Quinn won’t wither away, lack of $$$ won’t stop his political desires

I’m not surprised to learn that former Gov. Pat Quinn, in his political bid to become Illinois attorney general, is lagging far behind the other candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the post.

How many candidates have official state portrait?

The reality is that Quinn, in his decades as a candidate for political office, has never been a fantastic fundraiser. If anything, he’s the kind of outspoken guy who ticks off the kind of people who actually make sizable contributions.

HE’S THE KIND of guy who attracts the money of some hard-core political lightweights – the kind of people who might make $20 donations. Piece enough of them together, and you might get a dollar figure of some size.

Then again, one prominent donor or special-interest group can easily cough up the same amount of cash with one contribution check.

The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday about the amount of money the candidates for attorney general have raised. It shouldn’t be surprising that the guy who’s likely the frontrunner (state Sen. Kwame Raoul of the Hyde Park neighborhood) has the most money.

He had $406,000 already, and managed to raise another $540,000 during the past three months.

BY COMPARISON, QUINN added some $81,000 to the $232,000 he already had in an existing campaign fund.

How pathetic is that? According to the Tribune report, about the only Democratic dreamer for attorney general doing worse is Aaron Goldstein, who reported having $194,000 in contributions – of which about $185,000 is money he donated to himself.

Candidates such as state Rep. Scott Drury, D-Highwood, Chicago Park District President Jesse Ruiz and Highland Park mayor Nancy Rotering all have raised more than the former governor.

RAOUL: The 'big bucks" AG candidate

But as I’ve already implied, this is not a new trend for Quinn – who never has been the big-money candidate with unlimited funds to pay for all the advertising and other stunts that a political campaign engages in to attract attention and try to sway people to actually vote for them.

HE HAS ALWAYS managed to achieve whatever success he has gained on the Illinois political scene by swaying voters that he’s somehow different from the standard-issue government official.

Whether that can continue to work for him remains to be seen. Standard lines of logic would indicate that Quinn’s time has passed. He’s a political has-been who should come to his senses and drop out – be a retired pol who can claim to have achieved the rank of Illinois governor.

Of course, standard lines of logic would indicate that Quinn’s time had passed after his one term as Illinois treasurer. The one that ended after his 1994 defeat for Illinois secretary of state.

Between that electoral loss and his victory paired up with Rod Blagojevich in 2002 as his lieutenant governor running mate, Quinn ran for U.S. Senate seats and the lieutenant governor post on his own and continually lost. Largely because his campaigns were as poorly funded as this campaign appears to be.

BUT QUINN IS the type not easily discouraged. All those losses of the mid-1990s to the early 2000s didn’t discourage him from running again. Just as his 2014 loss to Bruce Rauner and his millions of dollars in personal wealth that he pumped into his campaign doesn’t seem to have discouraged him from trying yet again to be a part of state government.

Anybody can outspend Quinn, not just Rauner

I don’t know if Quinn can actually win. Perhaps he figures there’s so many people on the ballot (eight candidates on the Democratic side) that he figures he could get a quarter of the vote and the other seven could split up the majority into small-enough chunks he could still win.

As for those others, all of them have limited name recognition outside of their home regions. Whether any one of them could catch on with the masses has yet to be determined.

And even if Quinn loses the primary come March 20, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him try running yet again for political office – maybe he’ll go for Illinois comptroller and be able to say he ran for all the statewide constitutional posts. He may be 69 (his birthday was in mid-December) and getting up there in years, but I suspect Quinn is exactly the kind of guy who won’t quit trying to be a part of public policy until the day he passes on.

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Give it up! We’re keeping Madigan; we'll see if that's for better or worse

There’s one political prediction I feel confident in making – come Jan.11, 2017, the Illinois House of Representatives will convene for the beginning of a new two-year session, and as its first official act will choose state Rep. Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to be its leader.

MADIGAN: He's returning, for good or bad

People of a political bent who are concocting scenarios by which Illinois House members dump Madigan, who has been leader of the House for all but two years since the early 1980s, are quite possibly more out of touch than those who are expecting the Electoral College to dump on Donald Trump come Monday.

BUT THEN AGAIN, I’m skeptical that the leadership of the Illinois Republican Party, which for years has been trying to demonize the Madigan name and has stepped up their efforts in recent weeks, would want to have anybody else as their opposition besides the long-time “Mr. Speaker.”

Who else could they spew hostile rhetoric against and find anyone foolish enough to believe it? Would their trash talk seem anything but laughable against a House speaker Barbara Flynn Currie or Lou Lang?

I think that for Gov. Bruce Rauner to have a chance of overcoming the hostile attitude toward himself that has developed in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, he needs to have an equal “demon,” so to speak.

Otherwise, a Rauner re-election bid for 2018 would be doomed to defeat. But with a Madigan who gets the blame for favoring Chicago over all else in Illinois, it becomes a political brawl.

ONE THAT COULD, quite possibly, become as nasty and ugly as the recently-completed Clinton/Trump brawl became.

 

DRURY: Not likely to beat the Speaker

An Illinois version – Rauner, or whomever the Democrats wind up nominating for governor who the party will try to turn into a Madigan lackey.

There actually is a St. Louis Metro East-area legislator named Scott Drury, D-Highwood, who is trying to talk himself up as an alternate choice to Madigan for House speaker. Although I’m skeptical that any significant number (or any, actually) of Democrats would defect from Madigan to back him.

 

RAUNER: He needs a foe if  he's to win in '18

One thing I remember being told by Democratic legislators back in my day of covering the General Assembly is that Madigan usually doesn’t order his caucus on how to vote.

EXCEPT FOR WHEN it comes to their vote for House speaker. In exchange for his financial and staffing support in getting them elected to their legislative seats, they must agree to back him as their leader.

Anybody who dared take his money THEN vote against him for speaker would find themselves in a bigger hole than did soon-to-be former state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, who couldn’t even win his primary re-election bid this year.

There’s also the comments made this week by state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, that he’d be willing to consider term limits for the House speaker’s post IF it meant that government officials could finally move forward on approving budgets for state government – rather than the year-and-a-half of nothingness we have experienced.

Republican spokesman Steven Yaffe said Friday, “it’s encouraging to see Democrats break away from Mike Madigan’s irrational opposition to any form of term limits and his unwillingness to compromise.”

WHO WOULD YAFFE be able to issue such statements against if Madigan wasn’t present. Particularly when he adds, “Democrats and Republicans alike should work together to pass bipartisan reforms that the people of Illinois are demanding.”

 

TRUMP: Who says 'like' is needed?

It sounds nice, but anybody with sense realizes is nonsense – what Rauner wants a Legislature that will reaffirm his own partisan goals; as in Democrats who will shut up and keep their objections to themselves and do what they’re told!

Which was pretty much the attitude in place during 1995-96 when Madigan was reduced to the role of minority leader and the Republican legislative majority that couldn’t sustain itself went out of its way to demean urban interests in this state.

I don’t doubt the people of central and Southern Illinois would be pleased. But election trends (look at the Democratic gains in Illinois in what otherwise was a dismal Dem election cycle of ’16) show that if this truly becomes a Madigan vs. Rauner, Who Do You Hate the Most-type of election, the governor could find himself on the short end – regardless of his personal wealth and all the votes he thinks it will buy!

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Will political retribution be swift and merciless? Or long and drawn-out!

It wasn’t a surprise that Democrats in the Illinois House of Representatives failed to override the veto by Gov. Bruce Rauner – they have a veto-proof majority when EVERYBODY shows up and votes in unison.

DRURY: Dem with nerve to vote 'no'

But the absence of state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, when the Illinois House met on Wednesday literally left them short.

SO WHY WOULD Democrats and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, even bother with a vote?

There was a Friday deadline for action. But the vote is more about putting people on the record – legislators were forced to take a stand “aye” or “nea” with some wimpier-types deciding to vote “present” instead.

Democrats who want to continue to have the financial support of Madigan and the Illinois Democratic Party’s electoral apparatus had to vote for an override, while Republicans who want to have a chance at getting campaign cash from Rauner knew better than to vote against it.

The bill in question was a measure that would allow for labor disputes involving state government employees to be resolved by an arbitrator. Rauner hates that idea because he claims those arbitrators are not elected officials themselves.

HE’S RIGHT. THEY’RE not. They are experts in labor law who by not being beholden to electoral interests are capable of putting the issues of any particular labor dispute into their proper legal context.

FRANKS: A usual Madigan thorn

Which might not be something that Rauner would want because one of his priorities is undermining the authority of labor unions within state government. To the point where Rauner made it known prior to the vote that he was watching the votes of eight non-Chicago Democrats to see if they would stick with Madigan (five of them did, so now they’ll get GOP abuse).

Anyway, 68 legislators wound up voting “yea” – three short of the 71 needed to override Rauner’s objections. Dunkin, in his absence, was one of three Dems who didn’t back Madigan, as were Jack Franks, D-Marengo, and Scott Drury, D-Highwood.


Springfield-based legislators Poe ...

Franks voted “present” (he’s always a thorn  in Madigan's heel; it’s a wonder at times he doesn’t just become a Republican), while Drury actually had the nerve to vote “no.” He told reporter-types at the Statehouse he objects to the fact that the measure would prevent state workers from being able to go on strike – a right he called “sacrosanct.”

WHILE THE TWO representatives from Springfield – Tim Butler and Raymond Poe – both were the Republicans who didn’t back Rauner by voting “present.” Although that was more of a stance than that of state Rep. Terri Bryant of Murphysboro in Southern Illinois.


... and Butler didn't back Rauner

The Capitol Fax newsletter reported that she was in the House chambers at the time of the vote, but somehow didn’t hit the proper button that would have cast a stance.

Bryant herself is a former state employee and member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, while Butler and Poe both have many, many members of that union who live in their district.

Voting for a measure that would be perceived as anti-union could wind up harming them when they have to seek re-election in the future. Not even Rauner’s campaign contributions might not be enough to help them prevail against a well-funded Democrat – which is something that Madigan might be able to find.

THEN AGAIN, WHAT will happen to the Democrats who didn’t back Madigan? The speaker himself refused to say this week that Dunkin was on his private “list” of persona non grata because he didn’t show up (Dunkin’s Facebook page had pictures of him in New York City).

DUNKIN: The 'no-show'

Although it was interesting to hear the boasts that if Dunkin had shown up, he could have twisted the arms of everybody in his caucus and got the 71 votes! From anybody but Madigan, I wouldn’t believe it. From “Mr. Speaker,” anything is possible.

So this issue moves forward, sort of. Because the end result is that the attempt by Democrats to claim they were making a concession to Rauner’s union opposition (the bill would have prevented strikes in the future) goes nowhere.

Which means nothing changes. Except that now, Madigan and Rauner can start punishing those people who wouldn't align with their view. Which means that we, the public, wind up losing!

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