee supposedly studying the “border wall” issue to come up with a compromise plan that will allow for money to erect Trump – the Wall along the U.S./Mexico border.

HONESTLY, I COULD easily envision that three weeks from how, nothing will change, the “shutdown” will resume and everyone will claim that everybody else is to blame for what could become the months-on-end cessation of the federal government.

In fact, I wonder if this three-week reopening of the federal government is nothing more than a conniving plot by Trump to create circumstances that will allow him to claim he’s not to blame. Because it’s pretty obvious that just about everybody IS blaming The Donald for our government failing to live up to its obligations.

Sort of like a “do-over” to try to shift blame to “da Dems.” While letting Trump give his “State of the Union” address Tuesday in the Capitol as intended.

Maybe it’s because the memory of Bruce Rauner as Illinois governor is still so fresh in the minds that I recall how he would up taking blame for the just over two full years of inactivity by Illinois state government.

RAUNER: Trump could learn from Bruce's defeat

EVEN THOUGH GOING through the news “clips” produces stories early on in that shutdown with Rauner insisting he’d be the political victor of any such shutdown.

The circumstances are way too similar.

Rauner had as his crusade that was more important to him than the daily operations of state government his so-called “reforms,” which really were nothing more than measures meant to undermine the influence of organized labor within state government.

While Trump wants to build the barrier he claims will keep all the foreigners from being able to enter the country – even though anyone with sense realizes the foreigners enter the U.S. through airports or the U.S./Canada border – which is must more easily passable than the desert terrain that separates U.S. from Mexico.

PELOSI: The victor? Or just a delay?

RAUNER’S STATE SHUTDOWN resulted when the governor wouldn’t sign off on a state budget without the so-called reforms being included – even though it really was a completely separate issue from daily governance.

Just like Trump’s border barricades really ought to be done separately from the daily operations of the federal government.

But several months passed in Illinois when our officials approved a budget that would supposedly fund the state for six months – thereby giving time for us all to talk and reach compromise.

Which would have worked; if only we had officials inclined to want to negotiate in good faith. All that happened was six months later, the state shut down again – and that ultimately resulted in the combined shutdown of just over two full years for Illinois.

WHICH RESULTED IN the state developing much more severe financial issues and debt that it’s going to take our state years, if not decades, to cope with. I can really, truly see the same situation developing at the federal government level.

BUTTIGIEG: Could he be '20 beneficiary?

Are we truly headed for a situation that can only be resolved by the 2020 political demise of Donald Trump – with the voters taking it upon themselves to be so disgusted that they “dump Trump?” Or 2024, if it turns out the Democratic Party becomes too inept to put forth a credible presidential challenger (always a political reality).

It’s too bad that Trump couldn’t study our situation and try to learn from it for the betterment of the American people.

Then again, Trump is enough of an egomaniac to think he has nothing he could learn from anybody – which is the real reason that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has come out looking like a political genius in recent weeks. With The Donald looking like little more than a chump!

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Governor paying staff out of own pocket almost seems like a bribe

We have a new governor, and several high-ranking members of J.B. Pritzker’s staff will wind up being paid significantly more money than their predecessors did.

PRITZKER: New governor offers to pay double

One of the benefits of having a governor who has significant financial wealth.

IT SEEMS HE wants to pay some 20 of his staffers about double the amounts of money that the state payroll calls for.

It means that the staffers will receive their state salary – along with another check from East Jackson Street LLC. Which is a private company that is amongst Pritzker’s business interests and one that Pritzker supposedly controls completely.

All of which creates questions about ethical and moral issues – is it proper for an outside entity to be paying government employees anything? Even if it would seem it’s the newly-inaugurated governor himself who is coughing up the cash for the extra salary payments!

I can’t help but question it because one of the basic principles of government employment is that one is doing such work out of a sense of public service. And also to gain significant experience.

SERIOUSLY, WITH THE exception of Michael Madigan himself, nobody is meant to hang around the Illinois state payroll for a significant length of time.

Those people are gaining a certain level of experience and making contacts so that eventually, they will be able to gain significant compensation within the private sector.

This almost seems like Pritzker wants to buy a certain level of experience that the state payroll usually wouldn’t be capable of accommodating. Either that, or he’s expecting to buy a certain level of loyalty toward himself – rather than to the entity of Illinois State Government that is supposed to be the focus of such a job. 

Govt. attitudes changed since old days

There’s a reason that government employment is often semi-jokingly described as “the people’s business.” Government staffers are supposed to be doing their work  for the betterment of the public at-large.

UNLESS YOU’RE OF the mentality that thinks the Age of Trump our federal government now operates under is somehow proper. Then, you think the public at-large is a batch of chumps because they’d rely on government to fulfill certain responsibilities toward them.

So are we creating an ethical mess in which certain government employees – not all, I should say – will have the appearance of gaining financial bonuses?

Would it be little better than some private company with special interests on select issues suddenly offering up salary supplements to ensure that the actual government staffers act on their behalf – rather than that of the public.

Actually, if you describe the extra salary in such a manner, it almost sounds more like a bribe. Does Pritzker literally have to offer “pay offs” to get his people (who are supposed to be extra loyal to him) in order to get them to work?

NO MATTER HOW one chooses to think of it, such salary supplements sound kind of fishy. Also problematic because they wouldn’t be lasting. Are we literally going to have a fluctuating government payroll – based off who is in charge?

TRUMP: He'd love to buy cooperative govt.

Are voters going to have to contemplate who can afford to pay their workers the best when they decide whom to cast a ballot for? With the idea being that anybody who can’t afford to toss in some extra money for salary is too much of a chump to run for public office?

I’m sure that now-former Gov. Bruce Rauner wishes he had been able to buy a more supplicant staff to work during his four years as governor, Then again, what he really wanted was a more supplicant Legislature – which is something the voters never gave him.

So what should we think of the Pritzker years; will they turn into an era in which the governor has to use his wealth to buy his political influence? Or will it turn out to be a period in which the usual factors that split Democrats into different factions wind up making our state government as ornery as they always have been?

  -30-

What is the partisan political norm?

I stumbled across some commentaries recently; one of which predicted that the electoral gains to be made come November by Democrats with regards to control of Congress would be balanced out by an overwhelming victory come 2020 for Donald Trump’s re-election as president.

Would a "J.B." win restore the 'norm'

While I also have heard countless people talk of the Illinois political situation by saying this year’s election cycle (where many are convinced Gov. Bruce Rauner is doomed to defeat by Democratic Party challenger J.B. Pritzker) will be an “outlier”.

AS IN A victory by Democrats will be a freak exception. One that should not be taken in any way as evidence of what our state is all about politically.

All of which strikes me as a whole lot of Republican partisan types determined to ignore the realities around them. Either that, or they really do believe that everybody who doesn’t agree with them ideologically is someone who ought to be disregarded.

Probably even flogged publicly, then incarcerated, if the most outrageous of those individuals could have their wildest of fantasies come true.

Then again, listening to the conservative ideologues amongst us, the things they say publicly all too often are wild-enough fantasies.

Is Bruce Rauner the Illinois norm?

BEFORE I GO further, I should state that I think the partisan fluctuations of our political establishment IS the norm. I also think that not only is the way things are, it is the way it should be.

A part of me thinks that Illinois suffered from having the governor’s post in the hands of Republicans for 26 years (even if those GOPers included a city-based attorney like Jim Thompson, or a political professional moderate like Jim Edgar).

And before you try throwing it into my face about the string of Democrats serving as Chicago mayor (dating back to 1931 – the longest electoral winning streak by any political organization in any legitimate Democracy), I’ll concede that our city would be better off if the one-time Party of Lincoln could come up with credible candidates for City Hall posts.

Have we devolved to a national Trump norm?

But when you consider the GOP’s most serious mayoral challenger in decades was that 1983 election cycle when they came up with Bernard Epton to challenge Harold Washington – and that election became so overly-tainted by race for the one-time state legislator from Hyde Park to be taken seriously, it’s no wonder the Republicans are irrelevant locally.

WHAT SHOULD WE think of the politics likely to occur in coming months?

Personally, I’m inclined to think the 2014 election that gave us Bruce Rauner in Springfield and 2016 that produced Donald Trump in D.C. even though his Democratic opponent got some 3 million more of the popular vote were the election cycles that threw our system out of whack. Perhaps this is the year the voters try to balance things back to the norm.

By replacing the governor whose ideas of “reform” are about undermining organized labor and trying to perceive people who represent constituents who rely upon unions as somehow being corrupt because they look out for the union label.

Or by installing a Democrat-influenced Congress (at least in the House of Representatives) that could serve as a counter-acting measure for the remaining two years of the Donald Trump presidential term.

WITH THE 2020 election cycle being the one in which our society’s majority gets to Dump Trump. Or will it be that incredibly-outspoken minority of Trump backers manage to pull off a second electoral miracle?

EPTON: Last serious GOP mayoral hopeful

Perhaps it’s because I remember the 1994 election cycle – the one in which hard-core Republican ideologues managed to gain control in Congress and also experienced a surge in Illinois where the GOP gained control of all the state constitutional offices AND the General Assembly’s entirety.

It was the two-year time period during which Michael Madigan was reduced to the role of “minority leader” and Lee Daniels got to serve as Illinois House Speaker.

Those were supposed to be long-lasting partisan movements that would forever change the way things got done. Yet by ’96, Madigan was back, and Bill Clinton managed to get re-elected with as president. Everything has a habit of balancing out when it comes to partisan politics.

  -30-

EXTRA: Political strategist Madigan vs. amateur-hour gov Rauner

Gov. Bruce Rauner concocted a scheme to try to get himself some more votes come Election Day by trying to appear to be the guy who wants to bring back the death penalty to Illinois.

Will Rauner's death penalty fantasy ...

Yet in the ultimate evidence that when it comes to politics, Rauner is a rank amateur, it would seem to be that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is going to wind up using the issue to take him down.

RAUNER’S METHOD OF bringing the issue up was by using his amendatory veto powers to attach the issue to a separate measure – one that would impose a series of restrictions in Illinois on firearms usage and purchase.

In short, legislators who desire to have those restrictions take effect would have to go along with his death penalty plan for people who kill law enforcement officers or large numbers of people in one fell swoop.

So what does Madigan, the man who’s been a part of the legislative process in Illinois for nearly a half-century, do?

He introduced an amendment Thursday to an Illinois Senate bill now pending in the House of Representatives, with the amendment being “the exact language the governor suggested” to bring back capital punishment.

THAT BILL WILL have a committee hearing come Monday. Legislators will have their say on the matter at that time. As Madigan put it, “we look forward to continuing our effort to keep our children, our schools and our communities safe from senseless gun violence.”

More likely, it will give the Democratic Party majority that controls the Illinois House a chance to beat up on Bruce Rauner, knock about his bill, denounce him for trying political tactics meant to impede firearms restrictions that many of them previously voted for, and pretty much go out of their way to make Monday a very unpleasant day for the governor.

Eventually, they’ll probably take some sort of vote on Rauner’s suggestion, and put the spin on it by saying it was evidence that “the people” didn’t like the governor’s ideal.

... be killed off by Madigan's political skill?

It kind of reminds me of a moment some two decades ago – back when then-Gov. Jim Edgar and Mayor Richard M. Daley came up with a proposal related to a new Chicago-area airport.

THE TWO OF them made a public announcement about what they wanted to happen, and implied the General Assembly would follow suit in coming months. Yet then-state Senate President James “Pate” Philip didn’t think much of the idea, and really was bothered by the fact he wasn’t consulted as part of negotiations.

Which resulted in Philip having the Edgar/Daley proposal written up as a bill for the Senate to consider. They wound up rejecting it outright (literally, nobody voted for it), and Philip forevermore would say of that issue, “we voted for it, nobody liked it.”

Now I know some are saying that this may be a tactic by which Madigan ensures Rauner takes full blame for trying to bring back a capital crimes statute – an issue for which the state went to lengthy extremes to abolish in past years.

Which would wind up costing him many votes in Illinois – even though Rauner is looking solely at the ideologically-inclined who might get worked up over this single issue.

BUT I SEE it more as a way of killing the Rauner plan off, while possibly trying to save the separate issues related to firearms ownership.

Reminiscent of Pate tactic

Regardless, it makes Monday’s debate more about partisan politicking rather than about any criminal justice issue.

If you want to be honest, if this gets reduced to an issue of political gamesmanship, it’s most likely that Madigan will prevail.

For Madigan just comprehends the political process and how it can be used to get things done far better than Rauner with his anti-union dreams that he tries to pass off under the label of “reform.”

  -30-

Rauner, Trump have one thing in common, both play scapegoat game

On a serious note, Gov. Bruce Rauner plans to meet with the leaders of the Illinois General Assembly on Thursday so as to discuss what will happen during the remaining portion of the legislature’s spring session that ends May 31.

Does Rauner really believe his pot-shots ...

Those meetings are supposed to include Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and state Senate President John Cullerton, both D-Chicago. Which is supposed to give the impression that everybody’s being serious about government activity.

YET HOW SERIOUS can we think anybody s being when, in announcing the bipartisan political meetings, Rauner also goes out of his way to take pot shots at his political opposition?

“This election is about the people uniting against a corrupt machine of self-dealing, unethical behavior, insider transactions, higher taxes that benefit a few against the people,” the governor told reporter-type people on Monday.

This comes as the governor sent out an Internet survey (which I happened to receive in my e-mail as I was writing this commentary), asking me if I support “roll(ing) back Mike Madigan’s 32 percent income tax hike.”

Which is about as loaded a question as one can ask, since the increase being referred to was the one that boosted the state’s personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to 5 percent. It could raise nearly one-third more money, but it is not a 32 percent hike (it’s about a 1.25 percent increase).

... of Monday will be received well by ...

NOT THAT I’M at all “shocked, shocked” Rauner would engage in making such politically-partisan cheap shots. “Blaming” Madigan is what the governor has been doing throughout his gubernatorial term. Why should anything change now?

But you have to admit it takes a certain amount of nerve to so blatantly lambast the guy you’re talking about wanting to meet with to have serious talks about government activity.

It may be as tacky as the behavior of President Donald J. Trump a few months ago when he complained about Mexico and its governments open refusal to even consider footing the bill for that silly barricade along the U.S./Mexico border that Trump keeps claiming is the key to national security.

... Madigan and Cullerton on Thursday?

Trump has said that because he has made so many political promises to his backers on this issue, he needs to have the wall and Mexico has no business opposing him on the issue.

AN ARROGANT ATTITUDE to have, and one that is similar to Rauner thinking he can repeatedly bash about Madigan and the Democratic caucus he controls in the state Legislature because they don’t blindly follow his political whims.

The governor may say repeatedly they are “reforms,” but many of them are anti-union measures meant to undermine the influence of organized labor within state government – and they were measures that no self-respecting government official with Democratic Party leanings was ever going to support.

All of which makes me think Rauner fully intends to finish out his current term in office with the same inactivity that dominated his time in office.

It was during The Rauner Years that we got just over two straight years with the state operating without a balanced budget – which interfered with government’s ability to pay bills and conduct its business and made the state’s financial problems as severe as they currently are.

COME JULY 1 (the beginning of the state’s 2019 fiscal year), we’re likely to go back to no budget; which most likely will run through the Nov. 6 general election and the rest of this calendar year.

Is Rauner more similar to Trump than he admits?

We have a governor who’s willing to play partisan politics and behave in a reckless manner with the state’s finances because the political opponents won’t blindly go along with his own partisan goals.

I’m sure the conservative ideologues of Illinois will want to disregard this – they’ll want to think they took down Rauner single-handedly because he won’t back their out-of-touch-with-many-people views on issues such as abortion and immigration.

But the reality is that it will be Rauner’s desire to put his anti-union ideology ahead of the daily workings of government that causes the majority to turn out come Election Day and cast ballots against Bruce. Because it’s time we remember the old cliché about government being “the people’s business” – which hasn’t, by and large, been getting done in recent years.

  -30-

Are Dems really a shoo-in for guv?

“Here’s the reality: While the state faces some unique structural economic challenges that will be a drag on any Democrat, the party does not need a billionaire to win this year’s gubernatorial election. In fact, they probably just need somebody with a pulse who isn’t a criminal or a serial sexual harasser.”
-- David Faris, associate professor of political science, Roosevelt University.

  -0-

PRITZKER: Should he be Dem favorite?

If only life (and electoral politics) were that simple!

David Faris came up with an analysis published this week in The Week where he is critical of the establishment Democratic Party line of thought that J.B. Pritzker, whose family has substantial-enough wealth that he can afford to pay for his own campaign to run for governor, ought to be the front-runner for the March 20 election.

FARIS ACTUALLY TOUTS the campaign for governor of state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston. He’s the one-time mathematics professor-turned-legislator who goes out of his way to espouse progressive thought. Whether he’s capable of turning any of it into public policy remains to be seen.

While Pritzker does have some progressive leanings, much of his campaign rhetoric focuses on the need to dump Bruce Rauner – and show how his Republican affiliation puts him in line with President Donald J. Trump.

RAUNER: Are his chances of  victory already nil?

Of whom many political observers are convinced will be the ultimate millstone upon every single political candidate who runs this year under the GOP label.

Faris believes that Pritzker, because he’s immensely wealthy and has the potential to pay his own way for a gubernatorial campaign, is actually no better than Rauner himself.

RAUNER, OF COURSE, being the man who beat Gov. Pat Quinn in 2014 with a self-funded campaign, and has already come up with some $50 million of his own money to pay for his 2018 bid – with much of that intended for use to support legislators who theoretically would be Rauner allies.

Because the reason that Rauner has been unable to achieve any of his anti-organized labor initiatives that (in his mind) were the reason he wanted to become Illinois governor in the first place, was a Democratic Party-dominated state Legislature that thwarted him at every turn.

TRUMP: Rauner's millstone come Nov. 6?

Many of those Dems feel comfortable knowing they won’t be grossly outspent by the Rauner machine during this year’s election cycle.

Which is why someone who has never held political office (although his sister, Penny, was Commerce secretary under then-President Barack Obama) comes across at this early date as the favorite to win the gubernatorial nomination.

I’LL BE THE first to admit Rauner has his political problems. Democrats already upset with Trump’s presidential presence enough to turn out to vote also are displeased enough with Rauner (those two years without a state budget) that they’ll be guaranteed to show up at the polling places come March 20 and Nov. 6.

Plus, Rauner has the right-leaning segment of the Republican Party convinced he’s not really one of them. Jeanne Ives, the state senator from Wheaton who likes to talk about her days at West Point, will take supporters from Rauner he really could use in a Republican primary.

IVES: Hoping to thwart guv March 20

So theoretically, Faris isn’t totally off-base in saying Rauner is beatable. Maybe even a serial sexual harasser could beat him. After all, that label could be applied to the president himself; it didn’t seem to impact his electability in 2016.

But life is never that straight-forward. Nothing is that predictable.

WHILE THERE MAY be some people who are ready to cast their ballot right now (and probably think it appalling they have to wait some two-and-a-half months to do so), there also are a significant share who are undecided. And don’t want to be bothered with having to think about it until just before Election Day.

BISS: Could he beat Pritzker in primary?

The fact is that Rauner is not going to go down without a fight – and he has the experience of having done this once before. His will be a campaign that will not lack the necessities, and he has the focus of knowing that some people will be willing to vote for him out of a sense of practicality – the same way they may have voted against Democrats/for Trump two years ago.

My own thought is that political candidates can go on the attack all they want; but in the end, they have to give voters a reason to want to cast a ballot for themselves.

Thus far, the reason to vote for J.B. or any Democrat is that they’re not Rauner. There may be plenty of time, but until they come up with a solid reason to be worthy of our votes, we can’t totally count out “four more years” of Bruce for Guv.

  -30-

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): What makes “normal” Indian governor?

I have one thing to say about the Illinois gubernatorial Democratic primary coming up next year – Ameya Pawar has a sense of humor.

PAWAR: Our state's first Indian gov?

He’s going to need it; particularly since the common perception is that this primary is a battle between J.B. Pritzker (he of the Hyatt Hotels fortune) and Chris Kennedy – with the latter making up for a lesser personal wealth with the political glories of his father and two uncles.

YOU HAVE TO admit, even a Daley running for office in Chicago would have trouble rivaling the political star power of papa Bobby, Jack and Uncle Teddy.

HALEY: Now our nation's U.N. rep

For those of you who haven’t paid any attention to Pawar (and most people merely snicker when his name is brought up in political conversation), he’s the alderman for the 47^th Ward (Northwest Side) whose immigrant parents settled into this country from India.

He’d be the first Indian-American governor of Illinois, if he could win. He’d also be the third Indian-American to become a governor of any state – we’ve had Bobby Jindal from Louisiana and Nikki Haley from South Carolina; the latter now being the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Both of whom ran as Republicans in states that had negligible Asian racial populations (both estimated at about 1.8 percent, according to the Census Bureau’s 2015 updates). Which means both had to make themselves into something that the white majorities could identify with, rather than being themselves.

WHICH IS THE point Pawar tried to make with his appearance this week at the iO Theater when he quipped, “I’ll be the first normal Indian governor.”

JINDAL: 1st guv named for a Brady?

No tales like we get from Jindal, the guy who “Americanized” his name by taking the moniker from the snot-nosed youngest boy on “The Brady Bunch.”

Of course, we also get Pawar’s wife, Charna, who is Jewish, which leads to Pawar referring to himself as a “Hin-Jew.” Certainly a lot more color and life in this potential governor compared to some of the Executive Mansion occupants (Yes, I’m talking about you, Jim Edgar) we’ve had in the past.

What else is laughable, in an unfortunate manner, about the political scene these days?

AN ENCORE PERFORMANCE: Remember how miffed President Donald J. Trump got when a federal judge of Mexican ethnic ancestry wound up ruling against him in that lawsuit against his Trump University?

CURIEL: Will Trump target him again?

The same judge who is a native of East Chicago, Ind. (which has a slight majority of Latinos amongst its population) is now going to preside over a case in which a man says he was illegally deported to Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel (a federal judge in Southern California) will have to decide the fate of a man who says that federal Immigration officials provided no documentation to justify his removal from the United States. The Mexico native says he should have had protection from deportation due to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act.

You know, that measure enacted by President Barack Obama that Trump wanted to wipe away just as much as he wanted to do away with the Affordable Care Act? You just know if the courts prevent him from taking that action, we’ll get the ultimate load of obscenities – probably so many that even the late comedian Richard Pryor would blush.

WHO LET THE RABBLE IN THE OVAL OFFICE: We’ve all seen the photographs by now – Trump allowed former Alaska Gov. (and failed Vice Presidential candidate) Sarah Palin into the White House for dinner.

She brought along so-called musicians Ted Nugent and Kid Rock – both of whom think it enhances their “street cred” by being outspoken and crass toward Progressive causes and officials. Meaning they approve of the Trumpster way of thinking.

The 'deplorables' at work?

Much has even been made of the photograph of the group that was taken of them standing in front of a formal portrait of former first lady Hillary Clinton. It’s a wonder they didn’t blow their noses and wipe snot on it!

Although personally, I was more entranced by the trashy-looking women who accompanied Nugent and Rock to the White House. Because they’re exactly the kind of loose-looking “ladies” whom the conservative ideologues have spent years associating with former President Bill Clinton.

  -30-

Pritzker gets into mix, but do we really want a ‘rich guy’ battle for governor?

The field of candidates who will ask us to consider making them our state’s governor for the next four years is shaping up.

Pritzker's going for gov...

Just a few days after being the guy who merely tagged along with Bolingbrook mayoral hopeful Jackie Traynere when she campaigned for votes, J.B. Pritzker went ahead and formally declared himself to be one of several who want to be the Democrat who challenges Gov. Bruce Rauner come next year’s election cycle.

THE ILLINOIS REPUBLICAN Party immediately went on the attack; proclaiming that Pritzker is Illinois House Speaker Michael “Madigan’s billionaire” (after Pritzker called Rauner President Donald J. "Trump's local partner") and the guy who has gathered in those cliché-laden smoke filled rooms with political hacks to concoct tax hikes that will hit us all in our wallets!

“Like a true machine politician, J.B. Pritzker mirrored the Madigan tax hike plan behind closed doors, before even announcing his campaign,” GOP state spokesman Steven Yaffe said. “It’s clear that Pritzker’s loyalty belongs to … Madigan and his plan for higher taxes with no real reform.”

Ignoring, of course, the fact that many people in Illinois view Rauner’s version of “reform” as nothing more than a politically-partisan hang-up with regards to organized labor and unions. There’s a reason Rauner’s approval rating stinks (not quite one-third) and isn’t much better than the Madigan approval ratings.

But the real key to comprehending this campaign is the response of another candidate, Daniel Biss, the state senator from Evanston, who cited the fact that some people think is Pritzker’s big advantage – the fact that his family is ridiculously wealthy and he could match the kind of money Rauner plans to put into his own political futures.

... unless Kennedy can thwart his path

RAUNER, AFTER ALL, is the guy who began this year by stating his intentions to spend some $50 million of his own fortune on his campaign and those of others to try to create a state Legislature that would be sympathetic to his anti-union desires.

As Biss told the Capitol Fax newsletter, “do we try to out-Rauner Bruce Rauner or offer a truly Democratic alternative that empowers ordinary Illinoisans.”

I’m sure in his own mind, Biss thinks people will pick him as the alternative, allowing him to overcome the difference in campaign funding that he just won't have.

Just as I’m sure 47^th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar (who on Thursday called Pritzker, “an accomplished investor and philanthropist” and welcomed him to the campaign) has visions of becoming the gubernatorial nominee every time he goes about making illusions to the “New Deal” of Democratic demigod Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Will Dem winner be up to brawl w/ Rauner?

ALTHOUGH THE GUY who may wind up playing well with the Democratic Party public is the one who’s related to another of the Dem demigods – as in Christopher Kennedy, the son of Bobby and nephew to both Jack and Teddy.

If you need the subtitled translation, that’s the son of a former attorney general and presidential candidate, and nephew to a president AND a long-time U.S. senator.

There are those who think this Democratic primary will wind up being a battle between Pritzker and Kennedy, with the latter letting it be known this week that during the past six weeks he has been a candidate, he has raised over $1 million in contributions from some 3,000 individuals.

PAWAR: Too gentlemanly for fight?

That’s not insignificant! Particularly if the powers-that-be within Democratic Party interests start kicking in their own money. Kennedy could be the one who can take on the guy whose family wealth includes the Hyatt Hotels chain.

COULD THIS WIND up being the Kennedy/Pritzker brawl, seeing these two bloody each other up leading into a knock-down, dragged out, all-out brawl (got to overdo the clichés here) against Bruce Rauner?

Or could one of the lesser candidates manage to catch the public eye? Something of which I’m skeptical, particularly in the case of Bob Daiber, the superintendent of schools in Madison County (across the Mississippi River from St. Louis) – who seems to think he’s the 21^st Century answer to Glenn Poshard.

Remember his 1998 campaign where he won the Democratic primary by dominating the rural Illinois vote? Only to get his behind kicked in the general election by Republican George Ryan – a fate likely to recur in 2018 if Daiber was really nominated.

KELLY: Who?!?

Then, there’s William J. Kelly, the guy who’d like to challenge Rauner for the Republican nomination and who knew just enough about television and media to gain himself public attention (but hardly any votes) for his failed mayoral campaign of 2015. And whom I’m sure someone will contact me on his behalf to rant and rage about the fact that his political fantasies were relegated to the final paragraph of this particular commentary!

  -30-

Couldn’t we have done “5 percent” last year and never created problem at all?

Excuse me for not thinking much of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s talk this week that a good first step toward resolving Illinois government’s financial problems is to restore the income tax rate to that interim level we had for four years under then-Gov. Pat Quinn.

You know, the one that had personal income tax rates at 5 percent and corporate at 7 percent – which was enacted in 2011 as a four-year temporary plan that disappeared at the end of 2014.

OF COURSE, QUINN wanted the Democrat-dominated General Assembly to impose a measure at the end of last year that would have extended that higher rate – rather than letting it sink back.

Which is a significant part of the reason we have a financial problem. There isn’t enough money coming in to cover the state’s financial obligations. To put it in the speak of the professional gamblers, Illinois isn’t covering its “nut.”

As in we’re not producing the bare amount of money needed to survive.

Which wouldn’t be bad if the state under Gov. Bruce Rauner had somehow committed to reducing its expenses to keep in line with the level of money that is coming in.

BUT INSTEAD, THE Rauner administration has been more committed to trying to undermine organized labor rather than produce a real budget. Which is why we have some state agencies continuing to spend money at rates we don’t have.

MADIGAN: Now backs 5 percent

Now I have dished out more than my share of blame to Rauner and his ideologue aides who I think really don’t care much about any long-term damage to the state so long as they can impose their restrictions on labor unions. I’m not the least bit sorry for anything I may have written against them during the past five months.

But learning that Madigan offered up a return to the income tax rate of 2011-14 as something of a solution just strikes me as hypocritical.

RAUNER: His 'veto' pen ready!

Let’s not forget that Quinn desperately wanted that rate kept in place and wanted his final veto session as governor to consist of having legislators impose the change in the days when they still had domination over the entire legislative process – and not just the state Legislature itself.

QUINN: Off snickering somewhere?

IT COULD HAVE been voted for by the Democratic supermajority General Assembly then signed into law by Quinn – and the Republican partisans would have only been able to sputter and choke and rant and rage.

But not do anything about it!

Instead, we had Democrats who always thought Quinn was more interested in himself rather than their concerns thinking they saw no reason to rush into action. They did nothing, which is what caused the conditions that led to the ongoing partisan stalemate and lack of a budget.

Which isn’t likely to go away soon. Because we’re rapidly reaching the point where it would be a waste of effort to put together a budget for fiscal 2016. Come March, work will begin on the Fiscal ’17 budget – which will be complicated all the more by the fact that nothing exists for the current fiscal year.

LARGELY BECAUSE DEMOCRATS in the General Assembly felt compelled to give Pat Quinn a final kick in the pants to remind him that he may have reached the level of governor – but he was still that pain-in-the-butt gadfly who was always taking pot shots at them on so many issues.

Dank and dreary is the Statehouse 'mood' these days

They taught Quinn who the real “boss” of Illinois government was. Yes they did.

Which is why it comes across as hypocritical of them to now suggest that maybe we should do something that Quinn would have had them do all along – and that would have averted the mess we’re now in.

For all the people who are complaining about the need to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel, personally I’m more anxiously awaiting the 2018 election cycle so we can have a shot at replacing the state leadership – which likely is the only way that situation will improve for the long term.

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