What did Rauner do right?

Come the noon hour, Bruce Rauner won’t be our governor any longer.

RAUNER: At 12:01 p.m., he's a political nobody

Those heavy old doors of the Illinois Statehouse, with their ornate door handles bearing the state seal will give Rauner the “swat” on his behind as he walks out for the last time, and there will be many people cheering their “huzzahs!”

YET AS RAUNER departs and new Gov. J.B. Pritzker takes the oath of office to serve for the next four years, I have to admit there are some things the old governor deserves praise for.

There was the Executive Mansion renovation in Springfield. The structure dating back to the days when Abraham Lincoln was a resident of the capital city was in need of serious renovation and repair – made worse by the fact that more recent governors such as Blagojevich and Quinn couldn’t be bothered with the project.

It was Rauner who led the effort that raised some $15 million necessary to ensure the structure continues to have a long life. While also ensuring that he had to spend much of his own term as governor living in a house on the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

Just envision the aromas he had to endure – particularly during the state fair when all the livestock shows were at their peaks. That was bound to be the source of many a gag from people who thought they were hilarious.

QUINN: Didn't fix the mansion

ACTUALLY, I KIND of comprehend why the project wasn’t a priority in the days of Pat Quinn as governor. It was during that time that state government spent the millions necessary to do a renovation of the Capitol building.

A project that became very costly and caused many people to whine that Quinn was wasting government funds that could have been put to better use. I don’t doubt that a lot of people would have been lambasting him even more if he had also taken on a governor’s mansion renovation – no matter how necessary.

So it was left to Rauner to take on the project, and he got the work done prior to the official Illinois bicentennial celebration that took place last year. Although it amused me to learn that then-candidate Pritzker actually made a private donation to the fund to help advance the project along.

BLAGOJEVICH: Pardon backlog a mess

The bottom line is that Rauner gets credit for ensuring the official mansion and so-called showplace of Illinois government didn’t become too decrepit. That truly would have become an embarrassment.

RAUNER ALSO MANAGED to take care of something else the had become an embarrassment for Illinois. He issued a statement Friday pointing out there is no backlog of convicted individuals asking for some form of gubernatorial clemency.

There are no cases held over from past years for someone else to take care of.

Why is this an issue?

Actually, it’s because when Rod Blagojevich was removed from office by impeachment, one of the problems was we learned that the governor was ignoring the many requests for pardons or commutations that he had the authority to grant – if he so chose.

THERE LITERALLY WERE thousands of individuals whose pleas were made to Blagojevich that he never bothered to address. He was more than willing to play games with those individuals because he didn’t want to be bothered.

PRITZKER: What will he be noted for?

Now it’s one thing if you have a governor who seriously does not want to grant a lot of pardons or commutations. But the way Rod just chose to ignore the issue was a disgrace. Which is why many people find it ironic that Blagojevich is seeking clemency from President Donald Trump to get his own prison term (scheduled to end in 2024) reduced to time served.

It would serve him right if Trump just let him linger the way Blagojevich did to many others. But Blagojevich’s fate apparently benefits Trump politically – in that he can P-O many political people who want to see Rod suffer as much as is possible.

Rauner actually managed to work his way through the backlog dating to the Blagojevich years; creating a situation where future governors will just have to clean up their own mess. Although I'm sure the masses amongst us Illinoisans will be more than willing to be outraged at the many issues where our former governor caused problems to develop -- if not escalate to conditions that will take us years to recover from.

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New governor to live in Springfield, while family remains in Chicago

Excuse me for thinking it a non-issue in terms of recent reports that Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker says he intends to live in the Illinois capital city while serving in office.

PRITZKER: Moving to Springfield

The state does, after all, provide an official residence for the governor – the Executive Mansion, located one block away from the Capitol building in Springfield.

IN FACT, THE state in recent years performed significant renovations on the governor’s mansion, with some people going so far as to point out rather sarcastically that soon-to-be former Gov. Bruce Rauner kicked in some of his own money for the project, just to improve a house for his successor.

As though that makes the current governor the ultimate sucker!

But Pritzker says he’ll move to Springfield, although he admits his wife and two sons will remain in Chicago – they’re still in school and he doesn’t want to disrupt their lives, he says. Besides, the mansion is actually a series of formal ballrooms, with a private quarters on the top floor. Basically, it’s an over-glorified apartment.

Which is a fact I’m sure will manage to offend many of the people whom Pritzker was probably hoping to pacify with his residential announcement. Because there are people who are going to think anything short of the entire Pritzker family loading up the moving van to haul their belongings to Springfield is nothing more than a snub of the Illinois capital.

A Lincoln Park resident while governor

IT IS ONE of the laughable issues I recall from my days as a Springfield-based correspondent – downstate people convinced that everything had to be based downstate, and who resented those state agencies that maintained significant Chicago presences.

These are the people who were bothered by former Govs. James Thompson living with his wife and kid in a Lincoln Park neighborhood mansion, Rod Blagojevich eventually trying to run the entire state from a private office he maintained in his Ravenswood Manor neighborhood home, and Pat Quinn only occasionally staying in the mansion when not at home in the Austin neighborhood.

He rarely left Ravenswood Manor

Of course, even Jim Edgar wound up having a home in the Springfield suburbs (the “log house,” a home done up in a log cabin motif), while also maintaining an apartment in downtown Chicago for those days when his work brought him to the city.

If anything, George Ryan may have been the recent governor who made the best effort to get around the state – living in a Chicago apartment, the mansion in Springfield and spending weekends at his family home in Kankakee.

A West Sider (Austin neighborhood)

MEANING HE’D MAKE a complete circle around Illinois every single week!

As for Pritzker, he’ll use the mansion as a job-related residence, although we probably should expect he’ll be making many back-and-forth trips between Chicago and Springfield.

Which will bother those who want to think Illinois centers around Springfield – even though I’d argue the realities of the modern world mean we probably should have governors who are mobile and traveling about the state. The idea that he’s supposed to sit behind a desk inside the Capitol and never leave Springfield would be evidence of a governor not doing his job.

RAUNER: Helped renovate the mansion

Just as it can be argued that having a governor like Blagojevich who would have preferred never to have left his house was evidence alone that the job was not being done properly back in his gubernatorial era.

WHAT AMAZES ME is that some people will be willing to make an issue of all this – either that the governor never spends time in Springfield, or else is there far too often and neglecting the rest of the state’s needs.

RYAN: Actually lived around Ill.

You’d think with all the issues, financial and social, that confront Illinois government these days, there’d be far more important things for people to concern them about.

But then again, some people will want to find something to gripe about – no matter what.

Just as they’ll want to move along to the other statewide constitutional officers, who are required by law to maintain a residence in Springfield – even though the state makes no provision for their own housing. Just think how they’d moan if the state budget also included provisions for, say, an Illinois attorney general mansion?

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EXTRA: First lady won’t live in White House, reminiscent of Patti Blagojevich

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Patti Blagojevich when I read the reports saying that incoming first lady Melania Trump has no intention of wanting to reside in Washington at the White House.
 

MELANIA: Wants to be stay-at-home mom in N.Y.

Let’s not forget that when Rod Blagojevich served as Illinois governor, he ultimately became the guy who spent as little time as possible in the capital city, didn’t even like going into the official governor’s office in Chicago and wound up trying to run the state from the office he created for himself at his Ravenswood Manor neighborhood home.

PART OF THE motivation for that was the fact that Patti really didn’t want anything to do with a life in Springfield, and tried to explain it as a desire to keep her two daughters (now all grown up) grounded in real-life.

Similar to how Melania is saying she wants to remain in New York because of her 10-year-old son, Barron. He’s in school, and she wants us to believe that she wants to provide for him the typical lifestyle of a growing boy.

Although considering that the Trumps live in the penthouse apartment of the Trump Towers building in Manhattan, it can be argued that having to reside in the White House might be a step closer to the typical lifestyle the bulk of us live.

Whereas in the case of the Blagojeviches, Patti told the State Journal-Register back at the time her husband became governor, “We’re not Rockefellers, so when Rod’s term or terms as governor is over, we have no means to live like this. It would just be an unnatural thing for us to get used to.”

THE QUESTION REMAINS, “Are the Trumps wealthier than the Rockefellers?”

Forbes magazine has come up with a crude estimate of the Rockefeller wealth at being $22.22 billion in modern-day monetary value, compared to about $3 billion for the Trumps.

Although I suspect Trump thinks he can hold his own financially, and in fact I wonder if Trump thinks that living and working out of his own home and offices instead of the government-provided ones somehow gives him an excuse to not have to comply with all the disclosure requirements we’d normally demand of a president.

 

PATTI: Didn't like the Statehouse lifestyle

Either that, or maybe Trump just thinks the White House is a dive compared to his own apartment or Florida-based Mar-A-Lago mansion.

ALL I KNOW is that if he really feels that way about the White House, I’d hate to think how he’d feel if he ever had to set foot in the Executive Mansion in Springfield.

What with falling plaster, mold developing in spots, rainwater seeping into the Lincoln bedroom and a busted elevator (based on various news reports about the repairs now being undertaken), the sight of it probably would have been enough to scare Trump away from wanting to get into public service in the first place.

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Is Capitol Hill really that much better than being governor of Illinois?

He could always change his mind. In fact, it’s probably a safe bet to presume a political person will not try to run for a particular post until that election cycle passes without their name on the ballot.
 

DURBIN: Maybe he'll change mind, or not

But long-time member of Congress Richard Durbin says he’s happy with what he has, and has no intention of trying to become governor of Illinois.

WHICH IS RELEVANT because Durbin’s name is one being tossed about as a potential challenger to Gov. Bruce Rauner come the 2018 election cycle. We’re not even through the ’16 electoral nonsense yet, and there already are those speculating about the next election.

It’s as nonsensical as those people who want to talk ever since spring training how the Chicago Cubs are entitled to win this year’s World Series – only to see the ball club stagger a bit as they get within a couple of games of an actual National League championship.

But, back to Durbin, who is an East St. Louis native who has lived the bulk of his life in Springfield, from where he has been elected to a few terms in the House of Representatives, then became Illinois’ senator some 20 years ago.

It is figured by those people who keep talking up his name that he has the recognition to be taken seriously against the money that Rauner most definitely will put into his re-election bid in two years to try to bury anybody who has the unmitigated gall to try to challenge him.

TAKING ON RAUNER isn’t a challenge for the meek at heart, or for the little-known.

It may even be that Durbin could be a worthy public official if he were to try to serve as governor. Although the fact is that while he lives in Springfield, he is not a part of the local political process.

 

RAUNER: Which Dem will challenge him?

He’s the guy who went “up and out” to a bigger post in Washington, albeit one that isn’t all that important to the political people whose view of the world doesn’t extend beyond their local ward office.

If anything, Durbin is like Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, in one aspect – he has his sights set elsewhere in hopes that he can bring that place’s influence to use back to the local scene.

 
FOR MADIGAN, THAT local place is the Statehouse in Springfield. He rose to the ranks of House speaker for all these decades largely so he can ensure the Legislature works in ways that are of benefit to Chicago.

MADIGAN: Likes the power of being "Mr. Speaker"

While Durbin works the halls of Capitol Hill to try to bring back those federal benefits to Illinois – making sure the Land of Lincoln gets something back for all the tax dollars we have to pay in to the federal treasury.

Personally, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Durbin said recently he wants to remain in

Washington and is more likely to run for re-election rather than consider coming back home to be governor. He made such a statement while appearing this week in Champaign, saying he’s satisfied with his current lot in life.

Part of it, I’m sure, is that he knows it would be a tough political fight – although I don’t doubt he wouldn’t mind it in the least if he were remembered as the guy who dumped Bruce Rauner come 2018.

BUT IT’S PROBABLY more like Madigan in that he focuses his attention on an out-of-town political entity because he likes being part of the political scene there. It’s not like many Chicago political observers would think it wise to willingly want to live part of the year in Springfield, yet he does because he enjoys being the “almighty and powerful” speaker of the House.

While Durbin, I’m sure, fantasizes about the day he can be the Senate majority leader. Perhaps his goal is not to depose Rauner, but to be the guy who replaces Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Although as minority whip, it can be argued he already has a position pretty close to the top.

 

A remodeled home not enough to entice Durbin?

Important enough that his proximity to the top of Congress is a benefit that Illinois likes to play off of. If he came back to Springfield, he’d have to start focusing on such parochial concerns.

Besides, perhaps he figures the fact he’d be expected to live in the Executive Mansion isn’t all that much of a perk – no matter how much the place gets fixed up in coming years by the Rauners.

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