Playing the partisan game by accusing opponent of being politically partisan

Illinois state Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, let it be known he’s not running for re-election come 2016. He’s going to finish out his term in the state Senate, but he’s bringing an end to his legislative career.



SULLIVAN: GOP already eyeing his seat

Which isn’t of much interest to Chicago-area political geeks, unless you think of his hometown as being near the city of Quincy – which once had a Chicago Cubs minor league baseball affiliate. I’m sure the locals will find themselves another person to represent their needs in the Illinois Senate.

BUT HIS ANTICIPATED departure brought about a reaction from the Illinois Republican Party that ought to be of interest to political observers across the state.

For it seems that the party and Gov. Bruce Rauner are determined to keep pushing for their ideological desires over the wishes of the people of Illinois by trying to play one of the old regional favorites – Chicago versus the rest of the state.

 

Just as Rauner has been issuing many statements pointing out that Democrats from parts of Illinois outside of the Chicago area are too supportive of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, the political party put the spin on things Friday that Sullivan is running scared because he is a Democrat and a Madigan-backer on several issues.

“Sullivan’s announcement is an early sign that the Democrats controlled by Mike Madigan are afraid of answering to voters after their repeated failure in Springfield,” the party wrote.

EVEN THOUGH THE fact is that Sullivan has represented a Republican-leaning legislative district since 2002, yet manages to get elected over and over even though he has the “D” following his name. He must be doing something right that appeals to the people of that western Illinois city on the Mississippi River.

VRDOLYAK: Became a 'nobody' w/ GOP

 

Or is it just that Rauner and the Republicans want someone whose blind political faith will be to the GOP, rather than the D?

What amuses me about this particular tactic is that it is so old. So much for the idea that Rauner represents a “turnaround,” a shake-up of the old way of doing things on the political scene.

It reminded me of the old (sort of) days of the late 1980s and early 1990s when Republican organizations used to routinely issue statements any time someone who had been connected to Democrats shifted to the Republican Party. They used to have a running count that pushed into the thousands (nationally). It was supposed to create the impression that anyone of sense was a part of the Party of Reagan.

OF COURSE, IF you read beyond the rhetoric, you’d see how silly this became.

PUCINSKI: Became a judge after returning to Dems

There may have been some Southern legislators who permanently shifted their political party allegiance (usually for racial hang-ups they refused to give up), but locally so few of those transitions lasted.

Edward R. Vrdolyak may have been the alderman and Cook County Democratic Chair who became a Republican and never went back. But it can also be argued that his political shift was the exact point in which he became practically irrelevant!

More typical were people like Aurelia Pucinski, the Illinois appellate judge who for a time went Republican, but then decided that being Democrat was the way to get elected to office in Cook County.

THIS IDEA OF Democrats being damaged goods just comes across as ridiculous. If anything, the Republicans run the risk of damaging themselves by coming across as absurd if they keep up the nonsense rhetoric.

I realize the purpose of a political organization is to enable its candidates to have the best chance of actually winning election. I don’t expect the Illinois Republican Party to “play nice” with Madigan – whom I’m sure will fight back with “great vengeance and furious anger” (remember actor Samuel L. Jackson’s “Jules” character from “Pulp Fiction”?).

RAUNER: Becoming the next Bill Brady?

 

But this attempt to gain victory by putting Chicago at the weak end of the Illinois “urban vs. rural” split has so much potential to backfire. For Rauner won his electoral bid last year by managing to get a share of the Chicago vote to combine with Republican voters in the rest of Illinois.

Becoming the blatantly anti-Chicago candidate could get the local electorate so worked up that they do whatever it is Rauner dislikes -- just like in 2010 when William Brady’s Republican gubernatorial bid went down to defeat because his rural Illinois strategy so blatantly offended Chicago interests.

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Does it mean much that one-time Channel 2 news anchor Holt now the big guy at NBC's prime newscast?

I kind of got a kick out of the way I learned the latest in the Brian Williams/NBC News saga that he is no longer the face of the evening newscast and has been permanently replaced by interim news anchor Lester Holt.

HOLT: From BBM to natl. newscast head

I woke up Thursday morning and started the day with a few minutes of Robin Meade at CNN’s Headline News channel, where the one-time anchor of WMAQ-TV’s morning news segments told us all of how Williams was “demoted” to MSNBC and how Holt, the former WBBM-TV news anchor, now has the top broadcast position at his television network.

IT SOMETIMES SEEMS like one can’t get away from Chicago no matter how much they may try.

But back to Holt, who hasn’t worked in Chicago television for 15 years. But he did leave a memorable presence on the CBS station back when he worked in Chicago – helping to keep the channel’s news presence alive in those years AFTER Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson completed their domination of the Chicago news scene.

He even left his image on our city proper.

I found it amusing when I had to do a day of jury duty back in February that the Cook County Sheriff’s police continue to use a decades-old video featuring Holt, as he explained to us exactly what a jury is and what would be expected of us if – by chance – we were picked to be on a jury and asked to render a verdict on some poor schlub who theoretically is among our peers in society.

THAT VIDEO LOOKED like it had seen better days; having been played over and over and over again throughout the years since Holt had left Chicago – even though the basic message hasn’t changed one bit.

WILLIAMS: Was he really demoted?

But now, Holt has moved up to the top of the broadcast news scene – being in charge of what is supposedly the top priority newscast that NBC puts on each night.

He has the same job title that David Brinkley, John Chancellor (himself a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter-type person) and Tom Brokaw once held.

Yet I don’t know that anyone views Holt’s job as being anywhere as prominent as the role those men once held.

THE FACT IS that fewer people tune in to a scheduled newscast to learn news – preferring the notion of being able to tune to a news channel for 20 minutes or so at a time to get a jolt of information about what is happening in society then tuning in to whatever entertainment program it is they’d really rather watch. Just think of all the odd-hour newscasts our local television stations have created for those who can’t wait until 6 p.m.

MEADE: Is she now more prominent than Holt?

It may be that people seriously interested in news are still turning to the newspapers with the declining circulations – which could show that fewer people are seriously interested in “the news.”

So what should we think of this latest move – brought about by the fact that corporate officials felt the need to demote Williams without actually firing him. That would have brought too much shame to the network.

I’m not going to get too worked up over what Williams is alleged to have done – the whole account of whether he exaggerated his experiences while reporting in Iraqi war zones. It is proof that the memory is flawed.

I ALWAYS GET concerned anytime I have to write copy about some past event based off my own memory of it, rather than being able to look through the files of notes and old clippings I have accumulated during the past three decades. Invariably, some of the details are off. (Insert premature senility gag here).

So Williams is no longer on the network proper, but he’s now a reporter-type for MSNBC, the cable channel – which in some circles may actually be regarded as a promotion of sorts. A more prominent spot that gets watched by some, rather than an evening newscast whose timing isn’t convenient for people who want a fact or two right now!

Holt from the old days lives on in Cook County jury rooms

Holt winds up getting the allegedly prominent post when it no longer means as much as it used to.

And in Chicago and suburban Cook County, at least, some people are bound to stumble across the NBC Nightly News in coming weeks and say to themselves, “That’s the guy from the jury duty video. What a mustache he used to have!”

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Will parade route alteration be a blessing in disguise for Hawks fans?

We’re likely to get more crummy weather on Thursday, which is what provoked city officials into altering the official celebration of the Chicago Blackhawks’ winning of a Stanley Cup championship – the team’s third in six years and only their sixth in their 89 years of existence.

Yours for only $105.29!!!

The fact that the celebration is now confined to the roughly 60,000 people who can fit into Soldier Field rather than the 2 million or so who could fit into Grant Park and turn it into a muddy mess could leave many millions miffed at their inability to be a part of the celebration.

THAT IS WHAT caused city officials to decide to have a parade from the West Side leading to Michigan Avenue, before it then heads to the Near South Side and the Park District-owned stadium that the Chicago Bears treat as their own.

Specifically, the parade will start at Washington Street and Racine Avenue – about 10 blocks further west than originally intended.

It is meant to create more space for people to line up along a parade route and feel like they’re a part of the happenings because they’re not going to be able to get the “free” tickets to Soldier Field that are now being scalped for several hundred dollars apiece.

I actually wish it could have been extended further. Literally to that “Madhouse on Madison” we call the United Center, where the Blackhawks call home.

IT COULD HAVE created more of a feeling that the team is a part of Chicago, rather than just for people who can afford the pricey tickets (several hundred dollars apiece if you don’t want to sit in the upper reaches of the arena) to actually go to a game.

If anything, it would be similar to the celebration the Chicago White Sox had back in 2005 when they finally won a World Series title for the first time in 88 years.

That parade started at U.S. Cellular Field, passed through several South Side neighborhoods, then wound up downtown for the big rally.
 

RAUNER: It's about the Hawks, not the guv

As much as some people might want to think of the downtown conclusion as the big event, I most remember the sight of those open-air buses passing through Chinatown.

THE COMBINATION OF the Sox and the aura of the neighborhoods truly made for a unique celebration – certainly more memorable than the sight of drunken revelers screaming like banshees every time a Blackhawks player says something insipid (which, let’s be honest, is about 98 percent of any sports-related celebration).

Could we get something similar as the fans line up along Washington Street, Des Plaines Avenue and Monroe Street to cheer on their favorite Blackhawks?

Could that be more memorable than anything that winds up happening inside Soldier Field, and that most of us will wind up watching on television screens that officials plan to set up outside of the stadium.

So that we can pretend we were part of the festivities! Although let's hope that Gov. Bruce Rauner, who says he plans to attend, doesn't try to draw too much attention to himself -- or else he'll get such a negative reaction from fans who want nothing but Hawks that it will make the recent event in suburban Oak Forest where organized labor activists gave da Guv the middle finger seem downright pleasant by comparison.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU think about it, is watching the celebration on television all that fake? Most of us have probably never been to a hockey game. The Stanley Cup itself was an event we watched on television.

We matter more as television ratings points (about half of the Chicago television market was tuned to Game Six on Monday) than as attendance figures.

In fact, sports itself is something we view on monitors. I have known some people who consider themselves hard-core fans who admit they rarely, if ever, go to a game.

But Thursday could be an experience for the hard-core fan, unless the rainfall winds up being so intense that it causes an outbreak of illness come Friday from people who didn’t have enough sense to “listen to your mother” and wear a raincoat!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Many people are getting their giggles from the Korea Times headline that proclaims Chicago Bears win Stanley Cup. Did da Bears really start playing hockey at such an elite level as to win its championship? Or is there someone illiterate enough in U.S. sports culture to not know a football team from a hockey team? Personally, I wonder if it would make sense if it were known as the Staley Cup. Then we could claim the Bears won a trophy named for A.E. Staley – the Decatur, Ill., company that founded the team

Is Rauner the perpetual candidate running to be the ‘ideologue’ governor?

RAUNER: Advertising like a candidate

Bruce Rauner is resorting to his campaign mode; using his personal wealth (and that of other corporate types who want a state government that will put their interests ahead of those of the public) to air television spots meant to trash Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and other Dems.

It seems Rauner thinks he can get the whole state so worked up against his political opposition that he will be able to impose his will on the public without having to compromise.

EVEN THOUGH COMPROMISE is inherently what democracy is all about, and that with a General Assembly with a veto-proof Democratic majority it is only natural that the governor should have to make concessions to his ideological desires in order to keep state government operating.

The sooner the governor realizes that, the better off Illinois will be.

Instead, we’re getting television spots like its campaign time. It makes me think the entire next four years is going to be like an election cycle.

All the mud that can be slung at everyone that dares to speak out against Rauner and have a difference of opinion.

WHICH IS WHY I was intrigued by the “Chicago Tonight” program Monday night on WTTW-TV. Illinois Senate President John Cullerton was interviewed, and he said that when he has had talks with Rauner, they have always been civil.

Rauner doesn’t go around saying much of anything nasty directly to Madigan or himself. In fact, Rauner in person comes across as someone who is rational and capable of compromise.

So does that mean we should disregard the trash talk we’re going to hear while watching our television sets for the next week?
 

MADIGAN: How will he fight back?

Should we think this is nothing that should be taken literal? In fact, is merely a political ploy to try to get away with conceding as little ground as is possible?

THAT MAY BE true. Although I think it says something about the Rauner character that he would feel the need to resort to such a tactic to begin with.

“All they want is higher taxes – again,” is what Rauner says about Democrats on television. Even though what it is that Madigan acknowledges is that government has obligations that must be met, and that claiming not to have the money is unacceptable.

As for whether the various anti-labor measures meant to undermine the authority of unions are proper, I’d argue it is really a separate issue. Whether or not you agree that such actions are possible, it is reckless to insist on getting it as part of the budget talks.

It really is an issue best put off to next year or any other time during what is left of Rauner’s gubernatorial term.

ONE PART OF this new advertising strategy does seem odd – the fact that the television spots are focusing on the Chicago media market.

Admittedly, that market does cover the part of the state where two-thirds of Illinoisans live. Yet it also is the part that has shown the most reluctance to listen to the Rauner rhetoric.

Most of the municipalities that were willing to back the symbolic resolutions that Rauner wanted passed to express support for his ideological agenda were isolated communities in rural Illinois. Perhaps television spots focusing on that part of Illinois would be more effective in stirring up so much outrage against Madigan.

Instead, they’re likely to be money spent on Chicago-area people who will be so offended by the message that it will build up support for Madigan and Dems. It’s not like the tactic worked in 2010 when Republicans tried to turn the entire statewide election into a referendum on Madigan!

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15 days and counting down until the state financial (and labor) mess begins

We’ve come up with the absolute worse time for our state political officials to engage in a hissy fit and be incapable of reaching agreement on the measures that will define the state’s business in upcoming years.

Because not only does the state have to come up with a budget by June 30 for the fiscal year that begins July 1, they also have to negotiate a contract with the major labor union that represents the bulk of state government workers.

YOU CAN’T REALLY put together a budget that makes any sense if you don’t know what the terms are that your workforce will have to comply with.

It also complicates things when we have a governor whose primary agenda is to undermine the labor unions and the influence they play upon state government operations.

There are those who are convinced Rauner will be the ultimate holdout and refuse to do anything that would constitute serious negotiations toward a new contract. They think he’d like to see state workers go on strike so he could justify whatever hard-core opposition actions he fantasizes about.

In my mind (and those of a lot of other government observers), Rauner is anxious to do his Ronald Reagan impersonation – as in when he fired all the air traffic controllers rather than try to work with them to put together a sensible contract that would have benefitted all sides.

IN THAT CONTEXT, it was significant that a Rauner aide told the Associated Press that the governor, “is not going to lock out our employees.”

With American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees officials saying they have no intention of calling for a strike come July 1 (when the current contract will expire), that would mean state workers would continue on the job without a contract.

RAUNER: He wants to win more than govern

The tensions would increase, as we’d literally go day-by-day wondering if some sudden outburst will cause a shutdown of the work done by our state government agencies.

Of course, there are some people who are convinced Rauner himself will give those tensions a jolt. That he’d be the one who would make the workers so uncomfortable that they’d feel they had no choice but to walk off the job and start up picket lines outside the Thompson Center, the Statehouse in Springfield and many other state government buildings.

IT WAS IN that context that the General Assembly earlier this year approved a bill that prohibits state government employees from going on strike or being locked out of their jobs.
 

REAGAN: Rauner's role model?

The latter concern was the Legislature’s motivation for passing such a law – they probably believe the governor is dreaming of a lockout and his chance to impersonate Reagan!

None of this would be necessary if we had state officials who were willing to work together to try to reach a solution to the problems that confront government.

Instead, we have officials who are interested in making sure they come out of the “Battle of Springpatch – 2015” with a political victory; a fight that the public will lose no matter how it turns out.

I’LL BE HONEST. I lean toward the Legislature’s leadership on this battle because I have never been convinced that the anti-labor movement is in any way beneficial to the public.

It is meant to benefit the profit margins of corporate America, and those interests often can benefit at the expense of, “We, the people.” Whose concerns are the last thing that most companies care about!

But the purpose of legislators and the governor are to work together on behalf of those who elect them. The public could care less who gets the “brownie points” for winning the political fight, so long as government still provides the services we expect of it.

As for those individuals who want to believe government should get out of the business of providing those services, that’s a completely different ideological battle – and one that should not be allowed to interfere with the compilation of a budget for fiscal 2016.

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EXTRA: We’re in a nowhere land when it comes to Chicago sports scene

The Chicago Blackhawks beat Tampa Bay 2-0 on Monday, giving them their third Stanley Cup championship in the past six seasons.

The goal that clinched victory

It has put the Blackhawks in a position where the team of this decade has the potential to become a historically-great hockey team, along with one of the best Chicago sports franchises of all time.

BECAUSE LET’S BE honest. Winning teams is not what Chicago sports is all about. Somebody who can only back a winner would be ever so frustrated if they were forced to root for the professional franchises that come from the Second City.

If anything, the fact about the Blackhawks that makes them a prototypical image for our city isn’t that they won their third Stanley Cup championship in recent years, but that Monday’s victory was the sixth Stanley Cup championship they EVER have won.

Two of them came back in the 1930s, and the third was in 1961.

Which means so many decades of hockey fans are used to coming up short year after year after year.

THE IDEA OF a perennial winner on the ice is something we ought to savor while it lasts. Because none of our teams has that New York Yankees-like aura where it is expected that when the team gets old, they will figure out a way to rebuild.

Our teams never get to that level, and are filled with countless players who never managed to live up to their potential.

He gave the Hawks the lead

Perhaps it is because I came of age in the 1970s, when the baseball scene was year after year of seeing which baseball team would stink the joint out worse than the other and where the Chicago Bears would think it a completely successful, potentially even historic, season, if they made it to the first round of the playoffs before getting knocked out of contention.

I still remember that very scenario from 1977 and the way Bears fans got all worked up at the thought of even being in a playoff game.

NOW I KNOW the Bears went on to win that Super Bowl following the 1985 season. Although the fact that quality Bears teams were unable to follow up with another championship is more the norm.

A memorable moment a decade later

Just as the Chicago White Sox are still flying that lone 2005 World Series title banner because they didn’t win another.

But which looks downright outstanding considering how the Chicago Cubs haven’t even accomplished that much!

I’m not a big hockey fan (baseball and soccer in the form of equipo Mexico, along with college basketball of the Illinois Wesleyan Titans of my alma mater are my rooting interests). But I realize how unique it is for one of Chicago’s teams to come up with a “three titles in six years” streak.

IT CERTAINLY SHOWS how incredibly off-the-wall it was for the Chicago Bulls to win two streaks of three straight NBA titles during the 1990s. A taste of Yankee-esque attitude for the city still remembered for having one of its teams getting caught throwing a World Series (even if eight ballplayers were eventually acquitted in court).

The fact that the Bulls have won nothing since, and in some seasons have become such a disgrace to the local sports scene, is more in line with the character of the Chicago sports scene.

Still waiting 3 decades later for another Super Bowl title

So it is with some sense of joy that we should perceive the Blackhawks’ victory (and think that those killjoys from Nashville, Tenn.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla., all tried to take down da Hawks and turn them into some sort of bully in need of a beating).

Because it’s just a matter of time not all that far off in the future that the Blackhawks will be back to mediocrity and “2014-15” will be just another banner hanging from the rafters at the United Center that fans manage to ignore while sitting in costly seats and guzzling down overpriced concessions.

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I got my Topinka dish; and I didn’t even have to go to the estate sale

A Topinka item with no purpose? How appropo!

During my more than two decades of being a political reporter-type person, I have accumulated some pieces of memorabilia ranging from a pot holder depicting the face of one-time Illinois gubernatorial candidate John Schmidt to a ball cap of Bill Bradley – the one-time New Jersey senator.

Yet the item that amuses me the most is a glass dish with lid that I have kept on whatever desk I have worked at since back when I was a Statehouse reporter-type person in Springfield.

THE DISH WOULD be ordinary glass, not even tinted any particular color. But it has embossed on its lid the Illinois State Seal and the name of Judy Baar Topinka – who back then was the state treasurer.

I remember Topinka herself giving me the dish, while also concocting a tale about the many different uses one could put the dish to. Which makes me suspect it’s really just a less-than-tacky little trinket that serves no real purpose.

I also recall the reason she felt compelled to give me the dish was that one of her aides saw all the political junk I had accumulated, and he was offended that Topinka’s persona was NOT represented amongst the mess.

Including Judy in the mess was something he thought she would appreciate.

ALL OF THIS popped into my mind when I learned how Topinka’s family held an estatesale this past weekend; allowing people into her cluttered home in suburban Riverside to give them a chance to find themselves a great bargain on some item they could use for themselves.

Considering that I remember Topinka herself occasionally talking of how she’d shop at second-hand stores and at estate sales, I suspect she’d find it totally appropriate that her possessions were disposed of in such a manner.

Just a few of the items for sale this weekend

I didn’t make it out to Riverside – heck, I already have my Topinka-related possession (which for all I know will wind up at an estate sale hopefully to be held decades from now once I pass on). Although I saw the description on estatesales.net and the photographs of the merchandise that make it clear a lifetime’s worth of possessions were being unloaded.

It looks like the ultimate garage sale was held Thursday through Saturday in Riverside. The perfect place for Topinka-type people to spend an afternoon rummaging for that item they absolutely had to own.

NOT THAT I would expect anything of significant value was for sale. For one thing, Topinka held an estate sale of some of her possessions back in 2007.

The listing back then said much political memorabilia (including autographed photographs of her with assorted politicos) was up for sale, with some of the proceeds given back to the Republican Party that she was a loyal member of for so long – even though she could also get along with Democrats.

Which make me think that our state would be so better off these days if we hadn’t lost Topinka back in December when she passed away just after Election Day but before she could begin serving the new four-year term as comptroller to which she had been re-elected.

Thinking of Topinka and her junk makes me wonder how she’d be reacting to the stalemate taking place these days between Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democratic leaders of the General Assembly in putting together a budget for the soon-to-be current fiscal year.

I HAVE NO doubt she’d be criticizing Mike Madigan and John Cullerton for their actions – she was a GOPer, after all. But I also have no doubt she would be appalled by the childlike tantrums being thrown by government officials of all political persuasions these days.

I don’t think she would have had that same press conference that current Comptroller Leslie Munger held to blame Madigan and Cullerton for the pending government shutdown (only 16 days ‘til July 1). She would have been trying to find that middle ground that would prevent a shutdown from being necessary.

And she’d probably be the one who – in private – would tell Rauner in rather blunt language what a knucklehead he’s behaving like and how quickly all of this could turn the people of Illinois against him if he lets his partisan desires to whack at the labor unions prevent state government from fulfilling its obligations to the people.

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