Illinois held its primaries for both Democrats and Republicans yesterday.
The reports of voter turnout are somewhat mixed: early voting continues to increase each election, while the election day turnout seems to have been low this time around. I voted mid-morning yesterday, which typically isn't a busy time at the precinct, but even taking that into account, it was pretty dead: there was one other guy turning in his ballot as I walked in, and after that I was the only voter there. The election judges informed me I was the 32nd voter at the precinct; there have been other elections in which that number would have been reached before people began their morning commutes. My wife voted after work and reported taking a paper ballot because all the electronic-voting machines were in use, so it seems it did pick up later in the day.
Republican gubernatorial primary. The headline races in Illinois were the two parties' primaries for governor. Illinois is a blue state but its current governor, Bruce Rauner, is a Republican. Rauner had been elected four years ago as a reform candidate. Democrats were particularly vulnerable that election cycle because the state was (and still is) in terrible fiscal shape. The fiscal crisis has been building for decades and has many fathers, but Democrats bore the brunt of blame because they had occupied the governor's mansion for a decade and had controlled both houses of the legislature for many years. Rauner has the socially moderate profile of Republicans who have had some statewide electoral success in recent years. But he's widely considered to have been ineffective as governor - National Review famously tagged him "The Worst Republican Governor in America" last year. He also angered and alienated social conservatives in his own party a few months ago by signing a bill presented to him by the Democratic legislature that increased state funding of abortions. This was viewed in conservative circles as a betrayal, because Rauner, who is pro-choice, had reached a truce with them during the previous election cycle in which they would support his candidacy so long as he didn't pursue a social-issues agenda.
So, in the wake of Rauner's alleged betrayal of social conservatives, he was challenged in this primary by social conservative Illinois House member Jeanne Ives. Ives is young, a West Point graduate, a pretty strong communicator, and staunchly anti-abortion. But she entered the primary pretty late, and she was virtually unknown outside her district. She garnered a good deal of publicity, not all of it positive, by running a commercial that lampooned Rauner's socially moderate positions on abortion, immigration and gender identity.
Rauner seems to have defeated Ives yesterday, but it wasn't a rout. The vote totals show Rauner with about 51% of the Republican vote, and and Ives with 48%. This was a good deal closer than the Rauner camp had hoped, and probably doesn't bode well for his chances in the general election, as it seems to illustrate that the social conservative wing is still pretty disgruntled with him.
Democratic gubernatorial primary. The Democratic race for governor had its own set of interesting story lines. Rauner's election four years ago served as a wake-up call to Democrats, although perhaps not in the way that many Illinois voters had hoped: Rauner was elected on a reform platform, but the lesson that many Democratic leaders seemed to draw was, "Holy smokes, we just got outspent by a rich guy. We need to find a rich guy of our own." They're not wrong in their assessment of Governor Rauner, who was a hedge fund bazillionaire before running for governor, and spent many millions of his own dollars to fund his successful campaign. So Democratic leaders went out and recruited a wealthy candidate for this cycle: JB Pritzker, scion of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt Hotel chain and has many other financial interests. Pritzker, like Rauner four years ago, is new to politics. It quickly became apparent that Pritzker was the choice of the Democratic Machine, which meant that he had the backing of Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, the boss of the machine and the single most powerful person in the State of Illinois. As expected, Pritzker self-funded his candidacy - according to some reports, he spent as much as $35 million of his own money on the race.
Even though Pritzker had the backing of the Democratic organization and bottomless personal wealth which he was spending freely, he had a half-dozen or so primary rivals. Two of them emerged as his main challengers: Chris Kennedy and Daniel Biss. Kennedy is one of the Kennedys, a son of the legendary Robert Kennedy. Perhaps readers of NewGathering aren't aware that the Kennedy clan has established a Chicago branch; this is because, until about 20 years ago, the Kennedy family owned the Merchandise Mart, a stupendous building in downtown Chicago which served as one of the family's chief sources of income. Like Rauner and Pritzker, Kennedy is a political neophyte and personally wealthy. Naturally, the prospect of a Kennedy as governor has been catnip to the Chicago media, and Kennedy also ran a creditable campaign: he came across as a principled and independent progressive. He earned the endorsement of many newspapers throughout the state, and he exhibited Kennedy toughness in the face of Machine attacks on his candidacy. Had I voted in the Democratic primary, I would have voted for him. Some members of my family did vote for him.
Daniel Biss is a state senator who staked out the Bernie Sanders territory in this primary. Unlike his chief rivals, he is not personally wealthy - a circumstance he used to his political benefit in the campaign. Like Sanders, Biss attracted the support of progressives and young people. At least one of the college-age young persons in my household voted for him.
Pritzker was far ahead in the polls during much of the primary campaign, but in the last couple of months, both Kennedy and Biss inched closer to him. Pritzker absorbed barrages of media assaults by both of his opponents, and also from expected GOP rival Rauner, who didn't wait until the general election to begin running negative ads, including an effective series that played FBI recordings of Pritzker cutting deals with disgraced former governor and current jailbird Rod Blagojevich. But the results yesterday show Pritzker winning pretty comfortably, albeit with less than a majority - as I write this, he is standing at 46% of the vote, with Kennedy and Biss both in the mid-20s. We see here something that is observable in many primary elections: the third candidate spoils the upset possibility for the challenger. As much as I like Kennedy, it's difficult not to conclude that, had he chosen to sit out this cycle, Pritzker may not have cruised to the easy win he did yesterday.
Illinois 3rd US Congressional District. I had written previously here at NewGathering about the Democratic primary for the Illinois 3rd US House district, in which incumbent Dan Lipinski, a conservative Democrat, was challenged by progressive first-time candidate Marie Newman. Lipinski holds views that are not mainstream Democratic Party views on abortion and immigration, but had the support of most labor organizations, including police and firefighter unions; many of those public-service employees live in his district, and in Cook County, organized labor support frequently is decisive. Newman's campaign was awash in funding from progressive outside sources, and she also had the support of the SEIU. As I write this, Lipinski is clinging to a very narrow lead - reportedly just a few hundred votes - and Newman hasn't conceded yet. It's possible that, had this election had the higher turnouts that happen during presidential election years, Newman would have won. I wouldn't be surprised to see her back in 2020.
Other races. The winning GOP candidate for state Attorney General, Erika Harold, is a former Miss America who used her beauty-pageant winnings to pay for her Harvard Law School tuition. She seems to be respected as an attorney, although it surfaced during the primary that she answered one of those beauty pageant questions by stating that she wouldn't allow same sex households to adopt children. But she clarified during the campaign that her position has changed and she now strongly supports same sex adoption. Perhaps not surprisingly, the issue didn't seem to hurt her in a GOP primary. Her Democratic opponent will be Kwame Raoul, an African American candidate who succeeded Barack Obama in Obama's state senate seat when Obama was elected to the US Senate in 2006. This cycle, Raoul won a crowded Democratic Attorney General primary with considerably less than 50% of the vote. So Illinois' next Attorney General will be an African American (Harold also self-identifies as African American).
And Cook County voted to legalize marijuana. The resolution was non-binding, but is expected to help the effort to make pot legal throughout the state. I voted for legalization, reasoning that it's better to make it completely legal and tax it.
Updates 3/21/2108 11:36 pm ET:
1. Marie Newman has now conceded in the Illinois 3rd US House District race with Dan Lipinski; the final tally shows him winning by a couple of percentage points. She has done nothing to quell speculation that she may run again in 2020, and is being urged to do so by backers both inside and outside the district.
2. In my rundown of the Democratic gubernatorial primary, I mentioned that Democratic primary winner JB Pritzker spent as much as $35 million of his own money in the race. Probably it struck you what an absurd number that is - absurdly low. In fact, news sources are now reporting that Pritzker spent as much as $70 million to win about 45% of the Democratic vote. In fairness to Pritzker, his Republican opponent and fellow plutocrat, Governor Bruce Rauner, spent $50 million to win about 51% of the Republican votes against a hitherto-obscure opponent. Neither guy is close to going broke yet, so expect the law of diminishing returns to continue as both candidates scatter the $1,000 bills around the political landscape like grass seed coming out of a lawn spreader between now and November.
The Ds remain brain dead. With hourly tweets showing the absolute stupidity of electing the rich guy who has never kissed a baby or slapped a sweaty back, the Ds nominated a rich guy who has never kissed a baby or slapped a sweaty back.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the ultimate winner gets to go to prison. Isn't that the history of Illinois governors?
I ask this as a serious question: is income inequality a politically effective issue to run a campaign on? From where I sit, rich guys seem to do okay in elections. Bernie Sanders deserves a lot of credit for putting the issue on the front burner - but he lost. Of course, if the Clinton campaign hadn't put its thumb on the scales in the Democratic primary in 2016, perhaps he would have won.
DeleteIn Illinois this time around, Daniel Biss absolutely played the income-inquality card in slamming both Pritzker and Kennedy - but he lost, too.
Jim, Just thinking out loud here. Bernie proved there is a constituency to be built around income inequality. But it isn't a majority. Trump won with a constituency built around xenophobia; it isn't a majority but it was enough to win.
DeleteThis is the question Thomas Franks tried to answer in his book What's the Matter with Kansas. I am not sure he succeeded. I just finished another book in that genre, Janesville by Amy Goldstein. It's a granular look at what happened to families after the big GM plant closed in Paul Ryan's home town. One granule: As Mitt Romney's running mate, Ryan lost Janesville, even his home precinct. But he was re-elected, and re-elected again and again, to the House where he continues to push Romney-type policies that tend to exacerbate income inequality. Janesville is still a blue city, barely, but for Congress it votes like Kansas even as the former GM workers work multiple jobs for less money than they made under union contracts.
Tentatively: Years of propaganda by wealth's hired guns have convinced too many people that man is made for the economy, not the economy for man, and there is nothing a person -- or people collectively (heavens! that would be like a socialist union!!) -- can do about it. The new Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, said yesterday that he is surprised wages haven't been rising, since CEOs say it is getting harder to find workers. But, Powell assured "the markets," the Fed will watch pay closely, and if it starts increasing, the Fed will raise interest rates and cool off that threat. And a million former day traders, sitting in their former stock market bars that are sports bars again, nodded sagely and felt that "the economy" is in good hands.
Always a pleasure to read the comments and analyses of a journalist, Tom. If mammoths had hired propagandists to convince paleolithic hunters that they should hunt only individually and not as organized teams, there would have been no mammoths brought down by humans. The 1% or maybe 0.1% are the modern day mammoths, rabid ones. Only collective entities like unions can bring down these mammoths. So, keep 'em atomized!
DeleteTom - regarding the possibility of collective action: I just think that, whatever this particular age is, it isn't an age of solidarity anymore.
DeleteAt the risk of tying multiple topics together: I think this is one of the reason that Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, have been leaking members. We don't care nearly as much about our neighbors as we used to. It seems to me that we don't perceive that we need to rely on them, and vice-versa. Somehow self-sufficiency (or, in the case of many Americans, self-insufficiency) has become the cardinal virtue.
Jim, Yeah, Robert Putnam sorta proved that the age of solidarity is over with Bowling Alone. (Seeing what's happening in bowling was a good micro way to get at the macro problem.) I love quoting Pope Benedict in On Christian Hope: "No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone." You would be surprised at the number of American Catholics who are certain that cannot be anything the Church teaches.
DeleteUntil people get over their "me-and-my-Iphone" feelings, they will just have to take what they get willy-nilly because they and their Iphones can't challenge the people who benefit from The Way It Has To Be (or as one of the prophets of individualism used to say, There Is No Alternative). The counsels of dispair.
To Tom's mention of "What's Wrong with Kansas," and apparently Illinois as well: How many voters on the short end of the inequality stick have come to believe in 'Supply-Side' 'Trickle Down,' ideas about how the economy works? If they just behave, some of that largess will rain down on them thanks to Nobles Oblige and all of that.
DeleteBowling Alone is a great book - should be required reading for anyone who engages in the pastime of wondering "What the hell is wrong with the world today, anyway, and how have we run so far off the rails?"
DeleteMargaret - I don't believe in trickle-down as you've described it. I do believe that one of the fundamental problems with the labor movement as it has worked in the US is that it is overly adversarial. The tech companies that seem to have spawned our current 0.1% seem to foster more collaborative cultures (to a point). That works reasonably well for white-collar professional types like me. For us, new jobs have trickled down. But the guys and girls who stopped going to school after high school, or didn't make it through high school, typically don't have the qualifications and skills (both hard and "soft") to be employable in that sector of the economy.
DeleteJim, Maybe European unions are less adversarial because there it is not considered a sin against Adam Smith to have a union representative sitting on the board of directors. Here, we began and ended with an adversarial situation, not unlike the way we seek justice in the courts. (Of course, now in the courts, it's Money's seven hired guns and their staff against a charity attorney or the public prosecutor, as the case may be.)
Delete?Illinois 3rd US Congressional District?
ReplyDeleteLipinski v. Newman. I assume she did better than she would have last time, if she had run. You predict she may be the winner next time, if she runs again. Question: Are demographics shifting in this district (or have they shifted)? I take it that this has been labor union, ethnic, and Catholic territory for a long time. Are those generations moving to Florida to be with Tom Blackburn or are they dying out. And/or is this gentrifying territory?
Margaret - yes, I agree with your portrait of what this district used to be, and yes, it is changing. For example, Bridgeport isn't as monochromatically Irish American as it once was (more Asian Americans spilling in from Chinatown, more Spanish-speaking residents spilling in from Pilsen), and some of the Southwest suburbs are more racially diverse now.
DeleteThe district is also changing psychographically, which is to say that Democratic blue collar people aren't the same as they used to be. The trends that we discuss would pertain there: Democrats are trending less religious, more diverse, and more progressive on social issues. And probably less unionized. And yes, I do think that part of it is intergenerational change, as the older union members retire and move away or die.
When I was a kid and a runner for my precinct-captain aunt, it seemed to me that Chicago was a polity unto itself, and that the rest of Illinois was another political world, really another country. Hence, all Chicago wanted from any governor or from Springfield in general was non-interference. I take it those days, if accurately remembered!, are over.
DeleteThe polity-unto-itself factor is still true culturally and psychologically, but not financially. Chicago depends on State money for schools and on state and federal money for public assistance.
DeleteOne of the criticisms of Mayor Emmanuel, who I think has done a reasonably good job all in all, is that the downtown, shiny, glitzy parts of the city are doing pretty well, but the neighborhoods are languishing. Chicago has a lot of long-term, structural problems. It hasn't gone the way of Detroit yet, and maybe it never will, but the risk is there that it will.
Charles P.Pierce on Pritzker: "As near as I can tell, he’s nothing more than a wallet bulging with cash and an ego bulging with ambition." Can't wait to hear what Pritzker's enemies have to say.
ReplyDelete"If they're rich, how dumb can they be?"
DeleteThat's how our culture exempts the rich from normal scrutiny. Let's hope the lessons we could learn from the Trump presidency will make voters a bit smarter and a bit more cautious.
I am not sure that being smarter in the sense of higher IQ or more post-graduate degrees makes someone a better political operator. Trump was perceived, at least by his base, to have street smarts. Maybe he's got some of that, but I am not sure how important that is, either. I'd say he's pretty lacking in generalship. Doesn't seem to have a strategic bone in his body.
DeleteYou mean if someone's a bully, a cheat, and a deadbeat, they have "street smarts"?
DeleteCould go look it up in the urban dictionary, but doesn't it mean someone who is cogniscent of the world (street) around them. I would say the previously mentioned aunt-precinct captain was street smart, in that she know everyone on the block, what they needed and what she could, and couldn't, do for them. That's part of the venerable, "all politics is local."
Tom: re: Charlie Pierce's take on Pritzker: in fairness to the candidate, he does have a platform. He wants to change the Illinois income tax from flat to progressive. He wants to expand health care, including a true public option. And he wants to legalize marijuana. A couple of those items probably are more realistic than the sitting governor's checklist when he came into office four years ago; at the top of that list was to establish term limits (which would have the desirable - to Republicans - effect of forcing Mike Madigan into retirement from the legislature). A few months into Rauner's term, the state Supreme Court declared term limits unconstitutional. The same thing happened to a proposal to reduce pension obligations to state retirees; the pension obligations are at the heart of the state's debt morass. After that, Rauner spent the next three and a half years saying, in effect, "I've got nothing." - until he signed the abortion-expansion bill that drew the ire of Ives and other social conservatives.
DeleteIn Illinois, it's fairly simple for the governor: cooperate with Mike Madigan and get things done (but make the state even broker than before), or don't cooperate with Mike Madigan and get nothing done.
Margaret - re: street smart - I'm sure your aunt, who literally had been around the block more than once, had aspects of it - I don't doubt she knew her precinct and understood the people in it. I think that, in general, the term is supposed to designate someone who understands the power relationships in the community, can size up a stranger, read motives, tell when someone is trying to flim-flam them, etc. In the case of Trump, I believe that over the years he's sought to cultivate a reputation (cult?) that he can't be intimidated by competitors or bankers or unions, he knows how to make problems go away from building inspectors and the mob, and so on.
DeleteSeeking to describe here, not defend Trump. In point of fact, I don't think Trump has demonstrated much toughness in office (except for blustery rhetoric), and hasn't come across as particularly smart in any sense of the word. He's what we get when we elect an old man who sits in front of Fox News all day. Oh, and who didn't want to be president and whose heart doesn't really seem to be in it.
I also suppose that the world is peopled with other leaders who have risen to their positions via ruthlessness and true emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. I believe our president is overmatched in those areas.
Could we agree that Hillary did NOT have street smarts? I am not sure Bernie did either. But I'm going out on a limb here and suggesting that maybe Joe Biden does....
DeleteMore on Illinois 3rd:
ReplyDeleteHere is a sum up of where Lipinski's and Newman's support came from "Newman had help in her fight, including support from progressive groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America; Emily’s List, which helps elect pro-choice Democratic female candidates to office; and Planned Parenthood. But Lipinski had help too, including a seven-figure investment from the centrist groups No Labels and Country Forward, and a six-figure spend by the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony List, which bought Facebook ads, dispatched canvassers to knock on doors, and sent direct mail asking voters to “imagine someone killing a 7-pound baby for any reason, or no reason at all.”
Is abortion going to be the big issue in these 2018 face-offs? Not inequality. Not Trump. Not Yemen!!
From Vox: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/22/17148626/2018-illinois-primary-election-marie-newman-dan-lipinski-trump
"Is abortion going to be the big issue in these 2018 face-offs?" If that's the case, it's how to guarantee that absolutely nothing gets done about absolutely anything, including abortion. Maybe it's a Russian plot.
DeleteBTW, the GOP spending bill fully funded Planned Parenthood for something like the 6th time.
"BTW, the GOP spending bill fully funded Planned Parenthood for something like the 6th time."
DeleteDemonstrating once again, the Republicans are Dems lite not only on contraception, but on abortion.
Margaret - I had never heard of No Labels nor Country Forward before. It seems that Country Forward is a PAC affiliated with No Labels that focuses on Congressional races. No Labels seems to be a group dedicated to centrism - apparently they see themselves as trying to be a counterweight to the trends that are moving Democrats farther to the left and Republicans farther to the right. They seem to have contributed to Conor Lamb's recent victory in Pennsylvania, but they'll also support candidates who run against Republicans whom the group views as too right-wing; they funded the campaign a few years ago to knock off Freedom Caucus member Tim Huelskamp.
DeleteI'm gleaning all this from this write-up at Roll Call.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/outside-groups-lipinski-newman
No Labels doesn't identify their major donors at their website, to the best I can tell; I am wondering if Clinton money might be involved in it. No Labels also supports a Congressional group known as the Problem Solvers; a press release on its website announces that Susan Collins and Joe Manchin recently joined. So pretty middle of the road.
https://www.nolabels.org/
Abortion as an issue hasn't gone away, no matter how exhausted some of us may be by the issue.
DeleteNeither is immigration. That is Trump's signature insight, the thing that allows him to claim the title of the smartest guy in the room.
Jim, Susan Collins and Joe Manchin have to wear the centrist label because they can't get elected as all-in, 100 percenters in their parties. Do you think Manchin could vote like (or for) Bernie Sanders in West Virginia and win? I can forgive him a lot for taking on Don Blankenship when the world around him was ready to do the usual, which would be treating the preventable deaths of 29 miners as business as usual rather than deadly disdain for regulations. Blankenship has done his stinking one year in prison for killing 29 people (the jury expected him to get more) and is running for -- are you ready?-- the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate! From Roy Moore to Don Blankenship! And I have to hear how evil Nancy Pelosi is.
DeleteDoes anybody really think, by the way, Pelosi could get elected in HER district as a Collins-type centrist?
Admittedly, there's a double standard at work here and I'm guilty of it myself. Democrats are judged against a scale applied to human beings. Republicans are judged against a scale applied to orcs.
DeleteTom - re: Manchin, Pelosi and centrism: I guess I'm not seeing your point. I'm probably naive, but I consider Collins and Manchin to be genuinely in the middle of the current ideological spectrum. (Maybe in another era they would have been to the right of the center?) As I understand this No Labels group, that's the sort of candidate they would wish to support. I also assume Pelosi is who she presents herself to be ideologically. She's pretty liberal by today's standards; I expect she's the profile that No Labels might seek to primary with someone further to the right, if they thought that there was a chance that someone further to the right could win in her district (I doubt that's the case, but I don't profess to understand her district).
DeleteManchin, as a Democrat in Appalachia, and Collins, as a Republican in New England, would seem to suit their electorates better than, say, Sherrod Brown and Tom Cotton would in those respective states.
To connect this up to the original topic: there was a lot of talk among Republicans in Illinois that, no matter how mad they are at Rauner and how appealing Ives seemed as an alternative, picking Ives would essentially be a political suicide pact for the general election, because there is no way that someone that conservative can be elected statewide in Illinois.
Jim: Thanks for the write up of No Labels. Had not seeped into my overcrowded attention span.
Delete"The outside group tied to No Labels that spent on Lipinski’s behalf interpreted his victory, combined with Democrat Conor Lamb’s in Pennsylvania’s 18th District last week, as a sign that voters want to back moderate candidates.
"Lipinski benefited from spending from United for Progress, a Democratic super PAC that falls under the umbrella organization Country Forward — the political affiliate of No Labels that exists to play in congressional races. The group first got involved in Illinois’ 3rd District in July 2017, well before the contest was on the national radar. The group said it eventually invested $1.3 million in the race.
“The DCCC left him for dead. Nobody came to his aide with the exception of our efforts and some canvassing from Susan B. Anthony List,” said Matt Kalmans, a strategist for Country Forward. “It’s a perfect case of why these kinds of efforts are so important.
"The 3rd District race is the third contest Country Forward has gotten involved in since 2016, and in the wake of Lipinski’s victory this week, the group’s donors are committed to playing in dozens of other races this year."
"BTW, the GOP spending bill fully funded Planned Parenthood for something like the 6th time"
DeleteBut that is so yesterday. Today, our esteemed President is threatening to veto the bill, thus shutting down the government and throwing the country into some pre-Holy Week chaos. Oh, wait - by imposing tariffs on China and turning over his State Department and Security Council leadership as he's prepping (or not prepping, because prep work is so boring and interrupts his TV watching) for a face-to-face meeting with the North Korean psychopath, he's already pitched us into chaos.
Btw, the reasons given for shutting down the government are that (a) there is no border wall funding and (b) there is no solution for DACA folks. Focus on (b) for just a moment. Granted that it's a bit much to expect any sitting president, not to mention his entire administration, to be able to stretch their memories all the way back to two months ago, when the loyal minority forced a short-lived shutdown over the same DACA situation. That shutdown was such a political debacle for Democrats that they collectively broke the 4 minute mile barrier running away from it. But Trump sees himself as the modern-day Midas, whereby everything he touches turns to political gold, a view contradicted only by every single word and deed of his presidency, so it's entirely reasonable for him to expect the opposite outcome this time.
Look on the bright side of this. No budget..no money for John Bolton to start wars in Iran and North Korea...or even Russia, which he probably has on his to-do list.
DeleteOn the other hand, what if Congress got its act together and over-rode a veto. What are the chances of that. Anyone taking bets?