* Considering that Bill Brady has already run TV ads, a website counter-punch ain’t exactly sufficient. But the Democratic Governor’s Association has put up a new site blasting Brady. So, let’s give it a whirl and rate it.
* I know the spring session isn’t actually, completely, totally over yet (then again, maybe it is), but who do you think were the biggest winners and losers? Explain, please.
* The generally accepted rule of thumb when watching campaign coverage, particularly downstate, is that you can expect local newspapers will be far better at it than the local TV stations. But check out how WSIL TV covered GOP lt. governor nominee Jason Plummer’s campaign stop…
The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor visited southern Illinois Friday. Jason Plummer began the morning at a prayer breakfast, then hit the bocce ball court at Herrinfesta Italiana.
The candidate has come under fire recently for refusing to release his tax returns. Jason Plummer is the only candidate running for Lieutenant Governor or Governor who has not released his tax forms. News 3 tried to find out why, but that response never really came. When News 3 asked Plummer if he would release his tax forms, he turned the tables and questioned transparency in the Quinn administration.
“How come he hasn’t asked the members of his own party,” Plummer asked. “How come he hasn’t asked his hand-picked appointees that impact public policy about that issue?”
Plummer attended the morning’s prayer breakfast before making his way to the HerrinFesta Italiana Bocce Complex, where he participated in the Robert A. Ferarri Corporate Division Bocce Tournament. He said he frequently visited Southern Illinois during the Republican primaries, but Friday was his first trip to HerrinFesta.
“This is great. Somebody asked, ‘Have you ever played bocce ball?’ and I said, ‘Nowhere this nice,’” Plummer said. “I’ve played a lot in front yards and back yards, but this is phenomenal.”
Plummer, the 27-year-old from Edwardsville, has thus far refused requests to release his income tax returns, a subject that has become a political right of passage for serious candidates. Here Plummer says it would put his business interests at a “competitive disadvantage,” in that it would involve releasing sensitive information about his family’s company and its investors. Brady trotted out the same objections and then released the data anyway, under pressure to do so, if under overly controlled circumstances.
Look, Plummer is applying to be a heartbeat away from becoming the state’s CEO. And it was the Brady/Plummer campaign crew, after all, that questioned whether Attorney General Lisa Madigan, now first in line of succession with no one occupying the lieutenant governor’s seat, owed it to voters to release her tax data. She did, and her GOP opponent this fall is following suit. What’s good for the goose …
Beyond that, this is just a matter of Illinois voters deserving to know what they might be getting in Plummer. It should be no surprise to anyone who seeks high public office that it comes with some privacy sacrifices. Plummer has virtually no public record to judge. At 27, how much can he have to hide?
* By now, you’ve all heard about the Mark Kirk award controversy. Of everything I read, heard and saw, this video really did it for me. It’s Congressman Mark Kirk during a congressional committee hearing claiming he was the “Navy’s “Intelligence Officer of the Year in 1998.” Listen and watch closely as he emphasizes the award and the exact date, both of which are incorrect…
That video was from March of 2002. He has mentioned the award countless times during his congressional career.
Kirk has made the claim about the award over and over during the years, including to the Sun-Times and the Tribune back when he first ran for Congress. Nowhere did he ever say that a private group awarded the citation (although the Navy does officially nominate recipients), nor that it was his unit which received the award and not himself.
Kirk was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for his Kosovo service in 1999.
As I told subscribers this morning, notice that the phrase “combat service” has been dropped as well. That’s a big military no-no. Bernie Schoenburg wrote a little about this back in January…
The wording of campaign material obviously needs to be watched carefully, to make sure what is said is the same as what it seems to say.
For example, a flier for U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Highland Park, who is running for the U.S. Senate, says: “A Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, Mark served over Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Served over?” What does that mean? ]…]
Kirk, calling from Washington, D.C., Wednesday, said his record referred to flights he was on. The planes were based in Turkey, he said.
“I entered Yugoslavia without a passport in a U.S. Navy aircraft, but didn’t land,” he said. “We were conducting combat operations.” That was in 1999, he said.
Cmdr. Danny Hernandez, the Navy’s assistant chief of information, said for several days last week that he was having trouble finding records to clarify the matter. Then on Friday, he said Kirk, an Appropriations Committee member who co-chairs an electronic warfare working group, had changed his Web site to incorporate a different account of the award.
Isn’t it a little bit weird that the Navy would wait until after Kirk had changed his website to get back to the reporter? I had a similar experience with the Navy months ago when I wrote about Kirk posting on his campaign Twitter page from the War Room (which Kirk has claimed he commanded, but actually doesn’t.) The Navy said they’d get back to me after they took a look into the matter, but never did. I followed up with e-mails and calls, but never heard back.
#1: Giannoulias Provided Story Diminishes Kirk’s Outstanding Service
First, the Giannoulias-provided story diminishes Kirk’s Kosovo service by describing him only as “the intelligence officer for a single squadron at Aviano.” In fact, Kirk took charge of four squadrons and served as the lead officer for a combined intelligence team – the largest EA-6B intelligence shop in the history of naval aviation.
The Washington Post does appear to have made at least a semantics error. From its piece…
A copy of one of these commendations posted on his Web site describes him as the intelligence officer for a single squadron at Aviano and says he used a “keen analysis, far-reaching intelligence-gathering network and concise and complete flight briefings” to supply aviators with updates on the threats to their planes.
The commendation medal certificate does, indeed, say that Kirk was the intel officer for a single squadron, but it goes on to note that Kirk “took charge of four deployed squadron’s intelligence assets.”
Still, for Kirk to, on the one hand, make a huge, repeated error of completely misidentifying his award and his service record and then go after Giannoulias’ campaign for the wording of a WaPo story is beyond chutzpah.
The Tribune then dutifully reported it all as a he said/he said campaign kerfuffle…
The issue of character came to the fore Memorial Day in the U.S. Senate race as Democrat Alexi Giannoulias accused Republican Mark Kirk of embellishing his military record and being a typical Washington insider.
Giannoulias then found himself defending his own lack of military service and previous loans from his family bank to people with ties to organized crime.
“I take full responsibility for this and changed the record once my staff told me [the award] had a different title. But I received this award, the Rufus Taylor Award, as commander of this ad-hoc intelligence unit. I actually served oversees and spent 21 years now in the United States Navy Reserve.
“In this campaign I have a military record and so Alexi Giannoulias’ political goons have now gone through every detail of my military record. He has no military record. He’s never served a day in uniform in his life. As far as I can tell when I wore the uniform of the United States Navy serving in Allied Force, he was wearing a uniform too: of a basketball team in Greece.
“He has also failed to disclose his taxes and his Senate ethics forms. And so while all the other major statewide candidates for Governor and Senator have released their taxes and their ethics forms, the question I have for Alexi Giannoulias is: what are you hiding?”
Usually when a candidate goes way out like that, the other side has hit a nerve.
* As the above quote makes pretty clear, Kirk is also not totally backing down from his previous claims that he was given the award…
#4: Giannoulias Provided Story Suggests Kirk Did Not Earn Award
Fourth, the Giannoulias-provided story inaccurately suggests that Kirk did not personally earn the Rufus Taylor award since it was presented to a unit. In fact, the “unit” that received the award was an ad-hoc intelligence team that Mark Kirk established and ran to support Electronic Attack air combat operations during Kosovo. Kirk was presented with the award at the National Military Intelligence Association’s annual awards banquet.
Leader or not, it was his unit which received the award. So for Kirk to still be taking credit for that requires a whole lot of stones.
* There were lots of harsh reviews about last week’s General Assembly actions on the budget and pension borrowing…
* Watchdog Urges Quinn to Veto State Budget: Laurence Msall, president of the non-partisan Civic Federation, based in Chicago, calls the bill “irresponsible.”
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn says he wants to reduce the salaries of state lawmakers. It’s part of his plan to make cuts to try to balance the state’s $13 billion deficit.
Lawmakers granted Quinn extra powers to make those cuts himself. The governor says reducing salaries is only the beginning of the cuts he’ll be making. […]
Quinn says he also wants to cut travel expenses of state employees. He says he wants to spare health care, education and public safety.
Illinois House Republicans had a universal message for Rep. Bob Biggins (R-Elmhurst) last week: You are officially an outcast.
Rep. Biggins infuriated his fellow Republicans by switching his position and voting for a $3.7 billion borrowing plan supported by Democrats. The money would be used to make the state’s annual pension payment. Without it, the state would have to slash programs like education and human services and health care or delay the payment, which could cost the pension funds tens of billions of dollars in the long term.
The first attempt to pass the borrowing bill failed by one vote, with Republican Reps. Bill Black and Bob Pritchard voting for it. Democratic Reps. David Miller and Jack Franks both voted against the proposal.
Biggins is retiring at the end of this term, and it has been rumored for weeks that he is searching for a state job. Because of that, he has been on a very short list of Republicans who some suspected might be called upon at the last minute to help the Democrats pass a controversial bill. They definitely needed him last week.
The House Republican caucus had taken a firm position against the pension bill, claiming the plan to borrow to make the state’s pension payment was simply “kicking the can down the road.” More important, they believed that Gov. Quinn would be forced to the negotiating table if they could stop the bill, which required a three-fifths majority to pass. They thought they could use the failure of his plan to push him to cut the budget even more, or at least create chaos and make the Democrats look bad.
Immediately after Rep. Miller’s “No” vote caused the pension bill to fail, House Speaker Michael Madigan huddled with Miller, who sits two chairs down from Madigan’s official floor seat. A few minutes into the conversation, Miller made a motion to reconsider the vote and the Republicans then met in private for an hour.
Miller, the Democratic nominee for comptroller, dodged reporters after the vote and sprinted into the governor’s office. Rep. Biggins strolled in later.
Biggins spoke at length by mobile phone with a top Democratic operative after the initial floor vote. He reportedly told the operative that he was thinking about switching his vote and asked the operative for advice.
The operative offered to help Biggins obtain whatever he needed from the Quinn administration, but Biggins reportedly declined, saying there would be time enough for that in the coming weeks, if at all.
The operative then helped Biggins draft a statement to the media, which Biggins wrote down verbatim, explaining that he has had trouble remembering details since his stroke six years ago. Not long afterward, Biggins met with Quinn’s chief of staff to discuss his vote.
Democrats say that Biggins has privately expressed frustration and disappointment with his caucus and his party for weeks. He has been unhappy with what he considers to be an obstructionist minority leader who refuses to cooperate on much of anything, and was also reportedly appalled at conservative state Sen. Bill Brady’s gubernatorial nomination and gaffe prone candidacy.
Meanwhile, the House Republicans began pressuring Rep. Pritchard, who had voted “yes” during the first round. They used a strong call to party loyalty to eventually flip Pritchard the other way. Rep. Black had made it clear he would not switch his vote and held firm throughout.
When Biggins didn’t show up for caucus, the Republicans suspected he was about to flip. They were right. Both he and Miller switched to “Yes” during the second roll call and the bill passed. Miller said he received nothing for his vote, but he has a tough campaign ahead against former GOP state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka and he will need all the help he can get.
Many of Biggins’ colleagues were beside themselves with rage at his vote-switching. Rep. Jim Sacia passed by Biggins while Biggins was speaking to reporters and called him a “two-faced son of a b__.”
Rep. Black told me as many as a dozen House Republicans wanted to vote for the pension bill. They voted against it because of the absolute party position against the proposal.
So, while I can easily sympathize with Republicans who felt blind-sided by a guy who broke his word, it’s mighty tough to feel sorry for anyone who stuck with their party instead of voting their conscience.
Illinois House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan said all the successes of the legislative session were on the backs of the Democrats. Madigan said pension reform, nursing home resident protections and the McCormick Place overhaul, for instance, were fashioned by Democrats, whereas Republicans were “just bystanders.”
“They want to win an election. They’re not real good at winning elections. They want to win an election, so they got a campaign plan for November which says there are lots of problems, not completely solved. Democrats are in the majority, they should’ve done better,” Madigan said.
And that general theme is, in fact, pretty close to what Republicans have in mind.
“I think people are tired of wasteful spending and watching people continue to borrow and spend money they don’t have and not improve the job climate. If those are the issues that are resonating, then those will be the issues of the day,” said House Republican leader Tom Cross said. “I do think people have been paying attention more than they ever have before. I think they will look at the party in charge.”
* Nothing quite typifies the ridiculous snake oil sales pitch of Rod Blagojevich as this…
“When I’m governor again…” said former Gov. Rod Blagojevich during his final talk-radio show before his federal corruption trial starts Thursday.
Blagojevich surely knows he can never be governor again. After removing him from office, the Senate voted to bar him from holding “any public office of this State” ever again. He can’t ever run for governor or any state or local office. He can’t even be appointed. He’s just blowing smoke and being Rod - the total huckster.
He also announced during his Sunday radio program that he would run for office some day. Under the Constitution, he can only run for a federal office in Illinois, and I highly doubt that he could ever win either a congressional seat or the US Senate. He’s done. Washed up. Wiped out. Gone.
Rod Blagojevich lawyer Sam Adam Jr. has long said the best weapon his defense team has is the government’s view of it.
“We’re a joke,” he said. “They think I’m a clown.”
Adam has had great success with Cook County cases, but that infamous schtick of his doesn’t work all that well in a federal courtroom with a no-nonsense judge. The rules are a lot different, which is why defendants in these cases almost never get off. Adam’s father and the rest of the team are more experienced in those matters, so Blagojevich will get a mostly competent defense, but the clown show will almost certainly be reined in.
They’re not yellers, they’re not flashy and they’re loathe to speak in front of cameras (they refused interviews for this piece).
Hailing from Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern, you might call them the Brainy Bunch; they are the buttoned-down opposites of the defense team.
“Here there was an opportunity for them to get side-tracked with all the TV cameras and [Blagojevich] TV interviews and they didn’t do it,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who now heads Kroll investigations in Chicago. “They haven’t been distracted by the circus.”
They’re also the same trio who put notorious Blagojevich fund-raiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko” behind bars two years ago.
“They came of age in the Rezko trial,” said Patrick Collins, an attorney at Perkins Coie and former federal prosecutor familiar with the team’s work. “That was a high-profile trial, there was a lot at stake.”
The team is likely to use a “no-nonsense, just-the-facts-ma’am” approach, Collins said — a stark contrast to the “shock and awe” of the fiery defense team.
Some observers with knowledge of the government’s case expect it to be presented in mostly chronological fashion, with Monk an early witness. Few have been closer with Blagojevich than Monk, who roomed with the future governor at law school and later served as a groomsman at his wedding. A one-time sports agent, Monk managed Blagojevich’s campaigns as well as the governor’s office for much of the first term.
Government documents indicate that Monk will testify that he, Rezko and another top fundraiser, Christopher Kelly, plotted with Blagojevich to cash in on the governor’s office even before Blagojevich was elected in 2002. They allegedly schemed to extort campaign contributions or kickbacks from people hoping to do business with the state and planned to divvy up money with Blagojevich once he left office. […]
Monk’s testimony may also serve as a bridge to discussion of alleged illegal activity that occurred near the end of Blagojevich’s six years in office. In fall 2008, Blagojevich allegedly was taped discussing extortion schemes with advisers, Monk included. Some of the talk allegedly revolved around how Blagojevich could leverage his power to pick a Senate replacement for Obama to either secure a Cabinet post in the new administration or a lucrative job in the private sector for the governor or his wife, Patti.
“You’re going to see all these little independent storylines that the prosecutors will try to weave into one larger one,” Cramer said. “The tricky part is going to be putting all the pieces together, so the jury starts to see a pattern.”
* Has the Blagojevich PR strategy of showing up everywhere and acting the clown worked? This analysis seems plausible…
[Former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson] said Blagojevich’s greatest success may have been in showing the world that he’s prone to scattershot thinking.
“It’s just Blagojevich-like, nobody takes me seriously,” Levenson said. “I’m just an odd duck, and I always say over-the-top things. I don’t mean them. I’m a rogue personality, and the statements I’ve made have to be viewed in that context.”
Indeed, several prosecution witnesses who are former Blagojevich aides are expected to testify they often ignored his directives because they knew they would change the next day.
On trial, Blago will ask, ‘What has changed in Springfield since I was impeached?’ A very valid question with very painful answers,” said Serafin. “The irony is a real-life federal jury becomes Quinn’s most important focus group.”
As mentioned above, federal trial rules are strict and tough and the judge has already warned against stuff like that.
That’s thanks in large measure to something called the state Property Tax Assessment Freeze Program, which offers a financial incentive in the form of a break on property taxes to owners of historic homes and homes in designated historic districts across Illinois, to put money into rehabilitating the houses and condos.
The Smiths’ home is among only about 3,200 houses and condos statewide that have been accepted into the tax-freeze program since 1985, state officials say, with most of the homes in Chicago that are in the program clustered in pockets along the lakefront.
