Can we really reform redistricting? Is the ‘human’ element just too strong?

I always get a giggle whenever I log onto my e-mail accounts and see a prominent name as having “sent” me a message.

EDGAR: Pleading for my money

Not that I’m delusional enough to think that the aforementioned person has any clue who I am, or really cares what I think. But the way in which activist causes try to create that image can go far – particularly when they’re asking for money.

IN THE LATEST instance, I got a message on Thursday from former Gov. Jim Edgar – who apparently is now part of the Yes for Independent Maps crusade.

They’re a group that looks at the sorry situation we have where partisan politics has completely taken over the way things get done, and thinks the key to breaking up such political hard-headedness is to change the way in which legislative and congressional district boundaries get drawn.

After all, if political people don’t have such a strong influence in determining that their districts are drawn in ways to include only supporters and their opponents’ districts containing all the opposition, then maybe people might have more of a say.

As Edgar put it in the e-mail, the current redistricting measures, “harms communities across the state and creates a system where we, the people of Illinois, are no longer choosing their representatives.”

NOW I’M AWARE this is a generic form letter sent out by the group to many people who wound up on their e-mail lists (you should see the ones I constantly get from allies of Barack Obama, and even a few of Obama’s harshest political critics).

The real thing they want is for me to donate money. This latest e-mail contained a convenient link so I could easily whip out a credit card and make a contribution to the Yes for Independent Maps group (based in Chicago).

I don’t really believe that Edgar has given me any thought since the day he ceased being governor back in January 1999 (and I doubt he gave me much thought even when he was governor and I was one of the Statehouse reporter-type people who tried to document his every political move).

A noble cause?!?

But maybe he is sincere about this latest involvement in redistricting reform.

BECAUSE I REMEMBER that while he had a generally sympathetic Illinois Senate when he was governor (and for one brief two-year period had complete Republican control of state government), it was often those alleged political allies of the GOP who were his most outspoken critics.

And some of them who now wish he’d just go away as a relic of the past, rather than trying to influence current political policy.

When it comes to this particular issue, it really is a flaw of both sides. We hear a lot of complaining about how Democrats have used their influence over state government to disregard a significant swath of the state.

Yet I also recall that two-year period as one in which Republicans did exactly the same thing to the people they wanted to perceive as their opposition.

I CAN’T SYMPATHIZE with those GOPers who think they’re being dumped upon now by Democrats because it always comes across that they’re not interested in fairness as much as being able to be the ones who do the dumping on others.

The only problem I have with these activist-types who say they want to reform the process is that I’m not sure if we’re just going to get political geek-types with their own ideological hang-ups drawing boundaries.

For those who say the process should be done by a computer program that draws maps without regard to special interests, I’d wonder if the person who writes the program has his own hang-ups to deal with.

Because some of those “interests” – particularly all of those concerning districts promoting the interest of certain non-white persons in our society – do have to be acknowledged.

SO WHEN SOMEONE comes up with a way that can seriously disregard bias by all to prepare political boundaries, perhaps then I could get on board in support.

Until then, I won’t be taking up Edgar’s e-mail plea to donate my money. I’m skeptical.

And yes, I’m also cheap!

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It's all about the name recognition

The Chicago Tribune gave us its traditional polls every campaign season, giving us as thorough an understanding of where the major campaigns stand in the primary elections coming up just a month from now.

RAUNER: Bought the primary?

If those polls are to be taken seriously, it will be Bruce Rauner and James Oberweis at the top of the Republican ticket, challenging Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Richard Durbin, respectively, and leading the efforts of all Republicans across Illinois trying to get elected to government office.

NOW I’M NOT terribly interested in writing about whether Rauner and Oberweis really are the best bets to seriously challenge Quinn and Durbin in the November general election. There will be plenty of time to do that in coming months.

It’s just that reading the details of those polls, it becomes quite apparent that despite all the talk amongst Republicans about how voters are energized by their candidates to clobber Dems come November, the opposite seems to be true.

I don’t think anybody in this candidate field has really captured the public’s love and affection, so to speak.

Rauner, the venture capitalist whom some GOPers think is too close and personal to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is the one who has used his personal wealth to advertise his existence.

WHICH MAKES IT very likely that to many would-be voters who probably just now are starting to pay any attention to the election cycle, Rauner is the only one they may have heard of.

The other three candidates may well be unknowns – which is a blow to the 2010 campaign between Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard, who don’t seem to gain anything from having run before.

OBERWEIS: On way to a win?

And as for Dan Rutherford, he’s only now starting to get public recognition – but for a subject matter that makes decent people squeamish! Something that only the sleaziest amongst us takes any pleasure in observing.

Rauner may well succeed in buying enough name recognition early on that there just isn’t enough time for the opposition to catch up. Since if the Tribune poll published earlier this week turns out to bear any resemblance to reality, nearly all the undecided voters would have to swing to Brady for him to prevail.

RUTHERFORD AND DILLARD are just too far behind to catch up to Rauner, it would seem.

Will Hardiman do worse ...

This may well become the gubernatorial race between a pair of Chicago residents – a concept that is bound to repulse many among the voters from rural parts of the state who are determined to dump Quinn because they think he’s too urban in his perspective on life.

The same seems to be holding up in the Senate primary, where Oberweis has such a large lead that he’s already the Election Day winner – provided that the poll results turn out to be real.

Then again, Oberweis is the guy who has run past campaigns for governor, senator and representative – before finally winning a seat in the Illinois state Senate.

AFTER ALL THAT, he had better be known to more voters than just about any other candidate (the Tribune poll indicates he has 88 percent name recognition). Although there are those who wonder if his recognition is for such negative past activity that it will kill him – and other Republican candidates on the ticket – come November.

What it does mean is that Doug Truax, a business executive from suburban Downers Grove, hasn’t done much in the way of getting his name out to the public. Because there are those who would like to have an alternative to vote for March 18.
 

... than Truax on Election Day?

Although what may become the most interesting aspect of the primary is one that will be of interest only to political geeks – will Truax become the biggest political nobody of the day? Or will he get topped (or should it be bottomed) by Tio Hardiman – who is the token challenger against Quinn.

Nobody seems to give Hardiman any chance to actually beat Quinn. Although I wonder if he winds up getting more support in that campaign than Truax does against the man whose dairy company, admittedly, does make some fine ice cream.

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Madigan backing Smith to be expected. I'm more upset by lack of a federal trial

I remember once having an Illinois House of Representatives of the Democratic persuasion try to dispute the notion that all of the House Dems were just lackies who voted the way Speaker Michael Madigan told them to.

SMITH: He's still around

This legislator told me that the only hard-and-fast commitment she had to make in exchange for Madigan’s support (including the periodic transfers of cash from Madigan’s campaign funds that keep many legislative campaigns alive) was to promise that she’d vote in support of measures to keep Madigan in his leadership post.

TO THE BEST of my knowledge, state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago, complied with that demand. He never did anything that would have challenged Madigan’s authority to be House speaker (without which Madigan would be just another schlub legislator from the Southwest Side).

So should it be any surprise that Madigan is backing Smith’s bid for re-election come the March 18 primary over other candidates. Madigan aides themselves admit that the speaker is supporting Smith because he’s the incumbent – and for no other reason.

Yet there are those who are acting “shocked, shocked to learn” that Smith can be endorsed by anybody for re-election.

Smith, after all, is the guy who got booted from the Illinois House two years ago when he was indicted by federal prosecutors on claims that the cash he took for his government activity amounts to bribes.

BUT IN WHAT was the quirk of the 2012 election cycle, Smith managed to get re-elected to a two-year term – one that will soon come to an end. Because the federal court system is one that takes time to work one’s way through, he has yet to be found guilty of anything.

So, he’s running for re-election to another two-year term in this year’s election cycle. The reality of our political set-up is that incumbents have a lot of advantages, no matter how inept or sleazy we may perceive them as being.

He’s going to keep getting re-elected until the very day that a “guilty” verdict is rendered. I don’t really like that idea, but I accept that it is reality.

MADIGAN: Merely playing politics

So I’m not so concerned about the fact that Smith probably will win the Democratic primary AND the general election in November.

THE REAL QUESTION is whether “the feds” can get their act together to obtain a conviction of some type against Smith.

Perhaps those of us who are all upset that Madigan would think to support Smith – instead of trying to pick a no-name and rise him from the muck to a position of authority in the Illinois House – ought to focus our attention on why it takes so long for a criminal case to actually come to trial.

For a case that is supposedly as obviously a “guilty” verdict as some political people would like us to believe, perhaps this should happened long ago.

For those who have already forgotten the specifics of this case, it involves a $7,000 payment he received after writing a letter supporting a day care operation that sought a $50,000 grant from state government.

I’M SURE HE’LL argue that he was just making a recommendation about something proposed for his West Side-based legislative district, just like any other legislator would do. This will become a case – when it finally goes to trial – that will become a matter of how much we actually trust anything Smith says.

Now I’m not writing this commentary in defense of Smith. It’s more a criticism of those people trying to score more cheap political points off of a pending indictment.

What's taking them so long?

I expect Madigan to keep supporting Smith so long as he fulfills Madigan’s interests.

What disgusts me is that Smith, if he really is as guilty as prosecutors want us to believe, isn’t in a prison cell already. And if he isn’t guilty, that a criminal charge has lingered over him for so long!

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A serious allegation? Or just a way of trying to legitimize campaign sleaze?

I recall a day I once spent on the job for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago when I was trying to confirm a sordid tale about Oprah Winfrey – one in which I came up with nothing!

RUTHERFORD: Facing a firestorm!

Not a single fact. Nothing confirmable. I didn’t get the story!

THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES a couple of weeks later came up with a gossipy blurb about it in one of their columns. And by day’s end, that had crumbled into falsehood.

I remember Winfrey feeling compelled to go on her television program live to address the rumor and deny it – while not giving any credence to the story.

I have been thinking about that incident for the past week; ever since Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Rutherford held that press conference on Jan. 31 along with former federal agents to try to defend himself from what he expected would be allegations made against him. The moment felt, to me at least, very Oprah-esque.

The stories being told now about Rutherford are sordid enough that some people want to believe it will be the end of the political campaign for the man from Chenoa who rose through the ranks of Illinois government from state legislator up to Illinois treasurer.

WHO NOW WANTS to make the big move up to governor!

For the past week, we have had stories published and broadcast about allegations with no details offered up. With reporter-types who knew the name of the person making the allegations, but choosing not to reveal it.

At least not until Monday. Which is the day that Ed Michalowski filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago against Rutherford. He says that while working for the state treasurer’s office, he was sexually harassed. He also claims he was pressured into doing political work on state government time. But most people are going to focus on the former accusation.

WINFREY: Will Dan be as successful?

Michalowski loses any claim to anonymity because his name is now on the lawsuit. It’s a matter of public record.

ALTHOUGH THE FACT that it is now out there, in a sense, does not make me feel there is any more legitimacy to the allegations.

I’ll state right now that I don’t know Michalowski or anything about him. And I certainly have no clue as to whether or not there is any legitimacy to his claims – which are that he experienced the harassment once at Rutherford’s home, once at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and once at a tavern in Springfield.

Before we knew what he was talking about, Rutherford denied the allegations. He claimed more than a week ago that any trash talk being spewed now was politically motivated.

The sad thing is that my gut feeling makes me suspicious – of the people who are making the accusations. Particularly some of the attorneys who have been talking in recent weeks about the case!

FOR IN THE two-plus decades that I have followed the activity of state government, I have heard rumor and innuendo concerning Rutherford that would be consistent with these latest tales.

Is this lawsuit now just something on a piece of paper that is meant to give legitimacy to such trash talk? As in now that this case is out there, they can start spreading the other nonsense tales that they have spewed for years?

All in hopes that it could drive the Rutherford campaign out of the mix for governor? Which makes me wonder if the real villain becomes whichever Republican candidate stands to benefit the most IF Rutherford were to wind up dropping out of the campaign?

I’m not about to get into tales I heard about Rutherford years ago – other than to say they were always more resembling of whispers that were told anonymously by people who couldn’t necessarily get their stories straight.

QUINN: The ultimate winner?

WHICH MAY WELL be where this whole saga is now headed! Just one nasty mess that will take down everybody in its path.

Which also has me thinking that the ultimate beneficiary of this may well be the Pat Quinn campaign – since whomever winds up winning the Republican nomination is going to be beaten up, bruised and bloodied so badly that they may not be able to give it their best effort in trying to Dump Pat come November.

  -30-

“WGN America” programs have little, if anything, to do with Chicago

I remember back the seven years I lived in Springfield, Ill., and had much of my focus centered around the Statehouse scene. I’d make the semi-regular trips back to Chicago when I could.

It's changed a lot since the early days

But much of the way I kept in touch with what was happening officially in Chicago was through WGN-TV.

THEY WERE STILL the “superstation” back then whose broadcasts were carried to remote parts of the nation (and the globe) through cable television and satellites. From a purely parochial perspective within the news business, WGN-TV had a certain significance.

They were the one Chicago-area television newscast that was carried across the entire state of Illinois.

People at the Statehouse could see the Channel 9 news on a regular basis – as opposed to the Channel 2, 5, 7 or 32 newscasts that could only be seen locally. Although I should admit that I remember Springfield residents who had satellite dishes rather than cable television programs would get our very own WFLD-TV for a local Fox affiliate.

Yes, people in Springfield got a little bit of exposure to the concept of Walter Jacobson, 1990's style – and I remember having to explain his significance and influence in Chicago. They just didn’t get the appeal.

BACK TO WGN, which gave the Chicago Cubs national exposure and made their losing ways seem cute (because the Tribune broadcast types knew how to make the overall atmosphere of the ballpark seem more important than a winning ball club). They also gave us exposure to the local newscasts.

But no more!!!

Or can we?

For WGN officials have let it be known that the local news we think of as being a natural part of 9 p.m. will no longer be carried on their broadcasts outside of the Chicago market. Only us in Chicago and the number three media market will see it.

WGN officials say the rest of the country that tunes in to WGN broadcasts will get to see the “Rules of Engagement” program (which I must confess to not having a clue what exactly that is).

THIS SEEMS TO be offending many people, some of whom actually went so far as to create a “Bring Back WGN News at Nine” page on Facebook – and one I actually indicated I “liked.”

Would these programs be too local?

Which I did so because I remember how often I made a point of tuning in to WGN news at 9 p.m. (followed up by WCIA-TV out of Champaign at 10 p.m. -- which doesn't even air in the capital city any longer). But I’m not under any delusion that the people in positions of authority are going to be swayed.

They seem to think that anybody who’s tuning in to WGN in other parts of the world (actually, they’re watching WGN America, not WGN-TV proper like we are) has little interest in Chicago proper, and views anything about Chicago as “too local” for the larger audience).

Personally, I think that WGN America is a little too generic. The times I have been outside the Chicago area and tuned into the channel, I found programming that could have aired anywhere. It seemed like the WGN label was somehow being misapplied.

I READ SOMEWHERE that someone wisecracked that it was becoming the equivalent of the Hallmark Channel. That may actually be a step up in programming quality.

So what will happen in those other parts of the country where there were some people who were counting on WGN to give them a little taste of where it is they come from? They’re going to have to adapt to whatever it is the news broadcasts in their current locale give them.

Perhaps something along the lines of that opening scene from “Broadcast News” (which I happened to be watching while writing this commentary) where Holly Hunter’s “Jane Craig” news producer character rants on and on about a story about a domino maze, while the people she speaks to love every second of it. And probably think the people demanding to keep a Chicago newscast on a national-focus station is somehow stupid.

So what should we think? Maybe, in a sense, this serves those people right for leaving this wonderful city on the shores of southwestern Lake Michigan. Although the punishment seems a bit steep, to me at least.

  -30-

EXTRA: Quinn on hand for tribute to a Cardinal; How will the Cubs fans react?

Now, he's a bridge

I realize that the greater St. Louis metro area spills over into Illinois (similar to how metro Chicago includes a piece of Indiana). Yet I can’t help but think it a bit odd that our governor was among the dignitaries on hand Saturday for the opening of a new bridge that pays tribute, in part, to the St. Louis Cardinals’ great Stan Musial.

Would a Missouri governor feel compelled to be on hand if something were named for Chicago Cubs great Ernie Banks? At least in his case, it could be justified by saying he once played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues of old.

BUT QUINN WAS among the political people who showed up for the ceremonies marking the new bridge that connects St. Louis to East St. Louis – which makes it a major entryway to people entering Illinois from the southwest.

And Quinn justifies the appearance by saying it’s the first new bridge built in that area in four decades. A “catalyst for business development and job creation for the future?,” as Quinn phrased it.

Let’s only hope so. Because I wonder how many people hear the name “East St. Louis” and automatically envision the Griswold family driving through town on their way to Walley World (remember “National Lampoon’s Vacation”)?

Officially, the new bridge is the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, which means it pays tribute to the military veterans that Quinn likes to honor any chance he gets.

IT’S TOO BAD that this wasn’t a bridge named (for whatever reason) for Lou Brock. He was, after all, both a Cardinal and a Cub.

Although I suspect that reminding Cubs fans of that deal would probably kill off any chance that they would consider voting for him in the November general election.

Can we pretend it didn't happen?

Then again, if he hadn’t shown up on Saturday, he might well have been accused of snubbing those baseball fans of Madison and St. Clair counties – which are among the few places outside of metro Chicago where Quinn might actually get significant numbers of votes.

How quickly the trivial gestures our political people make take on actual substantive results!

PART OF WHAT amuses me about this particular move is that putting Musial’s name on the bridge is supposed to make us forget how Cardinals fans in the Missouri Legislature actually named a nearby highway for Mark McGwire.

Oops, wrong team!!!

It was in the aftermath of 1998 and everybody was drunk with the spirit of those 70 home runs and Interstate 70 does pass through St. Louis. I remember people cheering at the sight of McGwire meeting personally with Pope John Paul II when the latter was in St. Louis early in 1999.

Of course, now that even McGwire admits he was using certain questionable substances to help bulk up his body to give him added strength for those “dingers” (remember The Simpsons? That’s what people really want to see), it seemed embarrassing.

Local officials actually went back to calling it the “Mark Twain Highway.”

NOW, CARDINALS FANS can still have a ballplayer’s name prominently displayed in the area near downtown St. Louis. And considering that Musial hasn’t played ball in 50 years (and died last year), it is unlikely he could do anything that would bring added shame on the St. Louis area.

Which may be the one way in which Chicago Cubs fans showed some restraint. To my knowledge, too many people got absolutely stupid in their worship of Sosa and his home runs all those years ago, but we don’t have anything named after him.

Except for those people who actually shelled out $19.95 (plus tax) to get a “Sammy Sosa Drive” sign. Which they can now use to whack themselves upside the heads while asking, “What was I thinking?!?”

  -30-

A half-century of Beatles memories, Obama, & what would Lennon be now?

I don’t really have a first-hand story about the Beatles in Chicago.

I wasn’t yet conceived when they did their first concert in 1964 at the International Ampitheater – although my late aunt Charlene was at that concert, and she always insisted that Paul McCartney himself was looking at her throughout the entire event.

I WAS JUST a couple of weeks away from being born on the day in ’65 when the Beatles took to a stage erected in the building that is now the parking lot just north of U.S. Cellular Field. Does that mean John Lennon’s spirit lingers alongside that of Nellie Fox?

By the time I was old enough to comprehend much of pop music, the Beatles had moved on (I grew up with people in junior high school who thought Kiss was an immortal rock band – instead of just a more obnoxious-looking variation on the camp of the Village People).

So as all the hype has been spewed in recent weeks about how it has been 50 years since the Beatles “conquered” the United States, a part of me has to admit it comes across more like a history lesson.

Not that I object to a history lesson. It is intriguing to see what catches the popular mindset at any time. And that there are times when it is something more substantial than a Justin Bieber.

ALTHOUGH TO BE honest, to read the initial coverage of the Beatles’ arrival at JFK Airport in New York so they could appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (50 years ago Sunday), it would seem that some thought of the “Mop Tops from Liverpool” as being equally inconsequential.



Next time you go to a ball game, keep in mind you may be parking your car atop the Beatles' one-time stage.

There would be people from a half-century ago who would be completely amazed at the concept that anyone today even remembers the Beatles any more than they do Gerry and the Pacemakers.



OBAMA: Beatle-esque?!?

Perhaps it’s because songs by the Beatles evolved onto a different level of pop music – perhaps elevating it to standards beyond schlock. If the Beatles had never gone beyond wanting to hold your hand, they likely would just be the story of the summer of ’64 like that “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey” that the aforementioned Pacemakers performed?

My own preference when the Beatles come up is to remember the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, which are at a level that no one in 1964 would have conceived of. Others usually come up with memories even later – although Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is just too much of a period piece album to listen to casually.

NOW, OF COURSE, the Beatles are more nostalgia than anything else. How many times can PBS re-run their broadcasts of McCartney appearing at the White House (and singing Michelle to the first lady herself)? That, and the time Mick Jagger got Obama to sing a couple of lines from Sweet Home, Chicago (but that’s another commentary).

Although that is more of a tribute to the Beatles’ lasting qualities. I don’t see anyone asking the Dave Clark Five to show up at the White House!

Insofar as Obama is concerned, a part of me thinks of his persona and the Beatles in similar ways. Obama had been on the Chicago scene since the mid-1980s, but didn’t really become known to the public at-large until that 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Just as many people in this country had no clue what a Beatle (that has to be a typo, they must have thought) was, until they saw that Sullivan broadcast. Those who knew the Beatles in Britain in '63 are like those people who read "Dreams from My Father" when it first came out in the mid-1990s.

ALTHOUGH BEATLE SPECULATION these days plays out in my mind (at least) as wondering what it would be like now if Lennon had lived a full life.

I am old enough (I was in high school) to remember his death, which seems even more nightmare-like because I happened to be taking a nap that day and awoke to see a television news report about his being shot in New York.

Remnants of their last Chicago visit

My first reaction was to think I was having a bad dream.

Unfortunately for all, it was merely more confirmation that reality is capable of coming up with things more unique, unusual and sordid than I ever could dream up in my own mind.

  -30-