Are “public” pensions the bane of all evil? Or are we being asked to back partisan rhetoric to amend constitution?

Not the current document

I find it amusing to learn that groups opposed to a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution are waiting until the final days before Election Day to try to stir up voter opposition.

Because it comes at a time when the campaigns, particularly those that would look favorably on a Barack Obama re-election, are all so eager to get high turnout at early voter centers.

BUILD UP SUCH a big lead that Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney is too far behind to possibly catch up with those votes actually cast at polling places!

Could a lot of people wind up finding out about what this state Constitution amendment actually means, AFTER they already have cast their ballots?

I know in my case, that is the case. I hadn’t heard much about the amendment that was the very first item on the ballot I cast when I went to an early voting center. In fact, it was the one item that I had to think about and be sure I read it correctly before I “made my mark” on the touch-screen.

And for the record, I voted “no.” The amendment would have said that any government trying to approve a measure related to employee retirement plans would have to get at least a 60 percent vote in order to pass.

RATHER THAN THE standard simple majority of officials that causes most measures to be passed into law.

This particular measure struck me as some sort of partisan measure by the ideologues to try to force their ways of thinking on the rest of us. The ones of us who want the rest of us to believe that the “problem” with regards to pension funding isn’t the irresponsible way in which our governments have funded them.

They want us to think the problem is the fact that anyone would get a pension at all.

Take the congressional campaign of Jason Plummer (Bill Brady’s youthful running mate in the 2010 election cycle; who's running down near St. Louis and in Southern Illinois), who is going after Democratic challenger Bill Enyart for pensions his wife (a retired judge) is receiving. “We’re calling the ethics of these things into question,” said Plummer, to reporter-types.

WHICH IS NONSENSE! I’d like to think a majority of people who cast ballots for the Nov. 6 election cycle (whether on that date or in the couple of weeks in advance at early voting centers) will be able to see through this.

Yet let’s be honest. The ballot question is written in legalese. And if one is so preoccupied with putting their little green check mark next to the names of Obama or Romney, they may not want to be bothered with reading (and thinking) about this issue.

Besides, when the issue of pension funding reform has come up before the General Assembly in recent years, we always hear the rhetoric about how this is a drastic problem that must be dealt with NOW in order to prevent permanent financial catastrophe from occurring.

Yet the legislators always manage to find ways of pushing the issue off into the future (just as they have always managed to ignore providing proper funding levels in the past) because it is a complex issue that many in the public don’t really get.

HOW MANY PEOPLE are going to cast their vote on this issue with less thought than they put in working their way through the lists of all those judges (most of whom on my ballot at least were running unopposed)?

How many people will see the spots put together by the We Are One coalition (which has raised about $500,000 in recent weeks to pay for broadcast spots and other ads asking for a “no” vote) and remember that they voted “yes” on the issue.

Then, they will smack their foreheads about their vote, wishing they could “take it back?”

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The significance of tax returns, or lack thereof, in the campaign cycle

I recall the first government official who ever showed me his income tax return – it was then-Gov. Jim Edgar.

EDGAR: Not Romney or Plummer



He wasn’t running for anything specifically that year. It was just his habit to let us see the return he filed by mid-April, and it was meant to reinforce the idea that he wasn’t all that different from the rest of us.

SERIOUSLY! I RECALL his returns as showing that while the Edgars had some miniscule financial investments, they weren’t wealthy. For all practical purposes, Edgar supported his family financially on the government salaries he was paid for the various electoral offices he held during his political career.

They weren’t bad salaries. So they lived well. But no more so than many other people.

Edgar always issued the returns so routinely that they ultimately became a non-story. Yet more evidence that Edgar wasn’t the most exciting man on Planet Earth. Or even to walk the halls of the Statehouse in Springfield.

Which is why it always amazes me when would-be government officials make a big deal out of refusing to disclose their incomes. They wind up making an issue out of what should be nothing.

WHEN THE INFORMATION comes out, it gets treated as though it is a major disclosure. If it never comes out, then we wind up thinking that there is some major secret being kept from the public.

It may turn out that the information amounts to a whole lot of nothing. But the candidates treat it as though it is a major something.

Yet every campaign cycle, we get some nitwit who is determined to think that he (or she, I suppose) is special, and that we shouldn’t have some interest in their personal connections.

ROMNEY: Returns becoming an issue



Which is what we gain from getting a look at those returns. Who do they have financial connections to? How do they live? Is this a person who gives a lot to charitable causes?

IF SO, WHICH causes?

It is personal information that we can relate to, because we all ultimately have to fill out those forms.

And while I don’t expect to see anyone running for office who files the 1040EZ, we do learn something from such information.

Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations are being attacked on this ground. He has only released limited details, and claims he doesn’t want more information about himself out there because he thinks opponent Barack Obama will merely have his staff pick through the information for details that can be used against him.

HE WENT SO far as to tell the National Review, “I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about.”

My guess is that the Romney campaign wants all the distortion and lies to be told by themselves about Obama. Which when thought of that way makes Romney sound like a bully and a wimp!

Locally, we have someone else taking the same attitude. Remember Jason Plummer, the St. Louis-area guy who ran for lieutenant governor paired up with Republican William Brady?

He’s running for a seat in Congress from that part of Illinois that borders St. Louis, and he’s refusing to give up his returns. He claims they’re personal, although he released a statement that says he earns a $55,289 salary as vice president of the family-owned lumber company.

WHICH IF THAT’S all there is would be so much like many other people.

PLUMMER: Really none of our business?



Except that for people like Romney and Plummer, that isn’t all there is. They have business interests that allow them to use various exemptions.

The tales told about Romney are that he has used exemptions and tax breaks so effectively that he literally didn’t owe any federal income tax. Which is something that would make him very unusual, and reduce to rubble any claims he might try to make that he’s just a common guy, compared to “elitist” Obama.

It’s probably the same situation with regard to Plummer. The family business that he has ties to likely make him independently wealthy aside from his actual salary that he reports to the IRS. It’s a shame that he, and Romney for that matter, feels compelled to treat it as a dirty little secret.

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EXTRA: A GOP “civil war” brewing at Chicago suburb political conventions?

Rick Santorum lives on in Chicago suburbs. Photographs provided by American Conservative Union

The Illinois Republican Party is holding its convention Friday and Saturday in southwest suburban Tinley Park, hoping to get the party faithful together to get them all worked up about the prospects of voting on Election Day.

No, they’re not going to put Illinois into the Republican column of electors for the presidential campaign. But they’re hoping to inflict their share of damage on Democrats, and probably would consider it a major deal if they could keep Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., from losing to Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth.

NOT THAT WALSH himself is going to be anywhere near the Tinley Park Convention Center, the facility located just off Interstate 80 that party leaders brag they chose because of its easy access to downstate Illinois.

Why make rural Illinois Republicans have to drive for another hour or two through the Chicago area to get to a northwest suburban convention site?

Yet somehow, I suspect another reason they’re in Tinley Park (which admittedly has a nice convention facility) is because the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont (near O’Hare International Airport) is already taken.

For that is the site of the American Conservative Union convention being held Friday at the very same time that party functionaries are trying to get people all worked up to vote GOP!

WALSH IS AMONG the people who will be speaking at the union’s convention, along with Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill. (the Republican who beat Duckworth the last time she tried running for a seat in Congress).

Among others who were expected to have a presence at the gathering include the failed presidential hopefuls such as Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann – names which have some attraction to segments of the electorate.

They’re also supposed to include names such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For those people who want a Grand Old Party experience, it sounds like the real bash is taking place in Rosemont – while the Illinois party leaders are gathered in Tinley Park, less than a mile from the site of the Lane Bryant store where five people were killed some four years ago in a still-unsolved case.

UNLESS THE PROSPECT of a “surprise” birthday party for St. Louis-area congressional candidate (and failed Illinois 2010 lieutenant governor nominee) Jason Plummer held Thursday got you all excited, it seems like the people the party leaders want to appeal to have all chosen to show up at the other end of Cook County.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that events were scheduled in conflict with each other. In the public’s eye that often cares less about political concerns, I’m sure it was a bigger deal a few years ago when the Chicago White Sox scheduled their winter fan convention on the same day of the Super Bowl.

Still, it makes me wonder which party operative is responsible for deciding that this weekend was the one for Republicans to gather in the Chicago area.

We’re going to be seeing the split between the party regulars and the ideologues who these days get most worked up over the prospect of voting for Republican Party nominees – even if in many cases they’re really voting AGAINST Democratic challengers.

BECAUSE I’M SURE that group would eagerly have rebuffed the party officials if there had been any suggestion put forth that these two sides somehow work together.

So what’s my point in stating all of this?

JINDAL: What GOP thinks Obama should try to be like

It’s just that the American Conservative Union says in the statement that they’re gathering in Chicago on Friday to, “take the fight for the future of America directly to President Barack Obama’s backyard.”

Yet if we look to the president’s “backyard,” we get to see the split that harms the party’s chances of Election Day victory – which may well be the reason that Obama overcomes the concerns about a sluggish economy and wins Term Number Two come November.

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EXTRA: Will Simon be a more effective lieutenant governor than her predecessor?

SIMON: Following in father's footsteps

Lt. Gov.-elect Sheila Simon is the daughter of a former lieutenant governor herself, as Paul Simon served in the state Legislature and as second-in-command of state government before moving on to a career in Congress – including 12 years as a U.S. senator from Illinois.

Yet in hearing from Simon on Thursday, I couldn’t help but detect a tone reminiscent of another political official, one whom she probably would not appreciate being compared to – former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

WSIL-TV, AN ABC affiliate covering Southern Illinois, talked with Sheila about her thoughts upon becoming the state’s lieutenant governor – at least in the opinion of the Associated Press, which on Thursday proclaimed her running mate, Gov. Pat Quinn, to be the winner of this week’s election.

Most of her thoughts (concerning patience in waiting for the final vote tallies) were predictable. Yet I couldn’t help but catch her comment about a residence.

“I’m not going to pack my bags and move to Springfield at all. I’m from Carbondale,” Simon said. “I’m going to stay in Carbondale,” adding she hopes to do a “good deal” of her work from her Southern Illinois home city – where she was on the faculty of Southern Illinois University School of Law.

Technically, she’s going to have to do something to establish a residence in Springfield, since state law requires all the constitutional officers EXCEPT governor to have a capital city residence (in the case of governor, the state provides the Executive Mansion for the governor’s use).

IT HAS ME wondering if Simon will go the route of Judy Baar Topinka, who back when she was a state legislator and state treasurer rented a cheap house in Springfield and furnished it with items purchased from thrift stores, so as to hold down the expense while maintaining her real home in suburban Riverside.

I’m wondering how long it will be until Republican partisans start denouncing her for refusing to live in the capital city, similar to how they used to jump down the throat of Blagojevich for thinking he can do the job from his Ravenswood Manor neighborhood home.

There is the difference that Simon is talking about living in a downstate Illinois city, rather than Chicago. So perhaps she will become the pride of Southern Illinois similar to how her father was.

Then again, Simon didn’t even win her home Jackson County (it was a 45-percent tie for her and Republican opponent Jason Plummer, although Jason got 23 more votes than Sheila). When combined with her previous loss when she ran for mayor of Carbondale, maybe it is a realization that downstate Illinois political people who want a future had better align themselves with Chicago interests to get ahead.

SPECULATION HAS ALREADY begun as to what exactly Simon contributed to the campaign season. Did she help make Quinn look a little more sympathetic to women voters? Did the tie to her father help make the Republican ticket’s conservative ideological beliefs seem all the more whacked out by comparison?

Back when P. Simon was Lt. Gov.

Regardless, it will be interesting come January when Simon takes the oath of office for the political post that set the stage for her father to start running for high-level political posts in Illinois (a failed governor bid in 1972, several terms in Congress and two terms in the Senate).

At age 49, she is young enough to take a future shot at some higher office. I don’t know if she’ll wind up rivaling her father as the most-prominent “Simon” in Illinois political history. Although considering that she and Quinn don’t have the same contempt for each other that Quinn and Blagojevich did (or distrust her father had as a Democratic lieutenant governor, paired up with Republican Gov. Richard Ogilvie), she’s bound to be more effective in the post than her predecessor was.

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Does Plummer warrant Lt. Gov. position?

While my doubts about William Brady’s partisan rhetoric about the state’s financial problems are part of my reason for opposing the GOP’s choice for governor, another significant part of the reason I’m hoping Pat Quinn gets his own full term as governor is that the more I learn about Brady’s running mate, the less I like him.

It is a juvenile sentiment on my part, It is spiteful. The part of me that is Catholic thinks I should have a serious talk with a priest for having such negative feelings. But the thought of Jason Plummer holding any government position – particularly one that could put him in charge of state government someday – gives me the creeps.

THIS IS A 29-year-old who is counting on the fact that few voters pay any attention to the running mate to get himself elected to a political position. Running for a lower-level position to gain experience would not appeal to him, because then he’d have to expose himself and let us all see him for what he is.

Exposure is something that Plummer definitely has avoided. His participation in the campaign cycle has been limited to the rural portions of the state at events where he only appears before the hard-core faithful – the GOPers so determined to vote against a Democrat that they’ll put up with anyone who carries the requisite “R” after his name.

That attitude was on display, instead of Plummer himself, when he blew off what was meant to be a debate between Jason, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Sheila Simon, and Baxter Swilley, the man who is paired up with independent gubernatorial hopeful Scott Lee Cohen.

I’m not about to claim that Plummer and Simon need to be the political equivalent of conjoined twins for the next couple of weeks. I understand he has his own campaign activity to tend to.

BUT PLUMMER IS going about trying to claim that it is Simon’s fault that she is not coordinating her schedule to his partisan needs, and that if she truly were interested in appearing with him, she would adapt.

I kind of like the way WMAQ-TV handled the debate this week – putting up an empty chair for Simon and Swilley to debate. Of course, I’m sure he’s going to take this as a slight and claim it is evidence that he is being picked on.

If it reads like I think that Plummer is the kind of aspiring politico who wants to beat up on the opposition, but can’t take their hits back, you’d be correct. When it comes to the world of electoral politics, that is a serious flaw that ought to make one unworthy of anyone’s vote.

Because politics is about having to deal with an opposition. It is not (nor should it be) about being able to strong-arm the opposition.

I’M CURIOUS TO see how things work out Monday, where Simon and Plummer are supposed to face off against each other at WTTW-TV studios, with their “debate” to be included in the “Chicago Tonight” program.

Plummer claims he will be there, and I expect he will show (because I don’t think he has the nerve to be arrogant enough to skip out on this event). But I want to see how he tries to spin the circumstances to make it appear that he’s doing us the favor by appearing at the event – and how somehow it is Simon’s fault that the two haven’t had any prior confrontations on the campaign trail.

I also expect we’re going to get a self-righteous tone when it comes to the one ongoing issue of this year’s campaign for lieutenant governor – the fact that Plummer is adamant about refusing to let anyone see the personal income tax returns he has filed in recent years.

It has become a staple of government that our elected officials make copies of their returns public so we can see what kind of people they are associated with and what income they have. For some political people, it is meant to show evidence that their sole income is the check they receive twice a month from the Illinois comptroller’s office for their government duties.

SOME POLITICAL PEOPLE, including Brady, go to extremes to make it difficult to see their returns, so as to make sure that only the most dedicated of political geeks bother. Plummer won’t even go that far, claiming that because of his family’s lumber business in the St. Louis Metro East area, he has business ties whose privacy ought to be respected.

He’s trying to put a noble spin on the concept of “none of your business,” which basically is his sole reason for not wanting people to understand that he is a guy who comes from a wealthy family (in short, he’s not a self-made millionaire).

I’m a firm believer in the concept that elected officials give up some of their privacy when they go on a public payroll to do the “people’s business.” If Plummer had been able to accept that fact early on in the campaign cycle, then none of this would be an issue.

I used to think that the most stubborn business-type who ever tried running for political office was H. Ross Perot’s presidential aspirations of 1992 and 1996. But the fact that Plummer stubbornly clings to his concepts all these months later – with only 10 days remaining until Election Day – means he tops Perot, and is unworthy in my mind of a vote.

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Did Kirk inflate resume just like Plummer?

I’m starting to wonder if Republican gubernatorial nominee William Brady is looking at the people he is paired with on the GOP ticket, and is shuddering at the thought.

It was earlier this year that we learned that lieutenant governor nominee Jason Plummer had such an overloaded resume for a 27-year-old because some of his accomplishments were exaggerations – ie: claiming internships as jobs, military experience that has yet to occur, etc.

NOW, WE’RE AT Memorial Day with the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois having to confront allegations that he’s claiming military accomplishments he never really achieved.

Does that make the modern-day incarnation of the Illinois Republican Party the equivalent of the 20-year-old kid who works overnight at a 7-Eleven convenience store, and claims during future job interviews that it was a “management” position because he worked alone on that shift?

Mark Kirk, who has kept his position within the Naval Reserve even as he has served the past decade in Congress as the representative from the North Shore suburbs, has had to deal with reports that came out ever so conveniently in time for this holiday weekend about a claim on the resume – one that said he was once named Intelligence Officer of the Year.

He had claimed the award was for his work with the Navy during military actions in Kosovo.

BUT NOW THAT people are looking more closely at the Kirk resume, it seems that officials are saying it was another reservist who received that particular designation – although there also are awards by the intelligence community given out at regional levels.

Kirk is now claiming that it was his entire unit that received an award from the National Military Intelligence Association, which means he won something known as the “Taylor Award,” which doesn’t sound as imposing as the wording his resume used to reflect.

How seriously should we take this, considering that resume inflation is way too common. I remember when I used to have a reporter-type position that occasionally required me to interview prospective interns, I used to routinely find puffery in resumes meant to make someone sound much more impressive than they truly were. It is to the point where I have weeded through my own resume to eliminate as much puffery as possible, in hopes that it would make me stand out from the crowd that I’m not trying to feed a lot of bull to a potential future employer.

I’m sure such personal promotion happens everywhere. Somebody wants to present their best side, and it usually is someone who thinks highly enough of themselves to begin with that they decide in their minds that such overstated rhetoric isn’t that big a deal.

THAT CERTAINLY IS the approach the Kirk campaign is taking, sending out a statement by e-mail on Sunday meant to downplay the significance of this whole thing.

It is playing off the Washington Post report this weekend that acknowledged the newspaper learned of Kirk’s resume inflation from people who have an interest in promoting the campaign of Democratic challenger Alexi Giannoulias.

This is a lame trick by the political opposition, they want us to believe.

How else to explain a statement that begins with the headline, “’Mob Banker’ who never served attacks decorated Naval officer’s distinguished service record.”

WHICH MEANS THIS was probably a last-minute rewrite of the political cheap shot the Republicans had planned to make public for Memorial Day – Mark Kirk has served in the military, while Alexi Giannoulias has not.

That statement makes such rhetorical flushes as, “while Mark Kirk wore a U.S. Navy uniform, Alexi Giannoulias wore a basketball uniform in Greece” (he played one year professionally for Panionios) and “while Mark Kirk was supporting electronic attack missions over Iraq, Alexi Giannoulias was partying in New Orleans at Tulane Law School.”

What was supposed to be a hard-core partisan shot across the bow of the Campaign Giannoulias to get all those military veterans ticked off enough to vote against him was turned into Kirk having to justify that he really did serve in the Naval Reserve.

It also makes us wonder how much of the rest of his background is inflated. Are we going to find more things? I’d hope not. I’d rather this become a campaign based on issues, even though that is probably a naïve statement on my part.

THESE RHETORICAL FLOURISHES wind up becoming the issues, which means we will have to spend valuable time in coming months trying to figure out which candidate is lying to us less when they tell us about their life’s accomplishments.

So while the Kirk camp tells us that the candidate’s military record, “should not be denigrated by a 34-year-old media-dubbed ‘mob banker’ who has never served our country in uniform,” I wonder if it should be denigrated by a resume padder (which I think says something about someone’s character if they’re that insecure about the bottom-line truth).

More importantly, I wonder if at least a few of those people who served our country in uniform and died to preserve our society are rolling over in their graves at the thought that these two are the best that the major political parties could come up with to run for one of the highest political posts in the land.

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It feels like an Election Day

There is a part of me that wishes I were headed for my polling place to cast my ballot to indicate preferences for candidates for the November elections.

Today is the third Tuesday of March, which traditionally was the date upon which primary elections were conducted in Illinois – a date that in some years can coincide with St. Patrick’s Day (although this year, it misses the great green festival by one day).

BY THIS POINT, I am now ready to make the trip to my neighborhood Lutheran church (which doubles as the local polling place) to cast my votes related to the state government and U.S. senate elections, along with picking all those judges.

The only problem is that it is NOT Election Day. We (or at least the few of us who bothered) all cast our ballots in the primary election held six weeks ago. Although I find a bit of poetic justice in the fact that we didn’t figure out that Bill Brady really won the Republican primary until just over a week ago.

Is that some sort of cosmic sign saying that THIS is the time of the year when we should be deciding things. These District of Columbia residents of 1938 couldn't vote because of the local laws in the federal district. We can't vote Tuesday because our officials foolishly held our elections six weeks ago. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

In one of the few bits of evidence that our politicos aren’t completely brain-dead, Illinois is considering a return to mid-March elections. Just last week, the Illinois House of Representatives gave its final approval to a bill that shifts the elections from early February to this time of year.

NOW, IT GOES to Gov. Pat Quinn, and his aides say the governor, “looks forward” to signing the measure into law. So 2010 will be remembered not only as the title of an awful sequel, but as the final year in which we had ridiculously early elections.

It also is evidence that some of our political peoples’ stupidest gestures can be undone.

I remember thinking that the Illinois Legislature was being incredibly short-sighted when this change was made. Somehow, the desired goal of giving homestate politico Barack Obama an advantage didn’t seem worth it.

In the end, moving the primary in 2008 to early February wound up resulting in exactly what state officials were trying to avoid – our state’s primary that year got lost in the shuffle.

HOW ELSE TO explain the fact that the Illinois primary was held the same day as New York and California? The national attention wound up going to California because it was the one state that wasn’t home to a Democratic presidential hopeful.

Considering how the Democratic primary for the presidential nomination that year turned into a drawn-out fiasco that wasn’t resolved until the whole process ended in June, Indiana with its ridiculously-late May primary wound up having more influence than Illinois.

Some will argue that 2008 was a bizarre election year that should not be used as a standard for analyzing anything. I’d agree. To me, the more dangerous after-effect of an early February primary is what occurred this year.

The early Election Day date contributed to the fact that record-low voter turnouts were registered in many counties across the state. Nobody wanted to be bothered with thinking about voting for anything (not even something as important as senator or governor) at that early date.

IT ALSO CREATED such a short primary season (barely a month of campaigning) that I honestly believe most people didn’t have a clue who they were voting for.

Anybody who looks at the primaries in both major political parties for lieutenant governor would have to admit that candidates with actual records would have had time to get the word out – instead of people picking the candidates who had money to appear often in television campaign ads.

Perhaps we could have avoided Scott Lee Cohen or Jason Plummer if we had more time to study the candidates? Of course, those candidates might have been able to use their financial advantage to burn their impressions so strong into the public conscience that people might have cared more that Cohen could win an election and still get shoved aside by his political party “allies.”

Of course, I’m not saying lieutenant governor was the only affected office by the early Election day this year.

I WONDER IF a few more weeks would have enabled one of the Republican gubernatorial dreamers to do better. Could six more weeks have allowed state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, to find 194 more votes – thereby making him the winner?

On the Democratic side, I will always be convinced that the one big winner of an early Election Day this year was Quinn himself. Six more weeks of having to campaign, and perhaps departing Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes would have overcome the Mighty Quinn.

Hynes versus Dillard, if only we had held this year’s primary elections (and I write this as one who actually voted last month for Quinn) at the right time? It will be one of the all-time Could Have Been issues that our political watchers will discuss for years.

It’s too bad Quinn couldn’t actually sign this particular bill into law on Tuesday. It wouldn’t do a thing to undo this year’s election results (apparently, only Cohen-like behavior can undo an election).

BUT IT WOULD eliminate a significant flaw in the political process that we built into the system a couple of years ago. Now, we can go back to complaining about the candidates themselves being incompetent and out-of-touch.

What could be more “All-American” than that?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Bill Black, a legislator from Danville, always has a knack for being blunt-spoken and honest (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/03/illinois-primary-election-headed-back-to-march.html), particularly his assessment (http://www.sj-r.com/state/x673415277/Later-primary-bill-now-heads-to-governor) that February primaries were “a disaster.”

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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