Where, oh where, will Harold go now; where, oh where, will she be?

Perhaps it’s evidence that I don’t know everything; I was amongst those who thought there was a chance that Republican partisans might be able to band together with enough votes for one statewide victory – that of Erika Harold to be Illinois attorney general.

HAROLD: She didn't even win her home county

Harold spewed her share of rhetoric about having one Republican constitutional officer to serve as a watchdog, of sorts, over all the Democrats who won all the other offices.

INSTEAD, HAROLD WENT down to defeat just like all her other colleagues. It seems that being of the same political party as Bruce Rauner and Donald Trump was just too much to overcome.

Which now puts her in the category of political people whom we can speculate on for their future.

The one-time Miss Illinois who represented our state, and won, at the 2003 Miss America Pageant, ultimately went on to law school and has often expressed political aspirations of her own. Yet she’s never been successful in actually winning electoral office.

Election Day 2018 is the closest she ever came to victory – taking 43 percent of the vote to 54 percent for Kwame Raoul; the state senator from Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood who now will serve as state government’s legal counsel.

Lar Daly used the flag imagery to tout his campaigns, ...

IS THIS DEFEAT enough to kill off the 38-year-old’s political aspirations? Will she run again? Will she be credible in future campaigns? Or is she destined to become the fringe nut, so to speak, of Illinois politics?

A perpetual name on the ballot, something along the lines of Lar “America First” Daly or Ray “Spanky the Clown” Wardingly. Perhaps Harold could play off her Miss America persona of two decades ago while campaigning for office and trying to spread the word on her personal issues of interest – while going down to defeat.

Not that I seriously expect to see a sash & tiara-wearing candidate in the future. That would be just a tad ridiculous.

… here's hoping Erika doesn't dig up this old Miss America costume

But it has me wondering if Harold is determined enough to keep running for office until she can find one that she wins!

HAROLD IS THE woman from Champaign, Ill., who has often talked of running for office – usually focusing her attention on a seat from Congress around her home area.

In the 2014 election cycle, she went so far as to file nominating petitions and get herself on the ballot. Only to lose the Republican primary to Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill. – who, by the way, was the representative who nearly lost Tuesday night to Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigan.

Then, she resurrected herself this year as an attorney general candidate; getting Bruce Rauner to kick in significant funding for her political operations and also use his political influence to dissuade any other Republican from thinking of running for the post.

Harold can count Rodney Davis and … 

Rauner liked the image that Harold brought to the Republican ticket – that of an African-American woman who didn’t come off as so dark that she’d scare all the rural white people across Illinois whom he was counting on for votes for himself.

THAT RACIAL ASPECT is always what hurt her chances of winning when she ran for central Illinois-based political posts. Insofar as considering a move to Chicago where race wouldn’t be considered a negative, that might not be realistic.

None other than Barack Obama himself in his earliest days in politics ran into opposition from local activists who didn’t like the idea that he wasn’t native-born South Side (remember he’s from Honolulu?) and that he was moving in to take a post away from “one of our own?”

… Kwame Raoul on her list of defeats

Harold would have the same problem. She’s a Republican because of her birthplace (Urbana, Ill.), but her political aspirations may be limited. Which is why this might well be her final (if not only) serious chance at winning electoral office.

Besides, there’s one other fact to consider – in Tuesday night’s vote tallies, she not only got whomped in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, she lost six downstate counties, including her own home of Champaign County. It’s hard to win an election when 51.07 percent of the votes in your home base go for the opposition.

  -30-

EXTRA: Illinois GOP strategy of “Dump Madigan!” seems to fail again

Illinois House Speaker/state Democratic Chairman Michael Madigan is the big winner of Election Night ’18 – and not just because he got re-elected to his Illinois House seat that is the base for all his political operations.

MADIGAN: Prevailed, big time!

Madigan, after all, was running unopposed for his legislative post representing the residents of Chicago who live in the area surrounding Midway Airport.

SO IT’S NOT like there was a chance he’d go off to defeat and political retirement following a career in Illinois government dating back to 1970 when he was one of many delegates who helped craft the current version of Illinois’ state Constitution.

But Madigan’s name has been dragged through the muck by just about every Republican running for just about every single office. The theme being that every Democrat is nothing more than a political hack who takes his (or her) marching orders from the almighty-and-powerful Illinois House speaker.

The leader in recent years of such strategy is soon-to-be former Gov. Bruce Rauner, who went through his campaign repeatedly blaming Madigan for everything that Rauner was unable to accomplish during his four years as governor.

His rhetoric often went so far over the top as to imply Madigan’s actions were criminal and that an indictment would be forthcoming, if only there were a sense of true justice in the world.

PRITZKER: $171.1 million spent for Springfield move

YET THE RAUNER defeat was so apparent that the governor made his concession call to Democrat J.B. Pritzker (who supposedly is Madigan’s hand-puppet and gay marriage spouse) less than an hour after the polls closed in Illinois. Some information sources didn’t even have preliminary vote tallies to report, yet the insider speculation was such that it wasn’t worth waiting in a sense of desperate hope that something would come up.

The man who was banking on the concept of a corrupt Madigan scaring voters away instead became a complete failure based off his strategy – which really is the same one that Republicans also tried using back in 2010 when Republican Bill Brady was defeated by Democrat Pat Quinn.

Who, by the way, told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday he was anxious to see Rauner be replaced as governor.

RAOUL: Illinois' attorney general-elect

But like I already wrote, other candidates tried tying their opponents to Madigan, with Republican attorney general hopeful Erika Harold going so far as to say she’d never take orders from the speaker – and implied she’d use the post to conduct the investigations against Madigan that Rauner always fantasized about having done.

YET WITH THE early vote tallies in, Democrat Kwame Raoul held a solid lead, taking majorities in five of the six counties that comprise the Chicago metropolitan area. Only McHenry County seemed to prefer Harold – the one-time Miss America who can now add this defeat to her list of failed political aspirations on her part.

Then again, McHenry is also the lone Chicago-area county that liked the idea of “President Donald Trump” back in the 2016 election cycle. While in Cook County proper, Raoul had some 73 percent of the overall vote early on.

It’s going to take a real mighty blow from downstate Illinois to overcome the solid 64/34 percent lead Raoul is holding across the state over Harold Tuesday night.

There’s also candidates such as incumbent Congress members Randy Hultgren and Peter Roskam, who were lagging behind early on to Democrats Lauren Underwood and Sean Casten respectively. And in the area around Champaign/Urbana, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan had a lead over Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill.

WHICH, IF THE Dems prevail in all, would add to the total tally of politicos who would serve as counterweights to the ideological nonsense spewed by Donald Trump.

HAROLD: Another defeat, will she try again?

Casten, in particular, faced a campaign strategy of being labeled as being a mere flip side of the same Madigan political coin. Instead, perhaps it seems many saw him as a potential ally to the man who stood up to the Rauner ideological tactics of the past four years and one who could stand up to anything absurd that Trump would try to do during the next two.

I’m not saying that the electorate of Illinois is all that enthralled by Mike Madigan. I’m aware of polls showing many people think he’s just another political hack. Even though he's now one with even more power -- since it seems his Illinois House majority is even larger now and can enable him to override gubernatorial vetoes single-handedly.

But perhaps one of the lessons we learn from Election ’18 is one that truly would benefit us all – candidates are most likely to prevail if they can sway people as to why we should vote for them. Not just why we should despise the opposition.

  -30-

Who’s the new AG? How will Raoul be remembered in Illinois history?

Is Kwame Raoul destined to become the 21^st Century’s version of George Sangmeister or Aurelia Pucinski?

RAOUL: Can he win Tuesday night?

Sangmeister and Pucinski were on the 1986 Democratic primary ballot for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, respectively, and both lost – with the common political speculation being that all those rural voters across Illinois didn’t identify with the German or Polish ethnic roots that the two had.

AS A RESULT, the Democrats nominated Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart respectively – with the rural types thinking those names were so-much-more “American” sounding. Even though both were actually ideologically aligned with right-winger Lyndon LaRouche.

Could we get a similar reaction come Tuesday to the campaign of Kwame Raoul for Illinois attorney general?

Raoul is a state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood who is the son of parents who came to this country from Haiti. Hyde Park is exactly the type of neighborhood that thinks such people are exotic and interesting and likely takes a certain amount of pride in having Kwame representing them in the Legislature for the past 14 years.

But Raoul is being challenged by the one-time Miss America, Erika Harold of Champaign, who has often expressed political ambitions but been unable to win anything. Usually because she has ran for Congress from central Illinois-based districts where the locals were more comfortable with white men representing them.

TRUMP: Could his mentality sway voters?

BUT NOW, HAROLD is running for something statewide. Also, she’s running a campaign that focuses heavily on the theme of her being the lone Republican to hold a political post – serving as sort of a partisan political balance to all the Democrats likely to be in power.

I have no doubt Raoul will take the Chicago vote overwhelmingly. In fact, that may well be enough for him to win the political post outright.

Hart and Fairchild (below), … 

But then again, it may not. Could enough rural Illinoisans who’d rather not have a so-called “foreigner” elected to office cast their votes for Harold? Could that be sufficient for her to win Tuesday’s election.

Could the 2002 Miss Illinois who went on to Atlantic City to win the pageant the following year be able to claim a similar story as Hart and Fairchild – who will forevermore be remembered in Illinois political history as the fluke victories. Ones whose real significance is that they screwed up the political campaign of ’86 for gubernatorial hopeful Adlai Stevenson III?

… will Raoul's monicker go alongside theirs?

IN THIS AGE of Trump that we’re now in, could the anti-immigrant sentiments that some people so clearly feel and base their political decisions off of become a factor?

Maybe even those people who will forevermore remain bitter that somebody named Barack Obama could ever be elected president will be motivated to turn out to vote against Kwame (who, by the way, was Obama’s replacement in the Illinois state Senate in 2004).

All of this is cheap, petty and makes next to no sense. But it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the electorate based their vote off of something totally stupid!

Could giving Illinois a former Miss America as the chief legal counsel for state government be the consolation prize that Republicans take for themselves to deal with the heavy losses that Bruce Rauner’s presence on the ballot is likely to inflict on the rest of the party’s ticket?

AS FOR RAOUL, he was amongst the Democrats using Barack Obama’s presence at the Sunday rally in Chicago to tout himself – moreso than J.B. Pritzker, whose gubernatorial campaign was the supposed reason for the political gathering.

HAROLD: A trivial image, but may be one many carry in their minds

As Raoul described things, “I’m a proud son of Haitian who did not come from a” expletive-deleted description used by Trump himself. “I am a birthright baby.”

Considering a recent New York Times-published poll saying (amongst other things) that 46 percent of people want Republicans to retain control of Congress and an equal 46 percent want Democrats to gain control of the House of Representatives, it would seem the partisan split isn’t anywhere near as intense as we get in Illinois.

Which could make Harold the ultimate Republican consolation prize coming from Tuesday night’s vote-counting activity. Sorry Kwame!

  -30-

Attorneys who prosecute for political reasons stink – no matter who does it!

There are those of a certain partisan political leaning eager to feed into a fantasy that a newly-elected state Attorney General Erika Harold would handle an investigation into the criminal behavior of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

MADIGAN: Ending AG term w/ Gov. investigation

Of course, much of what these ideologues want to say is “criminal” amounts to little more than the fact that Madigan, as a Democrat, disagrees with many of the policies they’d like to see the state impose on all of us.

SO PERHAPS THERE is a touch of appropo to the fact that soon-to-be former state Attorney General Lisa Madigan is doing her own investigation against the man – Gov. Bruce Rauner – who has been aggressive in spewing the rhetoric that “Speaker Mike” is a crook.

Specifically, Lisa Madigan wants to determine if the outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease that occurred at the Veterans Affairs facility in downstate Quincy in any way was worsened by neglect by the state that could constitute criminal behavior.

In short, is the man whose re-election desires are based on the notion that Mike Madigan is a crook really nothing more than a crook himself – one whose behavior resulted in aging military veterans in need of care becoming ill, or more than a dozen dying outright?

Or is all this rhetoric merely misuse of legal issues to try to punish one’s political opponents. Criminalizing politics – or at least the notion of being in an opposition party.

Ideologues would fight over whether Rauner … 

THAT MAY BE the scariest thought of all. Because it would put our society in the same league as many of the societies that we like to spew high-minded rhetoric about how superior we are to them.

To be honest, I don’t think Rauner has done anything blatantly illegal. Certainly nothing that ought to result in him spending the next few years following his possible Nov. 6 electoral defeat having to fight off criminal charges.

And while I don’t think that Lisa Madigan is somehow being a spiteful witch threatening to prosecute the man who keeps implying that her father is somehow worthy of criminal prosecution, you just know the conservative ideologues are going to want to view the issue in exactly such a manner.

… or Madigan is more of a 'crook'

If anything, Madigan’s actions are all the evidence needed as to why people who think that an “Attorney General Harold” ought to prosecute Speaker Mike are being downright ridiculous.

FOR THE PURPOSE of the state attorneys general is to serve as the lawyer advising state government on the limits of the law whenever they engage in their schemes on assorted issues.

In short, they’re there to defend state officials, not be the prosecutors. It really is the individual state’s attorneys across Illinois who ought to be taking on such criminal cases.

Which in this case means the state’s attorney for Adams County, Ill.; that Western Illinois place along the Mississippi River that would like to think it is still a significant port city – and not just the place where residents of the local veterans’ home died due to appalling circumstances.

Yet State’s Attorney Scott Farha has been quick to not only distance himself from any such action, he was even quicker to dismiss Lisa Madigan’s actions as being, “politically motivated.”

THAT MAY, OR may not be true. Yet it also creates circumstances where people can quickly conclude that Farha, as a Republican, is merely being protective of his political party counterparts – rather than trying to get to the truth of what happened in Quincy.

Did we believe Nixon when he said he was 'not a crook'

This has become a case where partisan politics is going to interfere with ever determining what occurred at that veterans’ home – and who was in any way responsible.

Trying to determine if Bruce Rauner was more of a crook than Mike Madigan was gets us tied up with side issues that most likely aren’t relevant to the case. They’re distractions.

Besides, those of us of a certain generation know that in politics, there’s only one man who deserves to be called a “crook” – that’s Richard M. Nixon. Although I’m wondering if President Donald J. Trump these days is giving him a run for the money for that label?

  -30-

Will we get equivalent of Trump's “lock her up” from Rauner about Madigan?

Is Gov. Rauner's re-election bid … 

Anybody with any degree of sense realizes that Gov. Bruce Rauner is full of it, so to speak, when he implies that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is engaged in criminal activities.

For if the governor really had the goods on Madigan, he’d be contacting the proper authorities in a position to do something; rather than wasting his venom on campaign tactics. He’d be pushing for something to happen prior to the Nov. 6 Election Day!

… going to try to treat Madigan … 

INSTEAD, WE’RE GETTING the rancid rhetoric as the campaign cycle heats up. We’re already getting tastes of it now, and it will continue to ramp up once we get past the Labor Day holiday.

For Rauner, who last week went on the attack during an interview with a radio station in Southern Illinois, engaged in similar trash talk during an appearance in the Chicago suburbs on Monday.

The “line” that gets all the attention?

“Clearly, he’s been doing unethical things. I hope he’s been doing something illegal, and I hope he gets prosecuted.” With Rauner speaking of the man who is approaching the half-century mark of service in the Illinois General Assembly.

… similar to all the 'lock her up' trash talk … 

THIS IS GOING to be the theme from here on through Election Day. Almost as though Rauner is trying to give us the political sequel to all the “Lock Her Up” trash talk and chants that the Donald Trump presidential campaign gave us in 2016.

To the point where, even though Trump quickly backed away from such talk following his election, there are still many of his backers whose only complaint about The Donald is that Hillary Clinton didn’t immediately face criminal indictment upon his election.

Rauner seems to want to get voters all riled up at the prospect of Madigan getting the traditional “Oxford education” (a stint at the federal correctional center in Oxford, Wis.) as a tactic to spur on voters and boost the turnout.

… Trump dished out to Hillary?

Perhaps it’s because Rauner has little to nothing in the way of accomplishments for himself that he thinks this is the only way he can win – particularly since Rauner’s record as governor includes several acts that have offended the ideologues he’d normally be counting on for support.

“PROSECUTE MADIGAN!” IS a phrase we’re likely to hear over and over again. And not just from Rauner himself about the House Speaker, who also doubles as the Illinois Democratic chairman.

For it is on Tuesday that Illinois attorney general candidate Erika Harold is coming out with her first statewide television campaign spot – one that highlights the notion of Madigan’s “corruption” (and even shows her standing out front of the offices used by Madigan’s law firm – the one that makes its money off tax law and allegedly getting its clients tax breaks that wind up costing the rest of the state more money).

Harold is running against Kwame Raoul, the state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood whom Harold labeled in her ad as a man whose top financial donor is Madigan himself. Of course, Madigan is a top donor for many legislative candidates – since Madigan is a legislative leader.

I also find it ironic that Harold would have the nerve to complain about Raoul’s “top donor” since her top donor is the governor himself. This very spot we’re going to be inundated with in coming days is likely only available because of that $1 million contribution to Harold that Rauner made mention of last week.

THE ONE HE’S making because he wants a state attorney general who will “prosecute” Madigan – even though Harold would not really have any such authority to do IF she actually wins.

MENDOZA: Had the nerve to win in '16

It’s probably just a matter of time before Illinois comptroller candidate Darlene Senger comes up with her own spots tying incumbent Comptroller Susana Mendoza to “corruption and “Madigan!!!”

Mendoza did, after all, have the nerve to defeat Leslie Munger for the position back when it was up for grabs in a 2016 special election, thereby knocking off Rauner's lone GOP ally. How dare she!?!

Which is why Rauner is all by his lonesome these days within the state government structure – surrounded by Democrats eager to Dump Bruce! and put an end to the notion that being a Democratic partisan is, in and of itself, a criminal act!

  -30-

$1 million for a prosecutor? Cheaper to just ‘drop a dime,’ call U.S. attorney

Gov. Bruce Rauner’s effort to buy political supporters for his dream of a second term in office is costing him some money; particularly a $1 million contribution to the Illinois attorney general campaign of Erika Harold.

RAUNER: Trying to 'buy' political allies

Which Rauner says is essential because Harold is necessary to “prosecute” Michael Madigan, the Illinois House speaker whom the governor has based an entire campaign strategy upon calling crooked and corrupt and the reason Illinois has problems to begin with.

OUST MADIGAN, RAUNER would have us think, and Illinois goes back to being the paradise it ought to be.

There’s just one problem with that line of logic.

It really seems that Rauner doesn’t fully comprehend exactly what it is the various officials of Illinois state government do. There’s no way that Harold – if she were to get elected as state attorney general – would be going into any court to file an indictment against Madigan. Or anybody else, for that matter.

The attorney general is the legal counsel FOR state government. Many municipal governments are able to get by with an attorney hired part-time, or perhaps a few full-time attorneys to handle the legal issues they encounter.

ILLINOIS GOVERNMENT IS a big-enough scene that it takes the whole crew that works for the Illinois attorney general’s office to defend it every time a law suit is filed against the state, or any time government officials need legal advice on how to conduct themselves without violating the law. Essentially, Illinois has its own law firm.

MADIGAN: Partisan actions, not criminal

And yes, it may sound odd that the General Assembly (a body by-and-large filled with licensed attorneys) would need legal counsel. Although when you consider the legislators are politicians at heart – and NOT legal experts – it makes sense.

So if anything, if Madigan in the future were to find himself in a predicament with a prosecutor somewhere, it most likely would be that the attorney general would be a part of the team defending him from legal prosecution.

Too many people seem to think the attorney general is some sort of super-prosecutor who oversees all in the criminal justice world. Instead of being more of a civil law expert (and in reality an aspiring politico with a law school degree who wishes to run for an even higher office someday).

HAROLD: What could she do, if she wins?

IN REALITY, IT is the various state’s attorneys scattered around Illinois’ 102 counties who have the authority to go about prosecuting state officials if they think they can prove their actions are harmful to the interests of the people in a criminal manner. If the attorney general really tried to usurp that authority, they’d be the first to complain.

More likely, it is the U.S. attorney’s office (mostly in Chicago, although there also are federal prosecutors in Springfield and Marion) that would be inclined to review state government activity and determine that federal laws are being violated.

While federal prosecutors in the central and Southern Illinois districts traditionally don’t get involved in taking on state government, the activities of the offices of state government located in Chicago certainly aren’t alien turf to the prosecutors based out of the Dirksen Federal Building.

Otto Kerner learned what federal prosecutors could do

Just who do they think it was that challenged (and beat) those “four Illinois governors” who wound up serving time in prison for their activities – along with many other state, Cook County and Chicago municipal officials throughout the years.

I HAVE NO doubt that if Madigan were doing something truly corrupt (and not the Rauner definition of corrupt which mostly is Madigan’s refusal to go along with all the anti-organized labor acts the governor desires in the name of “reform”), there’d be a prosecutor more than willing to make his name off pursuing the case.

THOMPSON: Made his rep on Otto

Similar to the way then-prosecutor James R. Thompson turned his post into four terms as Illinois governor through overseeing the prosecution of then-Gov. Otto Kerner.

So if Bruce Rauner is really making a special donation of $1 million to support Erika Harold’s Republican campaign for attorney general because he expects her to prosecute Madigan (as he’s saying publicly when appearing on radio stations in Southern Illinois), I’d say he’s being foolish, and wasteful of his money.

If he really knows of specific illegal activity, it would be much cheaper for him to follow that old cliché and “drop a dime” to call the U.S. attorney’s office. Otherwise, we can only assume Rauner has got nothin’ on Madigan – which may be the real reason many people won’t vote for Rauner’s re-election come Nov. 6.

  -30-

Illinois AG race about more than 'Obama clone' vs. 'lawyer Barbie'

By the time Kwame Raoul ...

There are times I wonder if people comprehend the purpose of the Illinois attorney general’s office.

For as I always comprehended it, the attorney general (for the past 16 years, it has been Lisa Madigan) has been the attorney for state government. Since our state is a large-scale operation, she has several assistants on her staff.

… and Erika Harold are through, … 

IT’S ALMOST LIKE she’s the head of a law firm whose sole client is Illinois state government. She’s there to defend the state every time someone within it screws up, while also making sure the rights our citizenry are not being violated every which way possible.

It amuses me every time I hear someone complain that the attorney general isn’t prosecuting someone, because it’s obvious to me they’re being swayed by some overbearing vision of what the post is.

Almost as though they think it’s the equivalent of the “state’s attorneys” that Illinois’ 102 counties all have. My guess is that if the attorney general ever tried to take on such tasks, there’d be a whole lot of griping from those local prosecutors about how she is grossly overstepping the bounds of her post.

All of this thought popped into my mind when reading a report recently (from Crain’s Chicago Business) about the state attorney general’s office and how its viewpoint is likely to be impacted by the elections to be held Nov. 6.

BECAUSE MADIGAN HAS made it clear she’s not staying in the post. The Democratic Party already has nominated a possible replacement (state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago), but there are some Republicans who think their nominee (Erika Harold) is the lone GOPer who has a chance to win something come Election Day.

… what will remains of Lisa Madigan's way?

The Crain’s report talks of all the lawsuits Illinois has filed, or supported, throughout the Age of Trump we’re now in that challenge the federal government on various issues.

With Raoul saying he is a “last line of defense” from a federal government that would be very eager to play partisan politics against Illinois. Meaning he’d intend to pursue all the lawsuits that come from the Madigan Era of the attorney general.

While Harold is much less committal. She’s not offering up much details, but some are reading into her words that she’d be willing to have her staff dismiss the lawsuits they’ve started against the federal government.

“I BELIEVE THE attorney general’s office should not be using their scarce resources to enter into lawsuits for purely political purposes,” she told Crain’s. “I would only sue the federal government if Illinois law has been implicated or the federal government has acted in violation of the Constitution.”

Which is a nice, text book answer that sounds like it came from a law school student trying to suck up to the professor to get a better grade.

For the reality is that way too much of the issues and the law are open to interpretation. One person’s serious cause on behalf of the public becomes an ideologue’s pet issue that they want to dump all over.

And could it be the intent of an “Attorney General Erika Harold” to back off of trying to rile up the federal government in hopes that it might get President Donald Trump to quit getting riled up against Illinois every time he has so little to do that he takes to spewing out political bile on his Twitter account.

Obama, Raoul share just a neighborhood

ALTHOUGH I DID find it interesting to read in the Crain’s report that Harold supports the state lawsuit brought about by Madigan that challenges the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold $6.5 million in federal funds for local law enforcement in Illinois as a response to the concept of “sanctuary cities.”

All of this means we’re going to have a decision to make come Election Day when we get to the portion of the ballot related to state attorney general.

Just how much of a pain in the behind do we want our state government’s legal adviser to be? And to what degree are partisan political issues things that wind up being a part of the public good?

Perhaps an image of Harold that needs to be retired

Definitely something we voters need to give more serious thought to than believing the attorney general’s race to be nothing more than between a Barack Obama clone and a former Miss America who used her prize money to put herself through law school!

  -30-

What should we think of Harold’s ‘shocking’ view on gay couple adoption

Surprise, surprise!

Erika Harold, the woman now seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for Illinois attorney general, may have once believed that gay couples were unfit to adopt children.

Would anyone have expected Harold to speak differently back then?

THE REASON I throw out the touch of sarcasm to the statement is that it doesn’t surprise me that someone who identifies herself with the Republican Party would have views on sexual orientation issues that might be considered a touch backward.

I certainly would be surprised if, some 20 years ago, a would-be Miss Illinois contestant would be spouting out talk publicly that could be considered sympathetic to the interests of gay people.

So when I read the report by WMAQ-TV about the recollections of people who were at the Drury Lane hotel in Oak Brook that Harold had less-than-progressive views on the issue, I wasn’t surprised.

I certainly didn’t find it “shocking” (as WMAQ did in the story’s headline). If anything, it would have been newsworthy if a credible Miss Illinois candidate had been willing to say something sympathetic about homosexuals, or adoption, or a combination of the two issues.

AS THINGS STAND, this has become the lone controversy to crop up in the Republican Party’s efforts to take back the state attorney general’s post from the Democrats, as four-term holder Lisa Madigan has decided to step down voluntarily when her term ends in January.

Harold, an attorney and Harvard Law School graduate, tries to present an image of herself as quite moderate and reasonable. To the point where there are some segments of the Republican Party who think she’s really not one of them.

But if all of this is true (for the record, Harold says she has no recollection of what she might have said some two decades ago), it would indicate clearly why a light-skinned black woman with a high education level would be so willing to identify herself as a Republican.

Although I also suspect she’s a Republican because, as a native of Urbana, that’s the local political party of significance in her part of Illinois. A central Illinois Democrat would be virtually irrelevant.

AS FOR WHAT it was Harold said, WMAQ-TV reported that back when she competed for Miss Illinois in 2000, she was asked a question (not as part of the public show, but backstage during interviews by pageant officials) about gay couples and adoption.

It was put to her whether it would be preferable to put a child with a loving gay couple, or with a heterosexual couple even if there were suspicions of child abuse.

Harold supposedly picked the latter, citing religious beliefs for not wanting to expose children to gay people. But as I wrote earlier, she now says she doesn’t remember any of this, and offers up general statements that imply her views have changed.

Which is good. The idea of someone aged 38 (as is Harold now) clinging to views from when she was 20 would be sad. For what it’s worth, this view didn’t help Harold win anything – she fell short in 2000, tried again in 2002 and won Miss Illinois, before going on to Atlantic City to win Miss America in 2003

ALTHOUGH THE ANSWER Harold is alleged to have given in 2000 certainly wouldn’t have been unexpected from a Republican-oriented person. Heck, it is still the attitude of many people who identify with the GOP.

Harold is taking a bit of a haughty attitude. Her official response is to say, “NBC Chicago has chosen to air an unverified story from anonymous sources 12 days before an election about an alleged event that supposedly occurred nearly two decades ago when Erika was 20 years old.” In short, lambast the reporter, rather than acknowledge the issue.

But a part of me wonders if this controversy may wind up gaining Harold a bit of political support – it would convince some people this one-time pageant contestant truly is one of them.

Considering that the few polls taken of this particular race show Harold with a very slight lead over opponent Gary Grasso – and about two-thirds of the electorate still undecided. It could help her win the primary; even if it would position her ideologically in such a way that she’d be likely to lose Nov. 6 to whichever of the eight Democrats now in the running manages to win the upcoming primary election.

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It’s that time of year again – having to hide from lies on my television set

One of the rules of electoral politics people ought to keep in mind this time of the year is that all would-be officials spin. It’s not lying, although they want you to believe that everybody else’s spin is a lie and they tell nothing but the absolute truth.

Newman has some establishment backers

It doesn’t matter which candidate you support or which political party you back. Everything is described through the mindset the candidate wants you to adopt – which is that they’re wonderful and the problems lie with everybody else.

I COULDN’T HELP but think that as I went through my e-mail Tuesday morning and noticed a pair of messages that included video snippets of campaign commercials that will air on television in coming weeks.

One of them is about how wonderful Erika Harold is, and how we all ought to be casting our ballot in the Republican primary so we can pick her to be Illinois’ attorney general.

While the other is about how disgusting Marie Newman is. She’s the woman seeking the Democratic nomination for the Illinois Third Congressional district, wishing to take away the position from Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., on the grounds that he’s not liberal enough to be a Chicago-area congressman.

But as this ad tells us, Newman is really someone who won’t look out for the interests of people who work at Midway Airport, who has no real liberal credentials and, in fact, once ran a restaurant that was infested with fruit flies.

THE ACTUAL NEWMAN campaign is the one that rants about Lipinski not being a “real” Democrat because, on many social issues (most prominently abortion), he doesn’t side with the party platform. In fact, Lipinski is one of those individuals who’d just as soon see abortion become a criminal act.

Is ad a retort to this write-up?

Although he’s not likely to lead the charge for THAT cause. But he doesn’t side with a woman having a “right” to choose to terminate a pregnancy, which has many of the woman’s rights activists upset – and even has Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., publicly backing Newman.

That has the United for Progress group paying good money to air an ad that bashes Newman about. Since Lipinski is the only other choice (unless you want to take Republican Arthur Jones – a white supremacist activist – seriously), he becomes the benefactor.

HENCE, WE’RE HEARING allegations of foreign airlines taking over the slots at Midway, the inability of political operatives to find federal records for charitable funds Newman allegedly oversaw, and the health code violations at her one-time restaurant (with the tacky tales of fruit fly infestation).

The high-minded approach would be for someone to tout that Lipinski is one who consistently backs the interests of organized labor and unions – which is why he identifies as “Democrat” and most likely would be hostile to GOPers like Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Are these Dems of past the Lipinski backers?

But this is the campaign season – with Election Day less than two weeks away and some people (myself included) having already cast their ballots. Sickening fruit fly stories work better, I guess. Particularly since Newman got a nice write-up Monday on the New York Times’ front page. Is this ad a rebuttal tactic?

Although in terms of distortion of fact, I kind of find the Harold spot (one produced and paid for by her own campaign) to be more outrageous. Aside from constant references to the “Madigan machine,” it talks about how Harold in her life has “beat the odds” to win.

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, Harold actually has lost every single Republican primary she ever has run in (for Congressional seats from central Illinois).

The “victory” referred to that has her beating odds? It was in 2003 when the then-Miss Illinois went to Atlantic City and became Miss America. The last time an Illinois contestant won that competition.

I’m not going to say Harold is not allowed to cite her status as a former Miss America. But I’m also going to shout “Bull!” the next time she, or political operatives, try to lambast any Democrat who tries to trivialize her by saying she’s nothing but a former Miss America.

And as for “Madigan’s machine” that Harold supposedly would “hold accountable,” one could argue that what it has done is held Rauner accountable as governor – preventing him from imposing a series of anti-labor measures into law under the phony label of “reform.”

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