Does downstate Illinois really love Quinn now? Or just afraid of unknown?

The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University came out with its own poll recently for the upcoming primary elections, and there’s little surprising about its conclusion that Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker are the favorites for victory come March 20.

Has downstate forgiven Pat Quinn?

But I did find one aspect amusing – the portion that relates to the Illinois attorney general’s office.

ON THE SURFACE, it would indicate that Kwame Raoul, a state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood, and Erika Harold, of Champaign, would be the favorites – although not by much. In a sense, a University of Chicago vs. University of Illinois election.

On the Republican side, it seems that nearly two-thirds of would-be GOP voters don’t have a clue who either Harold or challenger Gary Grasso are.

For the Democrats, there are eight candidates, but only two of them have any sizable following. As in Raoul and none other than Pat Quinn, our state’s former governor, who’s hoping to use the attorney general post as a way of achieving a political comeback.

According to the poll, Raoul has 22 percent support, compared to 18 percent for Quinn – with none of the others above 10 percent, and some 39 percent undecided.

BUT WHAT INTRIGUES me is the part that tried showing the regional breakdowns – where Raoul has 25 percent support in Chicago and 24 percent support in the suburbs. But Quinn is the leader in downstate Illinois.

Will it wind up being a Raoul vs. ...

The Mighty Quinn has some 25 percent support of downstate voters who will cast ballots in the Democratic primary, compared to 10 percent for Raoul.

“So what!,” you may ask. It might seem obvious that a lowly state legislator with little-to-no name recognition outside of his specific Senate district on the South Side would lag behind a guy who has been a part of the political scene for nearly as long as Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, himself.

Which is true, since Quinn served on the staff of then-Gov. Dan Walker back in the early 1970s, before going on to other roles – including the “cut back” action that reduced the Illinois House by one-third in the early 1980s.

... Harold brawl following the March 20 primary?

BUT IF ONE remembers back to 2014, the reason that Quinn lost to Rauner is supposedly because he was weak in downstate Illinois.

Actually, despised is more the word that was used to describe why rural voters were willing to back a rich guy from the North Shore suburbs over Quinn. The only county out of Illinois’ 102 that Quinn won was Cook. The rest of the state map from November 2014 was a solid shade of red.

Even in the primary election held in March of that year, there was evidence that Quinn was not the preferred candidate outside of Chicago.

Quinn actually managed to lose the vote in a few counties of Southern Illinois, where the distaste for Quinn was such that they voted for opponent Tio Hardiman – even though I suspect they knew nothing about him, and when they eventually learned of his views on gun control (he’s heavily concerned about urban violence – head of the CeaseFire Illinois group), they wished they could vote for nobody.

HARDIMAN IS ACTUALLY trying again to run for governor this time, and the Simon Institute poll shows him running last out of the six candidates with zero percent in downstate Illinois. Even perpetual fringe candidate Robert Marshall manages with 1 percent support.

How many of Tio's '14 backers still support him for gov?

So what does it say that many of the people eager to dump Quinn back in ’14 now seem to be supporting him? Should we regard that election cycle as a fluke? Or is the fluke the election cycle occurring now?

Is Quinn being forgiven for the misdeeds people constantly accused him of four years ago. Or perhaps it is the sight of what we replaced Quinn with for the past few years that makes some people think perhaps he ought to be given another chance.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this eight-way electoral fight manages to turn out, since it will be possible for someone with only about 25 percent support to win the Democratic nomination. Which could wind up being Raoul – although I’ll admit the thought of a Quinn/Harold debate come October is one I’d find amusing.

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Bring back the Maroons! It makes more sense than having SIU in Big Ten

Every year in the Illinois General Assembly manages to bring about a bill or two that gets a lot of attention just because the idea being espoused is so knuckleheaded and absurd that we know it’s going nowhere.

Not a ringing endorsement for Ill. flagship

This year, it seems the nonsense bill in question is one based upon the idea that Illinois needs to improve its educational opportunities for students by getting another of its public universities into the Big Ten.

AS IF WE don’t suffer enough by seeing Fighting Illini and Wildcats sports teams get their behinds kicked by Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana, state representatives Michael Connelly, R-Lisle, and Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, somehow think that having the Illinois State Redbirds or the Cougars of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the mix will bolster things.

This is just ridiculous on so many levels. But let’s take the key point that Connelly made in talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about this issue. “”Big Ten,’ to me, means a top state school. There’s a lot of pride in that. The Big Ten has a cachet and a record of higher academic and athletic excellence.”

Now I’m not looking to go on a diatribe against the University of Illinois. I have known many people (including my brother, Chris) who were educated there. It’s a fine place. But that statement from Connelly is just a bunch of hooey!

The reason some people choose to attend universities elsewhere is because they have achieved such standards and reputations that those top students want to challenge themselves (either that, or they have “legacy” connections that get them in).



MURPHY: Placing too much faith...

WE ALL KNOW it’s not 100 percent accurate to recall Tom Cruise’s “Joel” character from “Risky Business” and his reaction to learning he probably wasn’t going to be accepted to Princeton. But the Urbana-Champaign campus doesn’t really get bonus points academically because it’s in the Big Ten conference.

And the Big Ten sure doesn’t get much respect athletically when compared to the other major conferences that comprise the world of NCAA Division I sports.

Somehow, I suspect some alum of an SEC school is laughing his behind off at the thought of the Big Ten being elite. Then again, some of those alums may not be literate enough to read this commentary, so who knows how they will react. And as for the Ivy League types, their snootiness lets me easily disregard them.



CONNELLY: ... in Big Ten label?

I just think that some people are equating an athletic conference with way too much significance. And in the case of the Big Ten, it doesn’t help that their latest expansion efforts have been to get into the big media markets. That is, if you think of Rutgers as New York-area and Maryland as Washington, D.C.

THE ONLY WAY I could see the Big Ten wanting a third Illinois-based academic institution is if it would put them in Chicago proper (Northwestern University is, after all, based in suburban Evanston). I just can’t see them caring about Normal, Ill., or suburban St. Louis (as in Edwardsville). And don’t even bring up the main campus in Carbondale – a place so isolated physically it makes Champaign seem cosmopolitan.

Besides, what does any of this have to do with academics? Connelly and Murphy say their concern is that University of Illinois standards have become too high and many students get rejected.

How about working on ways to bolster the level of the other state-funded public universities? Which has nothing to do with the Big Ten label.

There’s also the fact that Connelly and Murphy think that students rejected by Illinois are going to other states, and not coming back. Yet how often do we hear about University of Michigan (or other Midwestern university) alumni who beehive it straight for Chicago once they graduate?

SO WHAT COULD this all mean? Probably nothing. The bill that already has made it through a state Senate committee calls for a commission to spend a year studying the issue – if it even gets approved. Nobody is bound to do anything.

Which means we’re not likely to ever see anything actually happen with this. Not even a return of the one Chicago university that actually has a Big Ten history.

The Stagg Field of old (and its Big Ten memories) are long gone from Hyde Park neighborhood campus. Illustration provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia.

Restore the Chicago Maroons to the athletic conference for the first time since the late 1930s? I doubt it, largely because university officials themselves would see the Big Ten as a hindrance to their academic mission!

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