As
I recall, the story is of a murder that took place in a boardinghouse, and the
police are present interviewing everyone who happened to be in the building at
the time.
IT
STARTED OUT with the account of a long-time resident who talked of how the love
of his life had been brutally murdered. But later accounts revealed that the
deceased woman barely knew the man – and was far from being his lover.
The
man wound up being cleared of the crime, but in a way that made him seem cheap
and petty and far from the romantic he described himself to be.
I
couldn’t help but sense the same about Bruce Rauner, the Republican running for
Illinois governor in the Nov. 4 elections. He’s the man who seems to want us to
think that African-American voters just love him. Or at least that they
absolutely despise Gov. Pat Quinn so much that they’ll vote for him 13 days
from now.
Rauner
is the guy who recycled the old news footage of former Mayor Harold Washington
explaining why he fired Quinn from a post with the city revenue department some
three decades ago.
NOW,
HE’S GOING on and on talking about how he plans to make Stephanie Neely a
significant part of his administration – should he happen to prevail in the
upcoming state government elections.
He
threw that barb in against Quinn during the Monday night debate sponsored by
the League of Women Voters, along with an allegation that Quinn snubbed
African-American voters when he passed on Neely for lieutenant governor and
chose one-time Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas instead.
Excuse
the chuckle I had to suppress Tuesday when I saw the Chicago Tribune report
that Neely says she barely knows Rauner, and certainly hasn’t been offered any
kind of job or appointed position within state government.
Should
we start calling Neely “Rosaura?”
WHAT
GAVE THIS particular tale some sense of truthfulness is the stories that have
appeared in recent days about how Neely is resigning her elected office as of
the end of November. She wants to take a position in the private sector, or so
she says.
It’s
not likely that Neely would be able to afford the pay cut she would have to
take to go back into government at the state level. Unless Rauner thinks
everyone in government ought to be independently wealthy enough to afford to
comply with the promise he has made for himself – that he won’t take a state
salary or pension benefits.
He’s
not likely to be able to claim Neely as a trophy to gain votes from the African-American
segment of the electorate. Just as I don’t think his use of old quotes from
Harold Washington are going to mean much.
Way
too many adult voters now weren’t alive back in those Council Wars days, or
they weren’t paying much attention to what was happening at City Hall.
NOW
I DON’T doubt there are some black people who will vote for Rauner (actually,
against Quinn). There’s always a few.
I
have spoken with a few African-American Republican-types who contend there is
some anger among black people that the whole gay marriage issue was pursued in
Illinois by Democrats, and that black legislators wound up being forced to go
along with the party rather than the views of their local pastors who were
opposed to the idea.
But
considering that even Rauner during Monday night’s debate was forced to admit
there’s nothing that seriously can be done to repeal marriage for gay couples
in Illinois, are those few voters really going to be enough to bolster Bruce’s
vote totals?
The
end result is either going to be that Rauner gets elected with
homophobic-leaning votes (although he’ll never admit it), or that he’s going to
wind up being like the boardinghouse resident who was forced to admit his “love”
wasn’t legitimate.
-30-
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