* From the Kennedy campaign…

Chris will participate as the keynote speaker at the Solution to End Violence Forum this weekend, hosted by Pastor Anthony Williams, where he will announce his plan to address violence in communities. The forum is focused on discussing potential solutions to end the perpetual gun violence that plagues Illinois. Chris will share his personal and family-related experience with gun violence and engage with local residents who have been directly affected by Chicago violence.

* While we’re at it, let’s make a small dent in my in-box and do a little roundup. From the Pritzker campaign…

The day before JB is set to host a Women’s Rights & Resist Lunch at the Chicago Cultural Center, City Clerk Anna Valencia endorsed him for governor. Valencia has been a staunch advocate for women’s rights and economic opportunity during her tenure as Chicago City Clerk.

“I’m honored to receive the endorsement of Clerk Valencia,” said JB Pritzker. “Anna is a strong voice for women’s rights and economic opportunity here in Chicago and across the state. As governor, I will work with leaders like Anna to protect a woman’s right to choose, support women and minority-owned small businesses, and work to close the gender pay gap. We will also fight the hateful attacks we’re seeing from the Trump and Rauner administrations. Bruce Rauner promised Illinois women he would fight for them, but then he threatened to veto HB 40 and surrounded himself with a team of extremists. We have work to do to clean up Rauner’s mess and I look forward to standing with leaders like Anna to get our state back on track and ensure women always have a seat at the table.”

“Equal pay and investing in small businesses aren’t just economic issues, they are women’s issues,” said Anna Valencia. “Whether it is preparing our state’s workforce for the 21st century or making sure schools across our state have fair and equal funding, JB has what it takes to address these issues head on. I am proud to support JB for governor and to fight alongside him for the future of Illinois.”

* Biss campaign…

Governor Rauner has had a bad few weeks.

To distract from his unraveling governorship, Rauner is on a warpath. His target: SB1, the bipartisan education bill that would begin fixing Illinois’ deeply unfair system of school funding.

Illinois has the most unequal school funding system in the entire country, and our governor has the chance to do something about it. Instead, he’s threatening to do what he does best: nothing. Our kids are being deprived of the education they deserve, and it will be low-income students of color who are hurt the most.

School districts across the state don’t have the funding they need because of a set of out-of-date funding formulas combined with a dangerous reliance on property taxes. This system causes unfair balances in funding that punishes educators, families, and students whose schools, in some cases, may not be open next year. SB1 aims to help fix that — it funds each school district in Illinois based on need, and it would increase that funding over time.

Daniel has been fighting for education funding reform throughout his career. He supports SB1 because it’s the right thing to do to start fixing our broken system. But the work doesn’t end there.

That’s why, as governor, Daniel will work to end our reliance on a broken property tax system, so that we have the revenue to fully and equally fund education once and for all. He’s already made proposals to ensure that we have a fairer tax system and that the wealthy pay their fair share. These reforms will help properly fund our schools across the state.

Rauner will try to tell you that SB1 is a Chicago bail out, that it just siphons money into a broken system at the expense of other school districts. This couldn’t be further from the truth. This bill is about equity for all school districts. Rauner is holding our schools hostage in order to score political points. This is unacceptable.

We have a chance to change education in Illinois for the better, and give every student the chance to succeed. That’s something Daniel is committed to, and I hope you’ll join him in this fight.

* Back to the Pritzker campaign…

Another Bruce Rauner hire is the subject of controversy after the Chicago Sun-Times discovered an appalling blog post she wrote that “compared abortion to Nazi eugenics.” Responding to the reports, the Rauner administration said to quote the staffer’s past writing with “full context.”

In that spirit, here is her full article, brazenly titled An Inconvenient Analogy: Abortion, Eugenics, and Nazi Germany. In it, she explains, “Certainly nothing matches the atrocity of the Holocaust, but it’s undeniable that abortion is being used to rid the world of “disabled and other ‘unwanted’ persons”—a fact the Left and their pro-abortion allies don’t want discussed.”

Rauner filling his administration with radical social conservatives should come as no surprise. Rauner said he didn’t have a social agenda on the campaign trail, but he then abandoned Illinois women as governor, pledging to veto HB 40. This is a bill that ensures all Illinois women have access to reproductive healthcare.

The Rauner administration’s vague and distant response to their latest controversy begs the question: Will Bruce Rauner condemn his new staffer’s atrocious remarks?

“Rauner’s decision to stand by and say nothing when a member of his staff makes such an atrocious comparison tells Illinois women all they need to know about their failed governor,” said Pritzker campaign communications director Galia Slayen. “Comparing the right to choose to the Nazis is indefensible and has no place in the governor’s office. This is an administration being taken over by radical ideologues, intent on furthering the Trump agenda of bigotry and hatred.”