* Greg Hinz at Crain’s writes today about an editorial board meeting with Bill Brady late last week. Among other things, Brady said he wants to do a huge pension bond deal, perhaps as much as $50 billion.
But most of what Hinz writes about today is Brady’s claim that he can cut ten percent of all spending to balance the budget. The object, Brady said, is to cut 10 percent from $45 billion of available spending. But Hinz heard something different…
Mr. Brady’s own number guys have told him that so many things like federal programs and debt service would have to be exempt that the remaining programs would have to be cut nearly 20%.
No, he hasn’t been told that, he replied. But “it’s possible” the average cuts would exceed 10%, depending on how fast his administration could boost income by creating new private-sector jobs.
And Brady’s numbers for the deficit are off as well….
Once you take things like the $14-billion Medicaid program off the table, which is mostly funded by the federal government, “maybe $30 billion” remains on the table for the 10% cuts. And the real deficit actually is more like $7 billion than $5 billion, [Taxpayers Federation president Tom Johnson] says.
In other words, without new revenues, “you’d need about 20%” in cuts to balance the budget.
That would be on top of what has already been cut.
And according to the comptroller’s office, the state’s bill backlog for last fiscal year now stands at more than $6.4 billion, or 23 percent of total FY 2010 base revenues. On top of that, the state has accumulated another $3.5 billion in unpaid bills for this fiscal year.
For sure, $44,000 isn’t a whole lot of money compared to the state’s $13 billion budget deficit.
But, when it comes to cutting the state budget during an economic downturn, you have to start somewhere.
The early returns on one of Gov. Pat Quinn’s attempts to reduce state spending show at least three of his agencies have complied with an edict to cut out magazine and newspaper subscriptions.
The governor’s directive, issued in July, also asked agencies to find savings in other areas, including telephone costs, travel and overtime. […]
At the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, the order has meant the end of morning delivery of two daily newspapers and the political newsletter Capitol Fax.
Like every other publication in this state, I do have several agencies as subscribers. I haven’t pushed them for payment or complained about late payments and I’m more than willing to work with the agencies as they try to get through this. All they have to do is ask.
Gov. Pat Quinn says he’d push for legislation forcing public officials to pay income tax on their state salaries, even if business losses wipe out their income.
Quinn has criticized Republican Bill Brady for not paying federal income taxes, implying the state senator did something improper.
But Brady didn’t pay taxes because his state salary was more than wiped out by his business losses.
Quinn said Monday that Brady should’ve paid taxes on the publicly funded part of his salary anyway.
Gov. Pat Quinn says Republican opponent Bill Brady and House Speaker Michael Madigan wouldn’t be in office today if a constitutional amendment to impose term limits he supported years ago had gotten on the ballot.
In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Quinn wouldn’t say if Madigan has overstayed his welcome in Springfield. Quinn says it’s up to voters in Madigan’s district and lawmakers in Springfield to decide if he keeps his seat and remains speaker.
Thoughts?
* Related…
* Quinn vague on ideas for Ill. future: Gov. Pat Quinn isn’t offering many details on what more he would do to repair the state budget or where he’d like to take Illinois if he wins a full term.
* A new Suffolk University poll has Gov. Pat Quinn leading Bill Brady 43-37. The toplines are here. From the pollster…
Quinn’s margins over Brady among ages 18-44 years (+25 points), Cook County voters (+30 points), and minority voters (+38 points) are the driving forces behind the Democrat’s edge in the statewide numbers.
I called the pollster because I noticed an error in the toplines. They show “Chicago” as being 38 percent of their universe. The pollster said this was a typo and it should read “Chicago and suburban Cook County.”
If you look at the extensive crosstabs, you’ll see Quinn is leading Brady 41-33 43-36 with women and 41-34 42-39 with men. I just don’t buy either of those results yet unless Quinn has performed some sort of crazy voodoo magic.
Still, the poll had Mark Kirk leading Alexi Giannoulias by a point, 42-41, which is in line with most other recent polls. And they had the generic congressional ballot essentially tied at 42 Democratic and 41 Republican. That is essentially the same result that Public Policy Polling got. So, it’s odd, man. Odd.
According to the pollster, Scott Lee Cohen is at 7 percent, Rich Whitney is at 3 percent and Lex Green is at 1 percent. I can buy those, too.
* The pollster was the first to survey the constitutional ballot question this year providing for gubernatorial recall. Just 48 percent were in favor and 44 percent were opposed.
* Other races…
* Lisa Madigan 63, Steve Kim 14
* Jesse White 60, Robert Enriquez 15
* Judy Baar Topinka 39. David Miller 23
* Dan Rutherford 32, Robin Kelly 26
* They also asked some policy questions. 18 percent said an ounce or less of marijuana should be legal, 19 percent said the amount should be decriminalized, and 33 percent said it should be legal only with a prescription. Total that up and you get 70 percent in favor of changing the state’s stupid laws. Just 21 percent said an ounce or less should be illegal under any circumstances. Another 10 percent was undecided.
* 37 percent of voters came out “absolutely against” any legally recognized unions for same sex couples, while 24 percent supported civil unions and 30 percent backed legal marriage.
* And 69 percent backed term limits for Congress of six, two-year terms. 25 percent opposed it and 5 percent were undecided.
* Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson looks like this year’s version of Carol Moseley-Braun. No, not the CM-B who became the first black female US Senator in 1992. I mean the incumbent who spent six years doing basically nothing, not coming home, walling herself off from the media and compiling a less than mediocre legislative record.
When the choice is between a mediocre first-term U.S. representative who tends to vote your way and a young upstart of great promise who would just as likely vote the other way, whom do you support?
We’re going with the kid.
Halvorson was a good state legislator who understood how to win tough campaigns. She was out and about in her district and generally kept in touch. It was tough for her to watch her voting record after she became the Senate Majority Leader, but she was such a strong campaigner/legislator that she was wooed hard by the DC Dems. Apparently, she forgot every lesson she ever learned in Springfield.
…Adding… The Halvorson campaign just called with several instances where she was available to constituents. But the fact remains that the people I’ve talked to in her district who are in this business say she just hasn’t been nearly visible enough.
* In other congressional campaign news, the National Association of Realtors is spending $300,000 on television ads supporting Democratic incumbent Bill Foster. Watch the ad…
* FiveThirtyEight, by the way, has downgraded Republican chances of taking this seat and now has it as an even chance of a takeover. Nate Silver had categorized this as a “Lean Takeover” seat.
The NRCC has launched a TV ad blitz targeting 45 districts this week, marking the first time Republicans have been on the air in as many districts as they’ll need to take back control of the House. Republicans are spending big on the effort, dishing out $4.4M on the ad buys this week.
The blitz is significant because, like last week, Republicans are spending much more on the airwaves than Democrats. The ads are part of the GOP’s strategy of going on the attack early in an attempt to lock up seats. The DCCC, on the other hand, is reserving the bulk of its resources for the final couple of weeks before Election Day.
The ads - 25 of which are brand new — come a week after the NRCC went up in 30 districts. The NRCC has planned to spend $35M on TV in 55 districts so far.
The NRCC is targeting 17 Democrats with ad buys of $100K or more.
The NRCC is apparently running ads in 10 (Kirk open seat), 11 (Halvorson) and 14 (Foster).
* In other down-ballot news, the Tribune, as expected, endorsed Forrest Claypool. They laid it on thick…
No task for Cook County voters is more important than denying the Democratic machine control of the assessor’s office whose calculations of real estate values drive your property tax bills. Its candidate, Joe Berrios — who sits on the county’s tax appeals board, moonlights as a lobbyist and heads the County Democratic Party — is a one-man conflict of interests. Most egregiously, he lobbies Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton in Springfield — then returns to Chicago to handle their law firms’ tax appeals on behalf of big commercial clients.
There’s more. Can’t wait for the scourge of legalized video gambling to arrive at restaurants and bars near you? Thank lobbyist Berrios and his compliant cronies in Springfield. And did we mention that Berrios supported his pal Todd Stroger’s notorious hike in the sales tax? Stroger wound up with a 1-percentage-point tax increase; Berrios was happy with Stroger’s initial proposal for a 2-point gouge.
Berrios’ supporters have a warning for the renegades.
“Everyone will be held accountable,” 1st Ward Committeeman Jesse Ruben Juarez told me. “They don’t realize how many Latinos they have in their areas.”
In truth, neither race nor ethnicity nor controversial social issues are involved in this contest. It’s a simple matter of reform, and political strategist Kitty Kurth says it boils down to this:
“If Berrios is able to win, the Machine still exists.”
And if he loses?
There will be an eye-popping chink in the little that’s left of its armor.
* I’ve been having serious problems with my Firefox browser for a few days now, so I made the decision a couple of hours ago to switch over to a new browser. I’m not sure what’s going on, but the thing is freezing up constantly. Safari doesn’t work well with this blog platform, so I’m trying out Opera. Seems OK for now. But that’s why I’ve been so slow to post today.
* Anyway, on to The Question: Who do you think will be the biggest surprise winner this November? Explain.
* Last week’s Tribune poll with Pat Quinn leading Bill Brady by a point kick-started a whole lot of buzz behind the GOP curtain that the paper’s Senate poll would have Alexi Giannoulias with an even larger lead. So, Kirk did a little preemption by leaking his ad buy and his own internal poll to POLITICO, which dutifully published its story a couple of hours ahead of the Tribune poll release Friday night…
Republican Mark Kirk has reserved almost $5.2 million worth of advertisements for the final weeks of the competitive Illinois Senate race, POLITICO has learned. […]
Kirk’s campaign is prepared to empty its arsenal and spend about $1 million each week in an effort to win the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama. […]
Kirk campaign’s own polling shows him ahead: An internal polling memo from the Kirk campaign and obtained by POLITICO shows him holding a 9-point lead. Kirk had 42 percent and Giannoulias had 33 percent, per a Kirk-sponsored Fulcrum Campaign Strategies poll taken Sept. 26-29 of 900 likely voters in Illinois. About 22 percent of survey respondents were undecided and the Green Party nominee, LeAlan Jones, received 2 percent in the poll.
A potentially troubling sign for Kirk is that voters in the traditionally Republican-leaning collar counties were almost equally split between the two candidates on the trustworthiness question.
In addition, 41 percent of voters, including 42 percent of independents, said they were less likely to vote for Kirk because of his exaggerated military claims, while 59 percent said it made no difference or didn’t know enough to decide.
About one-third of voters, including the same percentage of independents, said Giannoulias’ connection to the bank and loans to convicted felons would make them less likely to vote for the Democrat. The remaining nearly two-thirds said it didn’t matter or didn’t know enough to weigh in. […]
Kirk’s esteem dipped among independent voters, a key swing demographic. A month ago, only 17 percent viewed him unfavorably. Now 34 percent do. Overall, Kirk holds a 38 percent to 27 percent edge over Giannoulias among independents, similar to his margin last time, though 22 percent are undecided.
Rahm Emanuel’s campaign for mayor got underway today without a formal announcement of his bid to replace retiring Mayor Richard Daley. Instead, he is inviting Chicago residents to give him an earful in what’s shaping up to be a carefully orchestrated tour of neighborhoods.
Emanuel, who just left as White House chief of staff on Friday, started what he says is several weeks of community visits by hitting CTA bus stops near Roosevelt Road and State Street at 8 a.m. He spent about 45 minutes atop the “El” platform shaking hands with commuters and parents taking their children to school.
It was a scene of old-school street politics as Emanuel gladhanded, asking people where they worked, where they lived and wished them a happy Monday. […]
A throng of reporters and cameras, both newspaper and TV, recorded the events. Emanuel, though, wasn’t answering any questions from the press.
A reader’s take…
I caught the first appearance of Rahm on his “listening tour” this morning. He came to the Roosevelt Road L stop. Tons of reporters, cops and CTA personnel, very little interaction with potential voters, much less Rahm listening to the voters’ concerns. He was there for less than 30 minutes and then ran across Roosevelt Road, press and everyone else in tow, to go into the Jewel at Roosevelt and Wabash.
This is no “listening tour.” It’s a publicity stunt. The media allowed itself to be used once again by this guy.
Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has chosen Scott Fairchild, the chief of staff for Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), to manage his campaign for mayor of Chicago, POLITICO has learned. […]
Fairchild was also a senior adviser to Illinois Rep. Bill Foster’s successful 2008 campaign to claim former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat. After the election, he oversaw Foster’s transition in Congress.
*** UPDATE *** Many thanks to a commenter for pointing me to this story…
“I was born here and my wife Amy and I raised our three children here,” he says. “I’m glad to be home.”
But an Emanuel spokeswoman, Lori Goldberg, confirms that the video itself was actually filmed in Washington, D.C., in the offices of AKPD media, the firm founded by David Axelrod. […]
Emails Joe Trippi, a consultant to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, “A DC office? I guess there is no place like home.”
As Emanuel apparently still owns his home and has a longstanding residence in Chicago, I think he’ll have no problem declaring and demonstrating that he had an intent to return.
This issue is of some importance here as professors on sabbatical or otherwise away have been known to rent out their homes while they are gone. This does not take away their right to vote.
“The guy does not meet the statutory requirements to run for mayor,” said attorney Burt Odelson. “He hasn’t been back there in 18 months. Residency cases are usually very hard to prove because the candidate gets an apartment or says he’s living in his mother’s basement. Here the facts are easy to prove. He doesn’t dispute he’s been in Washington for the past 18 months. This is not a hard case.”
* Rahmup…
* Chicago aldermen offended by Emanuel’s royal send-off: Asked whether he believes Obama should “stay out of it,” Burke said, “I think he ought to get into it and help elect Pat Quinn and Alexi Giannoulias.”
While the Republicans say the pollsters are contacting the wrong people, the fact remains that three polls released last week had the Illinois governor’s race within 2 percentage points. And five polls released in the past month have shown it to be a single-digit race.
The Chicago Tribune’s pollster had Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn leading Republican state Sen. Bill Brady 39 percent to 38 percent last week, which is a narrower margin than its 5-point Brady lead a month ago. A CNN/Time poll had Brady up by 2 points, and a Democratic Governor’s Association poll had Brady up by 1 point. Public Policy Polling had Brady with a 7-point lead.
The Republicans say the “universe” is skewed on all these polls. They believe that Republicans actually outnumber Democrats come Election Day by a narrow margin. At the very least, they say, those other polls just skew too far Democratic.
If the Republicans are right, it would be the first time their party would outnumber or come close to outnumbering Democrats in any Illinois election in a very long time. This is a weird year, so nobody really knows who’s correct at the moment. Still, you need to keep the GOP’s strong objections very much in mind as we head into the final weeks of this campaign.
The other thing to remember is Quinn’s horrific job-approval rating. The average of the four polls that asked the job-approval question (CNN did not) was a 26 percent approval rating for Quinn, while 58.5 percent disapproved of his performance. He’s already vastly outperforming his approval rating, so it will be darned tough to push his own numbers up much higher unless people start feeling better about him soon.
Still, you simply cannot ignore five polls in a month showing Quinn within single digits of Brady. Whether the governor can pull this off is another story.
Why does this race suddenly look so close? For months, polls have shown it to be a blowout for Brady.
I now firmly believe this race has been much closer than I thought for weeks, if not months. The reason why I and others got this wrong is very bad polling.
Every poll published from the beginning of August to before last week had Brady leading Quinn by anywhere from 9 to 13 points.
Well, actually, one poll did show a close race. At the beginning of last month, the Chicago Tribune’s poll had Brady leading Quinn by only 5 points.
That Tribune poll was so different from the others that it essentially was ignored. But then last week, those other polls came out that showed a tighter race than widely assumed, and I noticed something curious. Pollsters who did not include millionaire independent candidate Scott Lee Cohen’s name in their polls showed a far wider gap between Brady and Quinn than those who did.
Last month’s Tribune poll included Cohen’s name in the mix, as well as the other candidates. The polls released last week that showed a tight race included his name as well.
The average of all five polls during the past month that included Cohen’s name is 38.6 percent for Brady and 35.8 percent for Quinn - a roughly 3-point split. The two-month average for polls taken that didn’t use Cohen’s name was 46.4 for Brady to 35.8 for Quinn - an almost 11-point race.
Notice that Quinn’s average is exactly the same in both sets of numbers. Brady’s is different. Why?
In a two-person race, when you attack an opponent, a portion of your opponent’s supporters eventually will cross over to your side. But in races where lots of people are running, when you attack your main opponent, then his or her supporters might end up with one of the other “minor” candidates.
If you drill down into the polls, it appears that significant numbers of women voters left Brady after Quinn’s early attacks and moved to Cohen. Now, I know that sounds absolutely insane, considering the domestic abuse allegations involving Cohen and his arrest for allegedly holding a knife to his girlfriend’s throat. But lots of people still don’t know who and what Cohen is. And the news media has all but stopped reminding them.
Some top Republicans have been increasingly jittery that Cohen might be making this thing a little too close for jubilation. They appear to have been right.
Finally, maybe Mayor Daley’s retirement from public office did not suck all the oxygen out of the state-wide races - as many pundits predicted. It was thought that the free-for-all for the Chicago Mayor’s Office would shift all attention and resources to that election. But, it may have merely caused Chicagoans to focus more on politics in general.
The last theory is purely speculative. But, the way things looked for him a few weeks ago, Pat Quinn needed any help he could get. With one month to go, the Illinois governor’s race may be less about change and more about whether Illinois’ typical Democrat/liberal base goes to the polls.
That’s certainly part of it. The oxygen was surely sucked out of the coverage, but maybe not out of the interest.
Thoughts?
* Related…
* Brady discounts polls that show Quinn gaining ground: “We don’t really believe it’s tightening,” Brady told reporters at a tea party event in front of the Statehouse. “Our internal data … shows that our momentum is growing every day. Our internal polls continue to show a strong, growing support for us.
* Brady rallies local support: “I have a problem with red light cameras being used too extensively,” he said.
* Northwest Herald: Governor: Bill Brady: For small-business owners, the backbone of our local communities, Brady proposes a five-year moratorium on federal payroll taxes and the creation of a Main Street Small Business Advisory Board to help the owners of small and fledgling businesses get off the ground and grow.
* Civil unions, concealed carry could confront next governor: “Bill believes marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” said Brady campaign spokeswoman Patty Schuh. “Our current laws reflect that.”
* Journal-Standard: Candidates need to step up: The report complains that 32 percent of the state inspection reports reviewed by the federal EPA were not detailed enough to determine if a confined-animal operation was complying with environmental laws; that state enforcement actions were rarely taken, and in more than 60 percent of the cases reviewed by the feds the state failed to get compliance even after violations were found. The report contends that the Illinois EPA is slow to respond to citizen complaints or take formal action against big feedlots and dairies that violate federal and state environmental laws.
* Tax policies display sharp differences for Quinn, Brady: While Brady is currently proposing elimination of the estate tax, “we don’t know what the feds are going to do,” Schuh said. “If they set it for estates over $10 million, maybe we’d take a look at it.”
Weis said there were 343 murders committed from January through September, eight fewer than last year at this time. The drop puts the city on pace with 2007, a year in which the murder total was the lowest in the city since 1965, Weis said.
Overall crime in the city dropped 4.5 percent, he said. In nearly every category, crime was down, and for the 21st straight month, crime dropped overall and in violent and property offenses.
Violent crime fell more than 11 percent in September.
Murder declined by 2.3 percent after a slight increase in August, police said, adding that the department is on pace with 2007, a year that ended with the lowest murder total in the city since 1965.
Also in September, police said they seized 130 firearms.
Violent crime overall was down more than 11 percent. Aggravated batteries alone declined 7.7. percent, which was the single greatest decrease in this category in 2010. Robberies and aggravated assaults each showed double-digit declines, and criminal sexual assaults were down just over 9 percent, police said.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers plans to add a new classification of workers who will not be required to complete the union’s standard training program and, as a result, will receive less pay than many card-holding electricians.
ComEd says it is still weighing whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court after an appellate court Friday struck down the utility’s plans for a $396 million rate increase to support major infrastructure improvements.
