{"id":292626,"date":"2010-02-08T10:02:24","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T15:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/illinoiseducationassociation.org\/?p=5718"},"modified":"2010-02-08T10:02:24","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T15:02:24","slug":"cohen-era-ends-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/292626","title":{"rendered":"Cohen era ends. Now what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Listen to an audio version of this blog<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Scott Lee Cohen era ended on Sunday night with a news conference held in a Chicago sports bar during the Super Bowl.\u00a0 In it’s way, a perfect ending to the latest in a series of episodes that have made Illinois politics a national joke.<\/p>\n

Cohen decided to withdraw as the nominee after he was spoken to by Illinois Democratic Party Chairman, Michael Madigan.\u00a0 Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that “conversation.”<\/p>\n

Cohen’s departure gives Madigan and the Democrats some flexibility as to who will be Gov. Pat Quinn’s running mate.\u00a0 Assuming they take a little time, they will have the advantage of knowing whether the Republican opposition will be State Senator Bill Brady or Sen. Kirk Dillard.\u00a0 Dillard trails by about 400 votes and Dillard backer, former Gov. Jim Edgar, has said he expects Brady’s lead to hold.<\/p>\n

If so, voters will have a clear choice in November.\u00a0 Brady’s positions on social issues are extremely conservative and he claims he can cut the state budget ten percent across the board to get the budget deficit under control.\u00a0 Of that strategy, Edgar says, “people will die” if additional cuts are made to human services providers , not to mention the devastating impact of further cuts in public education.<\/p>\n

Jim Broadway of the State School News service suggests Cohen has turned out to be a savior for the Dems:<\/p>\n

In dropping out, Cohen rescued Gov. Pat Quinn’s hopes of being elected to the job he got by default when ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich was impeached last year. Quinn still likely faces an uphill battle.<\/em><\/p>\n

He also removed a major distraction from the spring session of the General Assembly. Legislators face an FY 2011 budget gap of about $13 billion. They didn’t need such political comedy as a backdrop.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, by withdrawing from the state Democratic ticket, Scott Lee Cohen has done more for the people of Illinois than many current office holders.<\/p>\n

Can we build on this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Listen to an audio version of this blog) The Scott Lee Cohen era ended on Sunday night with a news conference held in a Chicago sports bar during the Super Bowl.\u00a0 In it’s way, a perfect ending to the latest in a series of episodes that have made Illinois politics a national joke. Cohen decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}