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Few specifics - Now and 2002

Tuesday, Aug 8, 2006 - Posted by Rich Miller

The Tribune coverage of yesterday’s Topinka speech was the most upbeat, but still repeated the Blagojecich campaign mantra that Topinka has failed to offer specific proposals.

Republican candidate for governor Judy Baar Topinka offered business leaders Monday what she called an “hors d’oeuvres” version of her plans for increased spending on education and public works projects but offered no taste of how much it would cost taxpayers.

“I don’t have all the answers,” she told the annual meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Council at a downtown hotel.

And the Daily Herald claimed JBT missed a major opportunity.

Republican Judy Baar Topinka had a perfect opportunity Monday to spell out exactly what sheâ€™d do if elected governor â€” a vision critics from both parties say has been lacking from her campaign. […]

But instead of offering specifics on key topics like education and transportation to the Metropolitan Planning Councilâ€™s annual gathering, Topinka turned to the same line several times in her speech. â€œI donâ€™t have all the answers,â€ she said.

I went back and checked coverage of the 2002 MPC forum with Jim Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Here’s a telling paragraph from Crain’s.

Mr. Blagojevich said Illinois could come up with more money for schools by cutting budget waste, but he did not indicate how he would stare down legislators who might have their own priorities. He also called for integrating planning concerns into any decisions about building new roads and the like, and said the state should â€œfocusâ€ incentives for economic development in communities that have sufficient affordable housing.

And here’s how his education proposals were summed up.

First of all, I do not think Illinois provides enough money to local schools. I want to direct more of our resources to education. Back in 1977, when the Democratic governor was leaving and a new governor came along, 48 cents on every single dollar that was spent on a child’s education came from the state. After a generation of the same people, basically, with the same ideas and the same approaches, we’ve seen that go down to as low as 33 cents on the dollar.

I would codify that [51 percent of new state revenues being set aside for education] in a law, so that there is no flexibility; that any new dollar that comes from revenue growth, 51 cents, at least, should go to incrementally move that level of education funding upward.

There’s a study by Augenblick and Myers that suggests that student spending per pupil, two-thirds of them will do better in school, will actually perform at the levels and the standards that we require, if pupil funding is up to $5,000 or $5,500. In Illinois, we spend about $4,500 per child. Money alone, however, while it’s necessary and you cannot do it without the money, will not solve the big problems. And we need to focus our resources in the classroom. We need more teachers, we need to train them better, pay them better.

I just think it’s a question of leadership and priorities â€” where are you going to put your priorities â€” and I do not think that we need to raise taxes to get there. Having said that, a new administration has the opportunity … to get into that state budget, turn it upside down, go line by line, because I know â€” having been a legislator and now a member of the Congress â€” how the Legislature works.

Not exactly specific, except for the 51 percent of new state revenue proposal - which he never did.

20 Comments

- Truthful James - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 8:34 am:
Augenblick and Myers is the standard contractor which is employed by a satellite agency to the Illinois State Board of Education to use whatever regression analyses are necessary to prove that additional funding is necessary to pull school performance above the current abysmal levels. Teacher knowledge and skills are not part of the formulae.

Are you ready for this one. Sit down and hold your chair tightly. A&M has never failed to conclude that more money is needed. Yet every time more money is added performance does not rise.

The key measure is the ISBE’s testing which results in numeric showings of “grade level” performance. “X percent of a class is performing at grade level” You should know that ISBE at the same time is dumbing down the tests and norming up the results. It makes parents feel good, it does to know that their children are performing to grade level. Makes the teachers happy too.

- Truthful James - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 8:35 am:
And by the way, by international standards our high school math and science is at the relative bottom.

- Cassandra - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:15 am:
Sigh. Why does she have to say she doesn’t have all the answers. This is a campaign, for heavens sake, and her opponent believes he has the answers to all known problems. We know neither of them does, but when she says it, it reinforces her image has an unsure, vacillating woman.

- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:23 am:
This election is about Blagojevich, but Democrats cannot win with that. So, they try to shift the focus towards Topinka, and thankfully, Topinka isn’t taking the bait.

Cry all you want about an opponent not being specific, but that is how elections are won by opponents.

As you clearly demonstrate, Blagojevich had never been specific during his 2002 run. He rode every issue right down the middle, even dissing his Democratic roots by proclaiming himself a Reagan voter.

The only folks frothing at this point are Democrats and reporters, (often the same thing), who want to play “gotcha” with Topinka so they can pull her down and protect their candidate.

We aren’t dumb. We didn’t expect Blagojevich to be specific when he ran in 2002 and did what we always did, place our vote based on perceptions. Voters perceived Blagojevich as a fresh start, a Democrat out to clean up state government after decades of Republican rule, a young man with a young family with enough Chicago ties to keep him safely on a leash to avoid embarrassments.

We were dead wrong about him. He is more corrupted than the old geezer he replaced, he fights within his own party and shows no loyalties, and he has ran our state debt to ungodly levels without showing concern about our children’s financial health. He shoots off his mouth and shows up late to nearly evey occassion. We were wrong, and now we have an opportunity to correct it.

That is what this election is about. His failures, not Topinka’s fuzziness.

- HANKSTER - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:28 am:
Rich: Are you really that biased in your favor of Topinka that your defense of her not having a plan for the state is “well Rod did not when he ran so its ok for her not to?” By this logic you would be ok with Topinka using the same hiring practices as the current administration under the defense of “well Rod did it too.” With all respect to you, its a very weak argument you are making in an attempt to defend Topinka and/or damage the Governor.

- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:38 am:
With all respect to you, Hanskter, that was a ridiculous and totally bogus analogy.

- HANKSTER - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:49 am:
I dont see how? Your clear defense of Topinka’s lack of a plan is based entirely on the fact that Blagojevich did not have a specific one when he ran so extending that logic it would be consistent to say that anything Topinka does that Blagojevich did/does is ok because he did/does it. Please let me know where am I missing the point because thats how I read it.

- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 9:52 am:
Because it wasn’t about Blagojevich, Hankster, it was about the media coverage.

- HANKSTER - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 10:04 am:
I guess I was confused since most of the 2002 stuff on here was him talking and the other paragraph seemed fairly similar to what was said today.

It didnt help that Topinka said some stupid comments like calling her first major policy speech â€œhors dâ€™oeuvres.” That invites questionsd about what the details of her plan(s) are.

- B Hicks - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 10:28 am:
Topinka knows the answer; sheâ€™s just not going to throw it out there. She is either going to raise taxes, cut services, or a combination of both.

What else is there?

The cat has been hanging around this thread, too.

- Anon - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 10:48 am:
Yes, and JIM RYAN LOST!!!

Keep those insightful comparisons coming.

- ChicagoCynic - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 11:25 am:
I agree that the media has accepted the Blagojevich spin about Judy not having any plans. But that criticism is coming not just from D’s but from R’s as well (and they tend to be angrier about it). She is running a piss poor campaign with no organization and no message. If Blago has been successful with the spin it is because there is an absence of counterspin from team Judy.

The R’s I know are enormously frustrated with her. I mean how difficult is it to get a committee of subject matter experts to volunteer their time to produce some position papers. It’s August for Petesake! I’ve been involved with numerous campaigns and numerous efforts to do precisely that. When I helped the Obama campaign, their 1st issues committee meeting to come up with position papers (based on the candidate’s ideology) was A YEAR before the primary. You get the feeling Judy’s people are furiously typing away even now.

Given her woeful fundraising, she’s got to do a better job campaigning and securing earned media, not worse. Increasingly her campaign is suspiciously similar to Eisendrath - no campaign at all, just a hope that Patrick Fitzgerald will bail you out with a blockbuster Levine plea deal and maybe a couple of blockbuster indictments. Even with that, she may still be toast.

It’s a sad commentary on how far the Republican party has fallen in Illinois.

- HH312 - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 11:59 am:
VanillaMan, I like your analysis. I heard Topinka yesterday and my take on it is not consistent with the “no specifics” spin of the Daily Herald or Tribune:

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/daily-harold/2006/08/08/what-topinka-said/

- Dem Voting R - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 1:18 pm:
I’ve made no attempt to hide the fact that the Current Occupant was a candidate I believed in and am sorely disappointed by. I feel that, on the basis of sheer personality, vigilance and common sense, Judy will govern better than he has, which is what I prize in a candidate - the ability to deliver after elected. Would I like more specific details from her? Yes, of course! A bold vision of how to finally separate politics from policy is where I would counsel her to go. But some of the posts above are right. If she said we’re going to do X, then Y - it would just let Blago’s PR machine jump all over it, distort it in those tasteless commercials, and perhaps backfire. Now Obama had/has Vision, so the majority of voters trust him. Judy obviously could go down that route and improve her responses to the negative barrage. And part of Vision is honesty - so what did she do in her speech? She was honest that the funding of education in Illinois is broken, but that political necessity will mean a real solution to that issue will not come overnight. She knows a tax trade-off won’t fly, even if she’d prefer it as a solution. That is the kind of common sense and honest that make me continue to believe in her candidacy even when I question some tactical and strategic decisions. Americans, in the end, vote for who they Believe the most. Hopefully, the folks of this State will see who that is come November.

- Skeeeter - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 2:06 pm:
It’s all the Republican’s fault.

- Jaded - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 2:33 pm:
Why does she have to make promises and have proposels. Jim Edgar’s popularity is still way off the charts, and he was basically a steward for 6 of the 8 years he was Governor.

How about if she said this, “Unlike my opponent, I WON”T make promises I CAN”T keep. There are a lot of things I would like to do as Governor, such as increase school funding for kids, fully fund pensions, expand health insurance coverage for women and children, increase economic development grants, etc., however unlike my opponent, I realize I can’t do these things with a $3 billion deficit. Here is what I won’t do. I won’t send the citizens of Illinois reeling deeping into debt. I won’t increase GRF spending with new programs until I have illiminated the deficit and until the state can pay its bills on time (unlike by opponent). I won’t borrow from one fund to pay for programs I create solely for press purposes, and I won’t give millions of dollars away for baseball stadiums while schools in that very area are being denied construction grants. Also, I don’t want to raise taxes, but because of the fiscal practices of the last 7 years, I may have no other choise”.

Does anyone think she could win if that was her stump speach?

- B Hicks - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 2:43 pm:
No

- Failure - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 4:05 pm:
Jaded…don’t quite your day job, leave politics to the professionals. Thanks.

- Jaded - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 4:57 pm:
Thanks Failure, I will take that into consideration. What with a name like that, “Failure”, how could I not take your advice. Wait, Wait, Wait…now it makes since…”Failure”…is that you Rod?

- Jaded - Tuesday, Aug 8, 06 @ 5:15 pm:
thanks B Hicks. My point exactly.

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