(Listen to an audio version of this post)
My grandmother used to have a card on the wall of her kitchen that read, Don’t Complain – Things Can Always Get Worse!
I thought about grandma this week, when Illinois Republicans (apparently) nominated a tax hating, concealed-carry supporting, Creationism teaching, school voucher proponent for governor and Democrats saddled Gov. Pat Quinn with a girlfriend-beating (allegedly), steroid-shooting, child support-owing nominee for Lieutenant Governor.
Oy. What a state we’re in.
Bill Brady
Prior to Tuesday, no one expected State Senator Bill Brady to even finish a close second in the race for the Republican nomination for governor. He’s not well known outside his Bloomington district and he didn’t spend anywhere near the money of his main competitors, Sen. Kirk Dillard or Andy McKenna, to try to change that. His was truly a grassroots campaign and, when the dust settles, Brady’s success needs to be studied and understood.
At this writing, Brady leads Dillard by about 400 votes. It’s not clear how many of the thousands of yet-to-be-counted ballots are for the GOP primary, much less how many of those voters chose Brady or Dillard over the five other candidates.
Scott Lee Cohen (update: 7:20 PM Sunday, Cohen withdraws. (More here)
Scott Lee Cohen, who made millions owning pawnshops in the Chicago area, spent more than $2 million of his own money to become the Democratic nominee for Lt. Gov. There is no way to force him off the ballot. He has to agree to leave.
And leave he must. From FOX TV in Chicago:
What does this do for the Democrat’s chances in November?
“As far as the governor is concerned, they’re done,” said Paul Green, a political scientist at Roosevelt University.
Green says Quinn would need moves like Houdini to separate himself from his unwanted running mate in the public’s eye.
“The fact of the matter is that all the media would be covering would be this fellow, and it wouldn’t be dealing with the state’s revenue problems, tax problems, pension problems. It would be ‘how close did that knife get?” Green said.
Since pawnbrokers are known for always getting paid, it might cost the Democratic party some big bucks to make Cohen leave.
My advice; “Pay the man.” One way or another, Cohen needs to go, now.
Longtime Illinois political observer Jim Broadway also believes State Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan, should go. He thinks Madigan should resign from that post for allowing this farce to happen. Again.
This fiasco is not unprecedented. It also happened back in 1986 when two followers of political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche gained Democrat nominations. Gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III acted on principle, formed a third party (Illinois Solidarity), essentially conceding the general election to Gov. Jim Thompson. Madigan, also then Speaker, learned nothing.
And, not to brag, but we talked about the possibility of another LaRouche-type fiasco in this space just a few weeks ago.
Back to Brady
Anyone who thinks that Brady is too extreme to be elected isn’t living in Illinois in 2010. He will promise, as Rod Blagojevich did, that we can be just fine without raising taxes, despite a massive ($13 billion dollar) budget deficit.
As we wrote in October, a 2009 survey made it clear that Illinoisans prefer to believe the budget mess can be so9lved through budget cuts..
The poll released Wednesday by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute shows 65 percent of the voters oppose Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposal to raise the income tax from 3 to 4.5 percent. The same poll shows 56 percent of voters believe the state’s budget problems “can be solved by cutting waste and inefficiency.”
This popular notion is absurd on its face; if you laid off every state employee and zeroed out the state’s contribution to public education, you would still have a budget deficit.
Though Brady has positions on social issues that are outside the mainstream, he will try to redefine himself as a “compassionate conservative” who can bring jobs back to Illinois by “squeezing the fat” out of the state government budget by cutting ten percent from all spending, including education and human services.
Former Governor Jim Edgar has rejected that idea, saying, across-the-board cuts at that level will mean that “people will die.”
If Brady is the nominee, we will be providing our members with a lot of information about him. He will need to be seen as he truly is.
