Gubernatorial debates more about opponent gaffes than real knowledge

I find it laughable that the gubernatorial hopefuls of the major political parties in Illinois already are fighting over when, and how often, they’ll debate.

Did Pritzker 'one-up' governor?

It’s not like either Gov. Bruce Rauner or Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker really want to speak. They’re more interested in getting their opponent to put their foot in their mouths.

IT MAKES ME think that Saturday Night Live got it right many years ago when they headlined a sketch parodying the ’92 presidential debate as, “The Challenge to Avoid Saying Something Stupid.”

What will be Rauner's response?

Because if we really get the large number of debates that are being pondered as of now, there will be plenty of chances for Rauner/Pritzker (if not both) to say something so inane that it could cause a massive shift in the political sensibilities of the Illinois electorate.

For Pritzker is the guy who definitely has fantasies of Rauner finishing himself off with a gaffe or two. To bolster the chances, he went ahead and said this week he will participate in three debates – one on Sept. 20 in Chicago sponsored in part by the Urban League, another on Oct. 3 in Chicago sponsored in part by the League of Women Voters and a third Oct. 11 in Quincy sponsored in part by the Illinois Broadcasters Association.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Rauner is somewhat peeved with Pritzker over this – because he hasn’t agreed to anything. The announcement sort of publicly commits him to partake in so many events; even though he might actually prefer gatherings under different circumstances.

Would we, the electorate, be better off ...

PRITZKER HAS MANAGED to one-up Rauner on this issue, because if the governor seeking re-election decides to push for something different, it’s going to be spun as though Rauner is ducking debates.

As though he’s somehow being cowardly and afraid to face off against J.B. with the people of Illinois watching on television.

Which, actually, is what these debates will be. Television spectacles. They will be held in television studios and the broadcast stations involved will take great pride in that fact.

... if these cartoons weren't so darned accurate?

If anything, they’ll probably be upset that I’m crediting the Urban League and League of Women Voters for the two Chicago-based debates, rather than the respective television stations, for staging the events.

NOW AS A reporter-type person who has had the chance to cover such political debates, I’ll admit I find them of little value.

Usually, the time restrictions prevent anyone from seriously answering a question – particularly since the candidates themselves find it more a priority to take pot-shots at each other.

While also hoping they can say something that provokes the opponent to say something ridiculous or embarrassing, or just downright stupid! Which is always a possibility when someone is trying to provide an answer in a 90-second time-span, with the entire event lasting just under one hour.

But I can see the point of the debate format in that it forces candidates into equal (almost) terms when it comes to confronting each other, and it sort of forces them to address the issues.

ALTHOUGH WE CAN run into a problem if the particular debate moderator gets into some sort of an egotistical kick of thinking that the particular debate is really their personal interview with the candidates – rather than a chance to see them face off against each other.

Which could become even more intense if this year’s election cycle produces a governor upset that he got suckered into facing off in debate under terms and conditions not of his own choosing.

Activity at the Veteran's Home in Quincy is bound to be a debate focal point

It will be particularly interesting to see about the supposed debate intended for Quincy, where there is a Veterans Home where residents were afflicted with Legionnaire’s Disease and many are more than eager to blame the Rauner administration for the problem.

Would Rauner have preferred a downstate debate in a place like Urbana or Peoria? Of course, there’s really no hiding from the state’s problems – as everyone in Illinois has a gripe these days about the way our state’s government operates.

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Hizzoner hopefuls to debate each other

Defining a debate can be tricky. But we’re approaching that point in the mayoral campaign cycle in which the five people with desires to work on the Fifth Floor of City Hall will actually face off – trying to show the public that they’re not inept and praying that their opponents commit a major gaffe that erases their chances of electoral victory.

By tricky, it becomes important to consider whether an alleged debate actually includes the significant candidates, or is merely a chance for a lone candidate to show themselves off without any pesky opposition to challenge them.

I BRING UP this point because the Center for Working Class Studies at the University of Illinois – Chicago is having a “debate” on Friday.

Yet the only two candidates who are expected to show up are Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Chicago, and 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti.

Which means the people who bother to watch the event on Chicago Access Network will have a chance to see if one of the two can create the perception of themselves as the legitimate challenger to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the image of the other as a political bumpkin in over his head.

Emanuel himself will not be there. Neither will Willie Wilson, who is hoping that the millions of his own money he plans to spend on his campaign will help him be so dominant among African-American voters that both Fioretti and Garcia wind up becoming the bumpkins who don’t deserve to be taken seriously come the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

FOR THE RECORD, Emanuel’s campaign has said he is participating in five debates – although only two of those are traditional debate formats where candidates face questions and rigidly-timed periods in which to answer them.

Those debates will be the League of Women Voters event to be held Feb. 5 and a Feb. 10 event by the Chicago Urban League.

Other events that could wind up having all the major mayoral hopefuls include a Feb. 4 broadcast of “Chicago Tonight” on WTTW-TV, and appearances before the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

Admittedly, those newspapers likely will put video of those interviews on their websites for political geeks to ponder over. But their real purpose is to provide the quotes and other information that the newspapers will use when preparing their editorials in mid-to-late February about how enthusiastically they wind up backing the re-election of Rahm Emanuel.

DOES ANYBODY DOUBT that the two major newspapers will take such a stance? Particularly when one regards just how enthusiastic they were in offering their official support for Bruce Rauner to replace Pat Quinn as governor in last year’s statewide election cycle.

I’m likely to try to watch all of these events in some form or another, even though all they usually wind up doing is reinforcing the beliefs of the hard-core supporters of each candidate.

The people who want Anybody But Rahm probably already have the talking points drafted in their minds about how inept Emanuel will be during the upcoming debates.

For all I know, they’re probably also going to claim he is behaving in a cowardly manner by not showing up on Friday and at other events being sponsored by organizations that wish they could get the public attention that is derived from sponsoring a political debate.

I NOTICED THAT Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday how Garcia will overcome his “mild-mannered sweetheart” temperament to ravage Rahm’s reputation and make him out to be completely inept at representing the needs of the “average” Chicagoan.

I’m sure the Emanuel backers are ready to claim how all the other candidates don’t have what it takes to address the diverse set of problems that confront Chicago and other urban areas in the United States.

And as for Wilson, the man who already is attracting derision for the fact that responded to a Chicago Tribune candidate questionnaire by saying on many issues that he can’t develop specific solutions until after he is put into office. We’re supposed to trust that he’ll figure things out!

I’m sure that Wilson’s campaign guru, outspoken former alderman and state senator Rickey “Hollywood” Hendon, is counting on reaching out to voters who despise all the other mayoral candidates that they won’t care what Wilson actually says during a debate.

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It’s over!

Can we bring in the spirit of Roy Orbison to whisper sweet nothings into the ears of the ideologues who are determined to fight to the death over redistricting?

It has been apparent for quite a while that the boundaries for legislative and congressional districts in Illinois that were drawn last year will survive the decade. Which means the political gamesmanship for the 2010s will be rigged in favor of Democratic Party interests – which want to preserve Chicago’s influence.

BUT FOR THOSE who haven’t been able to take a hint, the Supreme Court of the United States this week made it known that they weren’t going to hear any appeal.

As far as the high court is concerned, there is no legal issue involved in the case that needs to be resolved. Therefore, the appeals court panel of judges from Indiana and Illinois that upheld the boundaries will be allowed to remain in place.

It seems there are two last-ditch appeals still pending – one each in the U.S. and Illinois supreme courts. But no one seems to think either has a chance of success.

Republican interests are suing on the grounds that they were deliberately excluded from any say in the preparation of the political boundaries. Of course, what those interests really wanted was a circumstance in which they drafted the boundaries and Democrats were excluded.

SUCH AS WHAT happened in the early 1990s!

So for them to make that argument now just comes across as hypocritical. The fact is that state law creates a procedure by which certain officials get a say in approving new boundaries. And the outcome of the 2010 election cycle for state government posts resulted in ALL of those officials being Democrat.

This week's theme music?

If we had gotten a Gov. William Brady, he would have been able to use his veto power to smack down all of this work. But we didn’t get that. We have a Chicago-centric state government – which may well accurately reflect the fact that two-thirds of Illinois’ population lives in the Chicago metro area.

Which is why it likely is best that the high court is refusing to let this issue drag out any longer.

OF COURSE, CONSIDERING the fact that some members of the nation’s Supreme Court are known to have their own ideological leanings, it could well be that they are merely ‘writing off’ Illinois.

Perhaps the ideologues, in being practical, are going to focus their attention on the election cycles so as to create GOP majorities that would effectively put Illinois in the minority column.

Let’s not forget places like Texas, where the Republican majority there managed to craft a map that makes Illinois’ boundaries look like a League of Women Voters’ fantasy.

Considering that it was the league’s lawsuit in Illinois that the Supreme Court refused to hear, that is saying something.

WHICH IS WHY many political observers believe that the Illinois redistricting is all too integral to any effort on the national level to keep conservative interests from using Republicans from overwhelming the country – even the parts that have no interest in their rhetoric.

As for those people who are going to argue that it is wrong to think of redistricting in such cold terms, I’d argue that it is merely being realistic. There are times when those GOP interests have prevailed in Illinois. This cycle isn’t going to be one of them.

Ultimately, it comes down to the idea that there was a procedure to be followed, and state officials followed it. The fact that political partisanship influenced the process is, sadly, a reality.

As for those who are going to argue that computer programs should be used to draw politically “neutral” congressional and legislative boundaries, I’d argue that computer programs are only as neutral as the people who program them.

WHICH IS TO say that a computer geek could set criteria for political districts that, in and of themselves, have their own agenda. Just like those people who argue that districts should always be perfect squares or rectangles that should NEVER cross over county lines, or those who want ethnic or racial factors to be downplayed.

Because in many cases, those factors can become the obstacles to crafting boundaries that accurately represent our state’s population overall.

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There were no “good guys” when it came to Illinois’ redistricting proposals this yr.

I may well be the one person who is pleased that both of the major measures that were supposed to reform the way Illinois redraws its political boundaries to reflect population changes went down to defeat.

State legislators affiliated with the Democratic Party used their power to kill off the Republican alternative – the one that actually got the League of Women Voters and other good government groups to sign on. More gloom and doom at the Statehouse on account of redistricting "reform" failing to pass? I prefer to think we were saved from something equally as bad, no matter which plan had passed.

THEN, THE GENERAL Assembly last week failed to approve the “reform” plan that was preferred by Democrats. I write it as “reform” because it was really a measure that was meant to do as little as possible, while letting officials say they voted for something to impose change.

As someone who takes great interest in the reapportionment process because I find it intriguing the way a neighborhood’s partisan representation can be impacted by the way it is carved up by legislative boundaries, I fully realize the flaws of the current measure – the one enacted by the Illinois Constitution in 1970.

All too many people are quick to jump on Illinois’ tie-breaker function, which says that if the Legislature is unable to agree on a political map and if an eight-member commission can’t do it either, then a person nominated by a legislative leader whose name gets picked out of a glass bowl, or a hat, or some other object, gets to be the tie-breaker.

It was thought by the people who crafted the state Constitution that such a random act having the ability to give total control to one political party’s officials would be so terrifying that legislators would deliberately go out of their way to work together to create a map that would reflect all interests.

PERHAPS SUCH THOUGHTS were the after-effect of some late 1960s “acid” trip. Because the effect of that law has been that our legislators don’t even try to compromise on a bill, nor does the eight-member commission (four people from each major political party) do much of anything – until the name is picked out of the hat.

In short, our political people are swayed by greed. The thought that they can get total control if they hold out, and can give their opposition absolutely nothing, is just too tempting an opportunity to waste on actually trying to negotiate a map.

That attitude is the real problem, not the procedure imposed by the Illinois Constitution itself. In fact, I personally have always thought the image of picking a name out of a hat or glass bowl that once belonged to Abraham Lincoln was some sort of cute quirk that made us unique.

I am not convinced that any of the so-called reform measures would have done anything to change the situation in Illinois, in light of the fact that we have a highly-partisan state. The “greed” is still there to want to have everything.

UNTIL THAT CHANGES, no procedure is going to make that much of a difference.

This whole debate actually reminds me of the activity that took place a decade ago with regards to liquor distributors. William Wirtz, who operated the largest distributorship in Illinois and one of the largest in the United States, used his political clout to get legislators to make changes in the law that protected his business interests.

That caused his opposition to go out of their way to stir up so much resentment to Wirtz that the changes were rescinded by the General Assembly a couple of years later. But that issue ultimately came down to two sets of business interests fighting it out in the Legislature – with neither side having a moral high ground (even though I can still remember the lobbyist who became all offended when I disputed her statement that she was the “good guy” fighting against Big, Bad William Wirtz).

This issue is similar because neither side has the moral high ground. It’s all about partisan quarrelling by a pair of groups behaving like political hacks, trying to make themselves appear to be less guilty than the other side of causing the problem.

THAT IS WHY I am glad neither can claim a victory – even if it means that the same procedure that has applied for four decades will now be used for a fifth decade when Illinois officials change the legislative and congressional boundaries to reflect the movement of people around our state (a little less in Chicago proper, many more less in rural Illinois, and increases in parts of the Chicago suburbs).

I know that the “good government” types will claim their reform proposal took control of the process away from the legislators by having eight members chosen by the four legislative leaders (two each, which is the same as now), and having the ninth “tie-breaking” person chosen by the eight members.

That might force people chosen by political parties to have to work together. Then again, it might not. It might just create a deadlock that results in endless delays to create political maps, which will need to be done this year.

Do we really want endless delays of the kind we have seen with the Illinois Legislature in recent years to craft state budgets to now impact the boundaries that determine who actually represents us in the General Assembly and in Congress?

THEN AGAIN, I don’t consider the Democratic alternative to be much better. It talked of “transparency” in the way the commission operates – which basically means we will get to see for ourselves just how greedy our political people get when it comes to reapportionment.

So as much as I find it ridiculous that Democrats denounced their Republican colleagues for not backing their Citizens First Amendment, it was no more absurd than the Fair Map Amendment touted by the GOP. Both sides wanted reform “credit” for doing next to nothing in reform.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Greed and self-interest among elected officials will always find a way to undo any political mechanism created to try to overcome it.

Everybody wants us to believe that it’s the other guy’s fault that truth and justice did not prevail when it comes to reform of the redistricting process in Illinois. People with sense will disregard all such rhetoric.

Reforming reapportionment not easy task

I have no doubt they're well intentioned, but the proposals being put forth by the League of Women Voters and other activist groups to reform the way in which legislative and congressional district boundaries are drawn isn't going to change a thing.

The problem isn't with procedures. It's with people. And in the end, partisan greed will overcome many people who get involved in any way with the political process.

THE ACTIVISTS, WHO have the support of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins (the guy who has George Ryan as a notch on his prosecutorial belt), are pushing for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution.

They're going the route of bypassing the Legislature. If they can get a substantial number of valid signatures on petitions, they can put a question on the ballot for the Nov. 2, 2010 elections on whether their proposed reform should become the new way in which districts are drawn.

To use the good government rhetoric, the drawing of political boundaries would be put in the hands of "independents" (a.k.a., those people to wishy washy to just admit their ideological leanings make them a Democrat or Republican).

These people would work together in a bipartisan manner to draw districts that would not be obsessed with clumping together voters sympathetic to the interests of the incumbent legislators.

THAT ULTIMATELY IS their motivation. They look at the statistic saying that 98 percent of incumbent legislators win on Election Day, and see something abhorrent. I see so many other advantages incumbents have that I doubt this one point would make much of a difference.

The only real way we could ensure significant turnover would be if our legislatures and Congress were to follow the lead of Mexico when it comes to picking presidents -- one six-year term, and you're out. No re-election possible.

I don't think any sane person in our country would want to go that route, because there is some benefit to experience -- particularly when it comes to weaving one's way through the legislative process.

My real problem with this so-called reform is because is relies supposedly on political "independents." Like I hinted earlier, I have always been wary of people who go out of their way to attach an "I" to their name, rather than a "D," an "R," a "G" or any other "third-party" label.

IT USUALLY TURNS out that these people have some pet issue that they want to put above all else, and the candidates they pick in various elections are usually of the same political party. The number of people who truly are independent of the current two-party political set-up we have in this country is so small as to be insignificant.

So the reform consists of putting reapportionment of political districts into the hands of people who are likely to favor officials supportive of their pet causes. It's only human nature. I don't think this panel would be any more worthy of putting together political maps than the current people -- the Illinois General Assembly, under the guidance of the Illinois Constitution.

Under the current set-up, the Legislature every decade redoes the map for Congressional districts and their own districts. They get to decide what boundaries will look like, and legislative leaders are known for trying to protect the interests of their own partisan bases.

The idea is that Democrats come from Chicago, with Republicans from the rural area. It used to be thought that suburban areas also were the province of the GOP, but in recent years Democratic legislators have been able to win in those areas.

WHICH IS WHY Republican officials like to draw districts that isolate the suburbs as much as possible from the city so as to protect their interests, while Democratic officials like to stretch the city influence into the suburbs as far as possible out of the theory that it's all one metropolitan area.

The issue that seems to irritate the reformers the most is the "lottery" that takes place in cases where the Legislature is unable to come up with a map and their own bipartisan commission makes no progress.

That is when both parties get put into a bowl (or once, a hat once worn by Abraham Lincoln himself), and the one that gets picked by the Illinois secretary of state gets to stack the commission to draw a map in accordance with its political wishes.

That is why the 1980s were a good decade for Democrats, while Republicans were able to gain influence in the 1990s, only to lose it in this decade.

BY 2012, WE'RE going to go through this process again, if there is no change as a result of next year's electinos.

The problem is human nature. Remember that when the drawing was written into the Illinois Constitution in the 1970s, it was seen as a "reform" measure. It was thought that political people would be so fearful of an all-or-nothing drawing that could leave their political party with "nothing" that they would break down and work together to draw a "fair" map.

Instead, what we have is a situation where our political people have partisan greed -- they see they have a chance to get "everything" and leave their political opponents with "nothing." It's too much of an opportunity to pass up to waste time on "bipartisan cooperation."

Like I wrote earlier, I wonder if the so-called independents would wind up bringing their own special concerns to the table. I don't trust them on this issue any more than I trust the political people.

IT ALSO INTRIGUED me to read a commentary published elsewhere earlier this week denouncing this proposal on the grounds that it really is a Democratic plot to seize control of the Legislature while under the disguise of "good government."

This conspiracy theory is based on the idea that the state Supreme Court would break a tie if an eight-member bipartisan board of independents truly couldn't come up with a map. As things stand now, the state's high court is majority Democratic and the chief justice is the former chief judge of the Cook County criminal court.

I don't know that I buy that, because the court goes out of its way to rotate its leadership around its members, meaning that the GOP also gets its moments of influence.

But it does reinforce the idea (accurately, I think) that the concept of "independent" can be deceptive.

IN THE END, there may not be any way to seriously overcome the influences that people have in their lives if they were asked to draw the political boundaries. Some of you may go so far as to suggest that computers be programmed to draw maps that spit out legislative districts of equal population without regard to who would represent those people.

As far as I'm concerned, forget that idea. Because then we have to get into the ideological pinnings of the people programming the computers.

What may sound harmless to some is downright radical to others.

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