Senior citizens sure have clout in this state. They stared down lawmakers and Gov. Pat Quinn when it came to the possibility of losing their free mass transit rides. Sturdy legislators turned to Jell-o when facing the voting booth wrath of Illinois geezers denied gratis bus and train rides. Quinn, too, waffled after transit agencies thought they had an agreement to restrict the free rides to low-income seniors and half fares for other seniors.
For all of you who thought there was no free lunch, talk to Illinois pols. They fear seniors mainly because they vote. A lot. While the nation's youth vote may have propelled then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama into the White House, they only come out when they're energized on an issue or candidate. Seniors don't care. They just vote. A lot. Which is why seniors get so much free stuff and reduced rates for everything from hotel rooms to national park entrance fees.
A group of seniors storming Springfield sends shivers down the spine of normally unswayable pols. Which is why the two-year-old free rides for seniors 65 and older is still running. When faced with re-election prospects, pols err on the side of seniors and their growing numbers (see, Boomers, Baby).
Chicago Transit Authority officials believe the free rail rides instituted by former Gov. Rod "The Apprentice" Blagojevich has cost them some $60 million. They were hoping to recoup that. Guess again. Now the CTA is looking at service cuts and fare increases.
We like what one lawmaker unconcerned with geezer rage said: "There is no free ride on a bus that doesn't exist." Who said seniors are in their golden years? Not The Hound.
There's nothing like a Democrat scorned, The Hound always says. Take Lake County Democratic Party boss, state Sen. Terry Link of Waukegan. He's still in a snit over Sheriff Mark Curran jumping to the Republican Party.
So Link now has a candidate to fight fire with fire. He's tapped Waukegan criminal attorney Douglas Roberts to take on Curran, who once was a Waukegan criminal attorney and a Democrat. Says Link in today's Lake County News-Sun about Roberts' candidacy: "He's a real Democrat."
Like there's a litmus test for this in Lake County? A lot of Republicans running at the County Board level are actually Democrats in disguise, knowing they probably couldn't get elected in certain districts unless being a Republican. And, Curran, according to newsroom geezers, isn't the only Democrat who's jumped to the GOP side in past years.
Looks like Democrats' memories are as long as an elephant's. And, what happened to actual law enforcement types seeking the sheriff's job instead of lawyers? Maybe it's tough to make a living as a lawyer in a recession, eh?
Stay tuned. Candidate filing for countywide and state offices begins Monday in Waukegan and Springfield. The primaries are in February 2010 and the general election in November, which is when the real fun begins.
Those Democratic lawmakers in Springfield sure have some nerve. After rejecting the chance for voters to boot former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the curb last year, they now vote to put a gubernatorial recall measure on next year's ballot. And, like most of their backbones, this offering for voters surely is weak.
State Sens. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, who also doubles as Lake County Democratic chairman and is an announced candidate for lieutenant governor, and Michael Bond, D-Grayslake, decided to join the rest of their colleagues this time around and let us nobodies vote to get rid of a sitting governor. Except, if voters approve it, the law specifies that 30 members of the General Assembly must support the recall measure and then supporters would have to get at least 15 percent of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election.
And the kicker: It's only governor we can try to recall. Not, for instance state senators. Like most of what has been accomplished in Springfield this year, this is a nothing bill. Voters wold be wise to reject this bone tossed to us and make sure the candidates we elect next year won't be afraid to put the people's business before their political backsides.
Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk has had a bad few weeks of late. That's what happens when you decide to jump from the narrow confines of the 10th Congressional District and run for the U.S. Senate. Your every move is placed under the microscope. And there's that learning curve moving from a tiny district to the statewide stage.
The Highland Park Republican is being accused of flip-flopping on the "cap and trade" issue, whereby pollutants companies release would be capped, but they would be allowed to buy and sell them for more emissions. Sort of a mercantile exchange for industrial polluters. When Kirk was a congressman, he was one of a handful of Republicans to support the bill, mainly because he voted the narrow interests of his congressional district.
That's what congressmen do. They vote their districts. If they don't, they don't get re-elected. Senators are supposed to look at the big picture, the statewide canvas. Kirk says if first nominated and then elected next November, he will do that when it comes to "cap and trade."
Democrats have leaped on Kirk's "cap and trade" stance as changing his tune, while conservative Republicans, who haven't factored in a Senate or gubernatorial race since Peter Fitzgerald, are getting their pound of flesh from moderate Kirk. Fortunately, it is early for Kirk to rebuff these pre-campaign gaffes.
The only folks paying attention at this stage are political junkies and the opposition. Voters aren't focusing yet on any election, if early polls are any conclusion, and won't start concentrating on the Feb. 2 primary until after Jan. 1. There's plenty of time for the Kirk Express to get rolling across the Illinois prairies.
Republicans have targets of opportunity across the Land of Lincoln next year. Just don't get overconfident.
Lake County Democratic Chairman Terry Link plucked Carol Sente from the obscurity of the Vernon Hills Park District. Let's see if this parkie can survive a contested primary come February.
That's what it's looking like as Waukeganite Link, who also is the state senator from the 30th District, which includes Sente's 59th House District, cast the weighted votes for the Vernon Hills owner of a Deerfield architecture firm to replace Kathy Ryg in the Illinois House. That move has not made a testy Buffalo Grove Mayor Elliott Hartstein none the happier.
Hartstein had lobbied vociferously for the appointment, but was rebuffed. He also has said he is a candidate in the Feb. 2 primary noting that "a contested primary on both sides of the aisle is a good thing for the district." At least two Republicans also are expected to run for the GOP nomination when filing begins next month.
Some may recall Link, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Illinois lieutenant governor, threw his considerable political weight into another intraprimary squabble last year. That was the 60th House District fight between incumbent state Rep. Eddie Washington of Waukegan and Lake County Board District 12 Rep. Angelo Kyle, also of Waukegan. Link spent a lot of money backing Kyle and when the smoke cleared, Washington was an easy winner. Is there the possibility of back-to-back losses for the Dem chairman?
As for Sente, vice president of the Vernon Hills Park District, she certainly hasn't been static since being sworn into office last weekend by the county's only Democratic judge, Jay Ukena of Wadsworth. That should send a message to Hartstein that party folks are, for the time being, behind her. She is reopening the shuttered 59th District office next week and getting her name out amongst the electorate.
The soon-to-be fighting 59th is one of those gerrymandered districts, which dips a bit into Cook County, but most of the voters are in the Vernon Hills corridor, although stretching north into Park City and snips of Waukegan.
We will see sooner than later if Master Link still has the political touch.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn made a big deal last week of vetoing the campaign finance "reform" bill he originally proclaimed as a "landmark" piece of legislation. As The Hound has contended all along: Illlinois ain't ready for reform.
Nobody was happy with that "reform" bill, except for Gov. Flip-flop. Quinn certainly is looking bad when it comes to making proclamations and then having to backtrack when everybody else goes, "Huh? What's he talking about?"
What the veto means is there won't be any campaign finance reform before next year's round of elections, just like lawmakers and the governor planned it under the original "reform" measure which was passed on party lines. Democrats lined up to vote for any measure they could spin as "reform". That sure worked out well.
Remember, this is the party of Rod Blagojevich. They will need all the faux-reform measures they can muster to convince voters next year Democrats should remain in office. But the Blagojevich reformers gave us what was essentially the Incumbent Protection Act of 2009. It gave incumbents an advantage such as failing to cap in-kind donations and not limiting contributions by election cycle. And, of course, implementing the bill until after the 2010 elections.
So, campaign reform continues to "go round and round and round in the circle game". As Joni Mitchell put it: "We're captive on the carousel of time/We can't return we can only look behind from where we came."
The handlers for state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias are touting the results of an August poll his U.S. Senate campaign committee commissioned that shows him with a "solid lead over" 10th Congressional District Congressman Mark Kirk in a head-to-head matchup. The Democratic statewide officer should have a lead over Kirk at this time. After all, the Highland Park Republican represents only a sliver of Illinois, whereas the treasurer has his "Cash Dash" to give his office and name recognition.
But trumpeting a poll of only 805 Illinoisans reached by telephone isn't the largest of samplings in what will be a volatile contest, and especially this early. Of course, Giannoulias is showing his "lead" to other potential Democratic primary challengers for the Senate seat once held by President Obama.
The Giannoulias campaign certainly danced around those poll numbers, though, according to the report in Michael Sneed's column in the Aug. 23 Chicago Sun-Times. Sneed said a source says the treasurer has a lead "outside the margin of error of 3 percent" over Kirk. What, 4 percent? And what does this mean that his campaign told Sneed: "...even after a battery of equally weighted positives and negatives, Giannoulias still came out ahead." Does that mean a negative is a name with lots of vowels in it?
With the poll, state and national Democrats believe at this time Kirk will be the GOP candidate come next fall. Bet Kirk releases a poll soon showing him closer than the Giannoulias camp thinks after only being in the race for less than a month. This one is an election to watch. .
It's good to be the party chairman of an Illinois county, as state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, has found. You know most of the other party chairmen and can call your counterparts in the state's other 101 counties and ask them to support your political advancement. In this case, Sen. Link wants to be Lt. Gov. Link.
Illinois hasn't had a lieutenant governor since Pat Quinn was elevated to governor with the departure of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Have we missed one? The Hound doesn't think so. What does the lite guv do besides applaud the actions of the governor, as Quinn was fond of doing during the nearly two terms Blagojevich served?
If, as the late Texan John Nance Garner once said about the vice presidency being as worthless as a bucket of warm spit, or words to that effect, the office of lieutenant governor must be even lower on the political food chain. But folks really want to be lite guv so they must see some value in the office. As The Hound said, we haven't missed one for much of this year so do we really need one? Well, the state constitution says we need one, so we must.
As for Link, he has as good a chance as being first nominated and then elected lite guv as any of the other no-name candidates who might be thinking of making the statewide run. Lake County has foisted a Republican lieutenant governor on the rest of Illinois, we might as well offer them a Democrat as well.
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Yowza! Those Lake County pols are just announcing left and right for offices as we're in the midst of petition passing for the February 2010 primary races. So far, the Democrats look to have some formidable intraparty squabbles:
Like governor. Already there's two announced candidates, appointed incumbent Pat Quinn and state Comptroller Dan Hynes. The Hound hears there are others mulling a statewide run.
Like the 10th Congressional District. Without Mark Kirk seeking re-election, some Democrats are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with a crowded field come filing time this fall.
Like the District 8 Lake County Board race, where two heavyweight Dems have announced within the week. One, newly elected Waukegan city Treasurer John Schwab and the second, Waukegan Park District President Bill Durkin, son of former Democratic Mayor William Durkin. Durkin was the choice of the Lake County Democratic Central Committee to replace Waukegan Mayor Robert Sabonjian who left the County Board when he took office in May. He was rejected in favor of Collin O'Rourke. The young appointed incumbent so far has been below the radar if he is going to seek election to the remainder of the Sabonjian term.
Like the 59th House District. Without incumbent Kathy Ryg of Vernon Hills in the race, this is now a wide-open contest. She is jumping to the lobbyist side of the Springfield combine as president of the advocacy group, Voices for Illinois Children. Republican Dan Sugrue of Green Oaks, who lost handily to Ryg last year, decided prior to Ryg's announcement she'll resign Aug. 31, that he would take her on again. In '08, Sugrue threw his campaign together only seven months before the election. With a jump start and the conventional wisdom this is a GOP year, it will be interesting to see who surfaces to carry the Dem torch in the 59th District.
Yes, the hair on The Hound's neck is rising as the flurry of political announcements continues unabated. Game on!
Things must be pretty easy in the Waukegan treasurer's office if their newly elected boss can take time off and serve on the Lake County Board. If he is elected in November 2010, that is.
The Hound wonders if City Treasurer John Schwab, a retired podiatrist, might help city officials get out from under Waukegan's continuing budget crisis. He says his budget expertise will be a plus for the County Board.
At this point it is uncertain if Collin O'Rourke, appointed by Lake County Board Chair Suzi Schmidt to replace Waukegan Mayor Robert Sabonjian on the county's august governing body, will seek election to the unexpired term of Mayor Bob. The guy's only been in office less than a month, after all.
But then along comes Schwab, with one victory under his belt, and it was in April, who wants that $40,000 or so County Board salary, on top of his treasurer's pay.
Is The Hound the only one who thinks the good doctor seems to be more worried about his political future than the city of Waukegan's coffers? And, if the treasurer's job is part-time, why does Waukegan need one? Waukegan is a home-rule community. Get rid of this job at the next possible turn.
After all, the city already has a finance director. She used to work for Gurnee but won't as of Aug. 7. Or so The Hound has read. But then, there also is another guy who currently is finance director.
Waukegan is lucky. It appears they have two talented fiscal whizzes, and a treasurer who believes his knowledge of the city budget will be invaluable in representing District 8 voters on the County Board.
With so much skill then, riddle The Hound this: How come the city is wallowing in its current fiscal mess?
