Election-year politics getting in your hair? Some answers to straighten things out
How do you know we’re getting close to the March 20 Illinois primaries?
You know because of all the politics in your hair.
Candidates of both parties are constantly screaming at us on TV and social media, and now your hair is so past redemption that you probably want to shave it all off and go full Mr. Clean.
Don’t. Just use this column to comb out your hair and it will be just fine.
Is Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives really a creature of Democratic boss Mike Madigan? Gov. Bruce Rauner says so on his commercials. So it must be true, right?
No.
A friend in Washington saw the Rauner ad against Ives and texted me, “So she’s a Madigan candidate?”
No, I told him. Absolutely not.
But when you have millions and millions to spend, like Rauner, you can say almost anything if you pay for it, and if media don’t call you out on it.
Ives, the conservative Republican from Wheaton who is challenging Rauner in the Republican primary for governor, is no Madigan toady. Or ally. Or minion.
The governor twisted her words from a debate the two had before the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. I was there. She crushed him in that one.
Yet now Rauner is using that commercial to make it seem as if she were defending Madigan.
It was Rauner who used Madigan as a shield in that Tribune debate, constantly bringing up Madigan almost every time he was asked a question he didn’t like. And Ives mocked him for it, saying, “There he goes, attacking Madigan again,” and so on.
Rauner took her mockery and twisted it. They were her words. But he twisted them. And I don’t see him being called out on it.
The reason she’s in the race is simple. Rauner broke faith with his own Republican Party by signing two controversial pieces of legislation: House Bill 40, allowing for taxpayer-funded abortions, and a “sanctuary state” bill to protect immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Illinois politicians for generations have operated with the belief that Illinois voters are stupid people who’ll believe anything they’re told.
It’s the reason why Boss Madigan — speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party — has been running things for decades.
Is J.B. Pritzker becoming a budding theologian as he chases the Democratic nomination for governor?
With a reported 25 percent or more of the Democratic vote still undecided, and with African-American votes key to the Democratic Party primaries, Pritzker has been busy.
He’s been scurrying, “reaching out” to African-American ministers.
He’s been “reaching out” (don’t you love that term?) ever since that FBI tape came out, the one in which he counseled now-imprisoned Gov. Rod Blagojevich about which African-American politician he should appoint to fill the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.
Pritzker said Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White would “cover you on the African-American thing,” and that White would be the “least offensive.” J.B. has since publicly apologized.
My sources keep telling me of meetings J.B. is having with ministers. Not in public, but in private.
I’m sure they’re merely discussing theology. But does J.B. fill the collection plate, or is he all about the hugs?
Does the #MeToo movement really want to go after Boss Madigan?
Madigan has been harshly criticized for his indifferent handling of sexual harassment allegations against his Democratic political aides and allies.
And many of those who keep calling for a truly “independent” investigation somehow keep forgetting that job should be done by the Illinois attorney general. But she happens to be his daughter, Lisa.
So where’s the #MeToo movement?
They’re nowhere near Madigan and his boys.
If Madigan were a Republican, I have no doubt they’d be protesting, holding marches and speeches. And not just women, but we’d see men in those fuzzy pink hats they wear when virtue signaling before news cameras against Republicans.
But when it comes to Democrats? Crickets.
It’s almost as if the #MeToo is all about partisan politics.
What do Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown and Joe Berrios have in common?
The Cook County Circuit Court clerk’s office was in the news when an employee told the feds that “the going rate” for a job with Brown was $10,000 paid to her bagman. Simmer down, it’s just an allegation to the FBI, not a conviction. Yet.
I bet you’re shocked. I bet you could never imagine something like this in Cook County.
Cook County Assessor Berrios, who is also the Cook County Democratic Party chairman, went to court last week on a different matter. His lawyers asked that property tax reduction attorneys be allowed to continue contributing big bucks to his campaign.
They work on cases before him. They contribute to his campaign. Nothing to see here, move along, this is Cook County.
Brown and Berrios are both machine Democrats. And this is what happens with one-party rule, decade after decade.
What’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $8.5 billion airport expansion deal really all about?
If you think this is just about airport improvements, a few more gates and happy passengers, you’re a moron.
This is about $8.5 billion of contracts. Emanuel is moving into re-election mode. And this move is a big one.
It would give Emanuel 8.5 billion ways to ask the guys who pour concrete and asphalt one simple question: “Who loves you, baby?”
Listen to "The Chicago Way" podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.
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