Electoral gamesmanship: It’s not just a matter of voting for the best candidate

I once covered a mayoral election cycle in the suburbs where we didn’t learn until the day before Election Day that the challenger was definitely off the ballot and that the unpopular incumbent truly was running unopposed for re-election.

RAILA: Back on the ballot, for now!

I mention that because it’s still six days away from Election Day, meaning there’s still time for electoral antics to occur with regards to the election being held for Cook County Assessor.

THAT’S THE ONE where incumbent Joe Berrios, most definitely an old-school politico of the Cook County mold, is trying to retain his post. But we don’t know exactly who he faces for opposition in Tuesday’s primary election.

Two people filed nominating petitions to get on the Democratic ballot to challenge him, and the one who has managed to get himself some airtime and political advertising is Fritz Kaegi – who’s been portraying himself as an honest guy businessman who wants to undo the ways of the political hack Berrios.

If it were a one-on-one political campaign, he might very well get enough voter support from all the people who are determined to view Berrios as venal in order to win the primary; which amounts to winning the election, since the Cook County Republican slate of candidates is weak and not likely to put up much of a challenge come the Nov. 6 general election.

But then, there’s Andrea Raila. She’s a tax appeal consultant. She has her own firm. She’s billing herself as one of the few women seeking a significant government post.

BERRIOS: Does Raila boost his chances of victory?

WHICH MEANS FOR those people who think Kaegi is too much of a political amateur to hold a countywide office but don’t want to vote for Berrios, there’s an alternative choice.

Yet Raila has been fighting for the right to even have her name on the ballot. Kaegi supporters say her nominating petitions were flawed and she didn’t qualify to even be a selection. Last month, she was removed from the ballot by a Cook County judge, who admitted ballots already had been printed with her name on them.

Which resulted in the situation I, and other Early Voting Center users, faced last week – I was handed a slip of paper before picking a touch-screen to vote with; informing me that if I voted for Andrea, I’d be spoiling my ballot.

It wouldn’t count.

KAEGI: A nobody after March 21, or a victor?

THAT IS, UNTIL Wednesday. When an Illinois appellate court overruled the circuit court. She’s back on the ballot, and anybody who cast votes for her instead of Berrios or Kaegi will now know that their votes will count, after all.

That is, unless another layer of courts manages to issue a ruling overturning the appeals court. This could get rushed through to the Supreme Court of Illinois. We may not know until Election Day whether Raila is a legitimate option for the post of Cook County assessor.

A post that usually doesn’t get much attention, but got actor Dan Ackroyd to recall his Elwood Blues character and take pot-shots at Berrios (while also endorsing Chris Kennedy for governor) in an Internet-only campaign ad. Now, it’s the focus of political chaos.

For what it’s worth, Raila has had to focus so much of her attention and money to a legal fight just to get her name on the ballot, it’s not likely she could actually win the primary.

SOME ARE CONVINCED she is a political front, of sorts, to steal votes away from a Kaegi campaign – thereby bolstering the chances that Berrios wins re-election.

Could she have been a credible candidate – the first Democratic woman to run for the post since the office was created in 1932 (that’s her self-important claim)? Perhaps. She might have been worth considering for a vote, since I’m not impressed with the Kaegi credentials. A political amateur, is what I fear.

Which means I was in line with many other Democratic Party establishment-types who wound up casting my ballot for Berrios. More of the same.

It would have been intriguing to consider a candidate like Raila; who turns to the late pundit Studs Terkel in saying, “You should be prime minister of taxes.”

  -30-

Quinn the most unpopular governor? Let’s not give him that much credit

It always amuses me whenever I see a poll saying that Gov. Pat Quinn’s approval ratings are dismal.

QUINN: Apathy, not disapproval

I don’t doubt that they are. But I also can’t help but snicker at such polls, including one published this week by Public Policy Polling that says Quinn is the “most unpopular governor” in the nation.

FOR IT JUST seems that some people don’t really get the political dynamic involved in Illinois, particularly with that of Quinn. We don’t hate the man. We really could care less about him personally, except for the conservative ideologue types who are still bitter that their preferences are so far out of the Illinois mainstream.

The fact is that there are four officials who are at the top of the political pyramid in this state – the mayor of Chicago, the two U.S. senators from Illinois and our state’s governor.

Yet when  it comes to the politically aware amongst Chicagoans, it is always clear that the governor is easily Number Four among them in priority. He’s the one we care the least about – and that is true regardless of which person actually holds the position.

So for me to think that there’s anything about Pat Quinn that makes him so despised? I really have to ask, “What makes you think he’s so special?”

FOR THE RECORD, the new poll I referred to says that Quinn only has the approval of 25 percent of Illinois residents who were surveyed – with another 64 percent of people saying they “disapprove.” The remainder, I presume, are too preoccupied with other things to care. Although you could argue that  even most of the “64 percent” are apathetic when it comes to state government.

Or maybe they think we’re asking about the appellate court judge Pat Quinn – whom I remember from his days a couple of decades ago when he was one of the top assistant state’s attorneys at the courthouse in suburban Markham.

The same poll also compares Quinn to various prospective political candidates (both of the “D” and “R” persuasion), and finds Quinn lacking.

Although I couldn’t help but notice that the number of “undecideds” is high for all the questions that pitted Quinn up against a GOPer. All of which means that the 2014 election cycle could well turn out like the 2010 version.

A CHICAGO-AREA MAJORITY of voters wound up casting ballots for the Democratic candidate in Quinn, rather than the Republican William Brady whose conservative rhetoric on so many issues wound up offending them.

Perhaps if he had piped down just a bit, we’d have “Gov. Brady” these days and Quinn would be off in political retirement.

Quinn won then because the opposition got people to actually pay attention to the race and decide it was important to them to defeat the Republican opposition who was trying to demonize the city’s image. It could easily happen again.

If anything, Quinn’s vulnerability is in the primary election – and only if someone decides they’re willing to risk a bloody partisan political fight amongst Democrats. Which is a long-shot, no matter what ego-stroking rhetoric they spew right about now (although a part of me has always wondered what Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is waiting for – she’s not a “kid pol” any longer).

ALTHOUGH THERE COULD be problems there. Most of the people who most vehemently whine and cry about Quinn are those who want something of a rural bent to our political scene (they see 96 counties versus six, rather than two-thirds of Illinois’ population living in the six urban counties).

Those people aren’t going to get all excited about the idea of the son and brother of a “Mayor Daley” deciding to run for Illinois governor – even though certain Chicago-based political geeks used to fantasize about what it would be like if we could have a Mayor Daley (as in Richard M.), a Gov. Daley (as in William) and a Cook County Board president (as in John) all at the same time.

That’s too much Daley for anyone to comprehend – and it’s not going to happen.

But so much of these polls are so early and there are so many factors that will kick in that ultimately will get the bulk of those Democratic partisans to cast their votes in their reliable manner.

THAT “64 PERCENT?”

It’s probably people who aren’t really concerned about Quinn one way or the other – combined with Republican partisans whose real objection is that the whole wide world doesn’t cast ballots in a knee-jerk partisan manner favorable to their political party.

  -30-