* Umm…
Carol Felsenthal: When you’re on your campaign bus traveling downstate, do you sleep on the bus or do you find—
JB Pritzker: A motel.
Felsenthal: Not a Grand Hyatt? [Pritzker’s family founded the Hyatt hotel chain.]
Pritzker: Have you been to central and southern Illinois?
Dude, there is a nice Hyatt in Champaign (I’ve stayed there), and another one in Bloomington. They’re not Grand Hyatts, but even Chicago doesn’t have one of those.
*** UPDATE *** The campaign provided the rest of the answer…
CHICAGO MAG: Well I went to the University of Illinois, so I do know.
JB: Okay, so you do know, yeah. No, it’s mostly small motels and wherever you can.
CHICAGO MAG: So it might be a Motel 6 or?
JB: It could be. Yeah, it’s wherever there’s something that’s nearby where we need to be in the morning or on the way.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* Sun-Times…
A day after the two Democratic primary frontrunners bickered over attendance at a forum, all seven candidates for governor kept things civil at a debate hosted by Whitney Young Magnet High School on Wednesday evening on the city’s Near West Side. […]
State Sen. Daniel Biss (9th) and Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) were in lock-step with Pritzker and Kennedy in calling for a progressive income tax, changing the funding formula for Chicago Public Schools, raising the minimum wage, reinstating funding for mental health facilities, protecting DACA recipients and banning assault weapons.
Bob Daiber, regional superintendent of schools in downstate Madison County; anti-violence activist Tio Hardiman; and small-business owner Alex Paterakis joined the other candidates in hammering Gov. Bruce Rauner as a crony of President Donald Trump pandering to corporate interests. […]
The only time Pritzker called out Kennedy by name was to agree with him that the state should increase investment in Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab to improve the state’s renewable energy prospects.
The back-story on that debate is pretty cool, so click here to read it.
* Trib…
Democratic governor candidate Ald. Ameya Pawar released a new nearly 5-minute long digital ad as he was scheduled to begin on Thursday the second leg of his “Don’t Close Our Communities” tour.
The ad called “Unity” shows the Chicago alderman on previous bus visits across the state. The latest leg of his tour is supposed to take him to 14 cities in four days. He’ll be joined by his running mate, Cairo Mayor Tyrone Coleman.
“It’s easy to prey on people’s economic anxieties and turn other communities into the ‘other’ when people feel like they haven’t been listened to. That economic violence is how we get to a place where bombast and ugly political rhetoric is the same as political authenticity,” Pawar says in the video.
“We need to fight back against that. But the only way you fight that is with a positive agenda that brings people together,” he says.
The ad is here.
* Hyper-local, but still interesting, considering the history there…
In these troubled times for the nation, it was touching to see peace break out this week in a Far North Side neighborhood long plagued by political conflict.
It was only this summer that a daughter of the 50th Ward’s late, long-serving Ald. Bernie Stone, Ilana Feketitsch, lashed out at the current alderman, Debra Silverstein for what she thought was Silverstein’s delay in naming a park in Stone’s honor. Wounds inflicted during Silverstein’s 2011 election victory over Stone clearly hadn’t healed.
But at an official ribbon-cutting Wednesday at the newly unveiled Berny Stone Park in West Ridge — attended by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and dozens of friends and family of Stone — it was all so much water under the bridge.
A smiling Feketitsch (who previously said of Silverstein’s successful campaign to unseat her father that she was “shocked” at how “some people” would “just dig their claws into you”), and Silverstein (who fired back through gritted teeth in June, “I’m sure she’s very happy”), hugged it out in front of the mayor.
* Heh…
* Related…
* Republicans picnic in Palos Park without Gov. Rauner: “When Gov. Bruce Rauner ran three years ago he said he had no social agenda, and here we are,” said David Dewar who attended the picnic in the character of Uncle Sam. “He promised a lot of pro-life religious organizations that he wasn’t going to do this,” Dewar said. “I believe in the right for babies to decide, not in reproductive rights. Now, they’re forcing me to take my tax dollars to fund something I don’t believe in.”
- Grand Avenue - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:19 pm:
Do Daiber or Paterakis have running mates?
- Ron Burgundy - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:22 pm:
–Pritzker: Have you been to central and southern Illinois?–
Watch the tone there, JB…
- NeverPoliticallyCorrect - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:29 pm:
Oh yeah, Pritzker is a man of the people. What a snarky comment. He wants this so bad cause he deserves it. Sounds more and more like a Blago with money.
- Chris Widger - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:40 pm:
==“I believe in the right for babies to decide…”==
Wait, what?
- Perrid - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:46 pm:
The tone was more disrespectful to the interviewer than rural IL. There simply aren’t that many Hyatts around. A lot of very good hotels, but she specifically asked about Grand Hyatts.
- Precinct Captain - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:51 pm:
Even New Jersey’s biggest cultural icon wrote all about getting out of Jersey.
- Oswego Willy - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:53 pm:
The “Grand Hyatt” was the key.
It’s a backwards “gotcha”, but not really.
If JB is thinking “top 50″ cities in the United States because of “Grand Hyatt” means something in his head, then the follow up coulda been…
“When you say ‘Grand Hyatt’ I think of places like Chicago or New York. There are Hyatt hotels all over Illinois, but none downstate. Sometimes I stay where proximity makes most sense, just like any traveler.”
- City Zen - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 2:57 pm:
Does Motel 6 pay a living wage?
- VanillaMan - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 3:02 pm:
It’s so nice of JB, you know, for leaving his luxurious digs to come on down and slum with voters. He must be really serious to rough it up without his monogrammed silk jammies.
- VanillaMan - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 3:04 pm:
I’ve met JB twice. Each time he asked me if I had any Grey Poupon.
- Oswego Willy - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 3:05 pm:
===CHICAGO MAG: Well I went to the University of Illinois, so I do know.
JB: Okay, so you do know, yeah. No, it’s mostly small motels and wherever you can.
CHICAGO MAG: So it might be a Motel 6 or?
JB: It could be. Yeah, it’s wherever there’s something that’s nearby where we need to be in the morning or on the way.===
Parked it.
Just don’t ask “have you been to” or anything like that to reporters. It never ends well.
This time, it worked. Parked.
- City Zen - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 3:07 pm:
““And who the hell wants to live in New Jersey?” he quipped.”
Sadly, 48 states could ask the same of Illinois.
- Amalia - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 3:48 pm:
oh, yeah, but commenting that he was coached for a commercial so as not to be arrogant THAT is off the rails. the fact is, in person, JB’s got superiority problems.
- hisgirlfriday - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:00 pm:
As a Downstater, I’m more annoyed by the commercial that claims Mrs. Pritzker knows me because she grew up in the Dakotas and had family in Nebraska.
- Aimtomisbehave - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:03 pm:
Yeah, Springfield has nothing but small motels near the Statehouse. The Statehouse Inn, Abraham Lincoln Hotel, Wyndham - I hope poor JB can afford to slum it in one of those little places when he campaigns here.
- @MisterJayEm - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:07 pm:
I don’t think that JB’s comment was a big deal, but not having a prepared response for such an obvious gotcha question is simply campaign malpractice.
– MrJM
- George - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:19 pm:
I grew up in Central Illinois. If you’re from central or southern Illinois and JB’s comment offends you, you’re faking it.
I mean, imagine a relative is coming to visit you in Quincy and asks “can you get me a reservation at the Grand Hyatt?” What’s you response going to be? Something pretty close to JB’s.
- Ron Burgundy - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:29 pm:
–I mean, imagine a relative is coming to visit you in Quincy and asks “can you get me a reservation at the Grand Hyatt?” –
I’d tell them to get their own room. I think part of it is the whole phenomenon of “You can’t talk like that about us, only WE can talk like that about us!” OK to say if you are from there, not OK if you are not.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:34 pm:
It can be tough to find a room in Springfield.
During fair week one year, I ended up at the Bel-Aire on South Sixth.
There was no Sunset Strip below, but the hardware store next door sold beer. Which was nice.
- Anonymous - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:41 pm:
yeah, Pawar. 1/2 of 1 percent of the vote he will get.
- dbk - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 4:51 pm:
Well, hmm. I mean, Central and Southern Illinois are not exactly teeming with Hyatt hotels, are they? It’s just the truth.
Progressive income taxes, a GI, vigorous development downstate, a capital bill to completely transform downstate’s infrastructure … all those might change that in future.
In the meantime, I hear the Peoria Marriott is pretty good.
Re: Chris Kennedy’s statement on NJ: Er, no, I don’t want to live there, either.
- ChrisB - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 5:01 pm:
That story about the high school students organizing the forum was awesome. We’d all be better off if more young people took an interest in politics before they can even vote.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Argonne and Fermi fully funded by the Feds? Fermilab is a particle accelerator. The only energy research they’d be doing would be in the nuclear field, and even then it’d be highly theoretical.
- Leatherneck - Thursday, Oct 5, 17 @ 9:17 pm:
As Quinn might ask, “What’s wrong with Super 8?”