* Good point by Greg Hinz…

The last piece needed for total Democratic control of all the levers of power in Springfield fell into place today when late election returns showed that the party will have a supermajority in the Illinois House—potentially clearing the way to adopt the graduated income tax pushed by Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker.

Final or near final returns showed that House Speaker Mike Madigan picked up seven seats, mostly in the Chicago suburbs, while losing just one, in far southern Illinois. That would give the Dems a net pickup of six, moving them to 73 total House members.

That’s significant because a supermajority of 71 votes is needed to pass and submit to voters a constitutional amendment authorizing the graduated income tax, a top Pritzker priority. Put a different way, though Madigan normally is very reluctant to move on revenue-raising bills without GOP buy-in, there are enough House Democrats to move ahead anyway even if the Republicans balk.

There’s also the possibility the Democrats could add one vote to that total, with two candidates vying for what had been a Republican-held seat in the Lake Barrington area separated by one vote.

* The Sun-Times misses the point…

Now is the time for [Pritzker] — and nobody else — to roll out the specifics of what a progressive income tax for Illinois should look like. Tell us what the rates would be. Tell us what the income brackets, deductions and exemptions should be.

Pritzker said over and over during his campaign that those rates would be negotiated with Democratic and Republican legislators and other stakeholders. I didn’t like it, but he won. And so if he rolled the rates out now, he’d be going back on his pledge and he’d also undercut his proposal.

Just give it a chance to percolate like he said it would.

* Simply put, the election was nationalized and that proved more powerful in suburbia and the Metro East than the “Because… Madigan!” chant…

After nearly four years of being vilified by the governor from one end of the state to the other, Mike Madigan appears to have gotten more powerful.

* This was supposed to help Republicans. It didn’t work too well…

Voters in suburban counties strongly favored blocking the creation of a statewide property tax in Tuesday voting, despite the fact that no statewide property tax has yet been proposed.

An advisory referendum on ballots in DuPage, Kane and Lake counties and Cook County’s Hanover Township asked voters whether the state Legislature should be permitted to institute a property tax of 1 percent of home value. In each of the four jurisdictions, at least 60 percent of the votes cast favored blocking such a tax.

The ballot measure refers to an idea that a trio of economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago floated in May as a way to pay off the state’s $129.1 billion in unfunded pension obligations.

Beyond the paper the economists wrote, there has been no organized effort to institute a statewide property tax, but Kurt Kojzarek, a Kane County board member who supported blocking the idea, said the votes served an important purpose as a proactive warning to legislators.

“Nobody in the Legislature would bring forth a tax proposal like that in election season,” Kojzarek said today. “But in January or February (2019) they might, and this vote sends a pretty good message to the General Assembly that the idea is a nonstarter.”

Commissioner Kojzarek has no idea what he’s talking about. Nobody, but nobody is gonna back a statewide property tax surcharge. If they do, they’ll never get a co-sponsor.

* Mark Brown with the line of the day…

Rauner campaigned for re-election on the notion that re-electing him was Illinois’ “last chance,” the same sky-is-falling narrative pushed by the state’s largest newspaper.

Tuesday was Rauner’s last chance, not ours.

* Related…

* Biz community’s memo to Gov.-elect Pritzker: Stability, please - “The one thing people are tired of: being lied to or not knowing what’s coming at them,” says CME Group CEO Terrence Duffy. “Just tell us what the rules are. Uncertainty kills.”