* The above headline is what I tweeted out the night Judy Baar Topinka passed away almost four years ago. I think about Judy almost every day. She would’ve been finishing up what was expected to be her final term as comptroller right about now.
* Never has the death of a comptroller changed state history more than when Topinka died a month after her election four years ago. The staunchly pro-union, penny-pinching, sharp-tongued Republican would’ve been a check on the excesses of Gov. Bruce Rauner. She wouldn’t have stood idly by during the impasse or while the governor attempted to undermine union member rights. And she was about the only person he was afraid of in politics. Heck, we were all at least a little afraid of her.
Judy Baar was truly one of a kind. And she was my friend. And I’m getting a little emotional now probably because I’m tired from the election. I think I’ll go take a nap, but I just wanted to write a little something about Judy today.
* Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has repeatedly denied that she knew about sexual harassment allegations against her chief of staff before she fired him in September on the eve of her announcement for mayor. Not true…
Scott Cisek, a key political adviser, said he told Preckwinkle days after the March 20 primary election that he’d “heard some very disturbing rumors” that Keller “had been behaving badly towards women.” And he warned Preckwinkle that someday “one of these women is going to come forward.”
Keller told the Tribune that Preckwinkle then met with him to let him know there was an allegation stemming from his brief work on a Democratic congressional campaign.
Keller actually offered to resign at that meeting, but Preckwinkle rejected the offer.
Preckwinkle also noted that she has referred the Keller matter to the Cook County inspector general for a full investigation. Preckwinkle did so after Emily Miller, a Democratic political consultant who had brought the Keller allegations to Cisek back in March, followed up with Preckwinkle last month to tell her she was concerned about the way the matter was handled.
Miller, a friend of a Keller accuser, then documented parts of her talk with Preckwinkle in an email to Preckwinkle’s new chief of staff, a copy of which the Tribune obtained through an open records request. […]
Miller recounted for the Tribune her interactions with Preckwinkle and Cisek. She said she came away disappointed with how they handled the accusations and called it a “cop-out” that the Preckwinkle administration did not pursue the matter sooner and more aggressively.
“There was obviously another way to take care of the problem than just filing that formal written complaint,” said Miller, who indicated that she is not aligned with any mayoral candidate. “And that other way played out two days before (Preckwinkle) announced for mayor. And it could have just as easily played out … when she first became aware of the problem.”
Reporters are obviously going to have to be careful with any “leaks” coming out of Preckwinkle’s campaign from here on out if that’s how they’re gonna play.
“This is bigger than Toni Preckwinkle’s shielding of John Keller,” said Lightfoot. “It’s bigger than her campaign’s dishonest efforts to discredit Emily Miller or her failure to hold anyone accountable for the abandoned SUV until the media took notice. It’s about a toxic culture that starts at the top, and that puts women at risk. We need leaders who will reject this culture and instead build a transparent and accountable City Hall that serves the people, not the broken political machine.”
* Related…
* Preckwinkle’s head of security fired: The head of security for mayoral hopeful and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was fired last week, two years after a county-owned SUV was found abandoned in a ditch in southwest suburban Lemont Township.
* Local Democrats weren’t just successful this year in Champaign County. The Will County Board flipped…
Riding the wave that thrust many Democrats and women to victory throughout the state Tuesday night, were Will County Democrats who appear to have won just enough seats on the county board to gain a 14-12 majority.
They also apparently claimed all county-wide seats and two judgeships, according to unofficial results.
It is the first time that Democrats controlled all county-wide seats, board leadership said.
Going into Tuesday’s election, Republicans held a 16-10 majority on the board, and had Nancy Schultz Voots as clerk, and Steve Weber as treasurer.
* From Bill Morgan…
Hi Rich,
Just wanted to send you a few details about Will County’s election night results. I’m a Democratic PC and on the county party executive board here. Our new chair, Bill Thoman, is working hard to rebuild the county party, focusing on winning races rather than petty squabbles, and it paid out dividends this cycle.
On Tuesday night, the Democrats swept the countywide seats. That includes electing Lauren Staley-Ferry to the county clerk spot, a position that hasn’t been held by a Democrat in 80 years.
The Democrats also took the county board from the Republicans (now 14-12), including a win by Amanda Koch, a hardworking and thoughtful veteran of the armed forces, in a very Republican district.
The Democrats also swept the two judicial races, making the court an even split between the parties for the first time in decades.
A lot of the credit goes to Thoman, who had a collaborative mindset and was committed to working with labor, progressive groups, and state legislators, especially Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, Natalie Manley, and Larry Walsh Jr, who were intensely focused on building the party and creating a “rising tide lifts all boats” mindset.
Hope things are going well with you and you might take a nap one of these days. On to the transition!
blue wave swept Lake County on Election Day, but Wednesday found some races still too close to call, including those for sheriff and some County Board seats — though if Tuesday’s unofficial results hold up, Democrats would have a majority on the board, with 11 members to 10 Republican members.
With provisional and late-arriving mail-in votes still to be counted, the election results won’t be official for 14 days, according to County Clerk Carla Wyckoff.
She added there were about 1,000 provisional ballots to be reviewed, and those, along with any mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, will be added to Tuesday’s totals all at once at the end of the 14-day period.
This year, according to the clerk’s office, 46,000 mail-in ballots were sent to voters and 34,000 have been returned. During the midterm election in 2014, 34,460 ballots were sent out and 26,733 were returned in time to be counted, Wyckoff said.
Republican Sheriff Mark Curran is currently ahead by 754 votes and his Democratic opponent isn’t conceding.
Aside from individual candidates’ messages, the Democrats’ success appears to be a combination of several factors: trickle-down from higher-level races where the party succeeded, crossover voters, state party support, voters’ disenchantment with the status quo, and Republican board candidates being lumped in as part of a “corrupt” system because of an ethics probe involving former board Chairman Aaron Lawlor.
“There were people who said, ‘This is the first time I voted for a Democrat in my life,’” said Holly Kim, a former Mundelein village trustee who defeated incumbent Treasurer David Stolman. “Everyone has a different reason.”
The GOP managed to keep a slim hold of their majority on the board with 15 seats versus 14 Democratic seats. The Republicans previously held 15 seats with one Independent seat and 13 Democratic seats. […]
(I)ncumbent Republican James Futrell of Alton lost his District 13 seat to Democrat Matthew King, who won with 51 percent of the vote.
Democrats also gained a seat when Robert Pollard, formerly an Independent, ran uncontested as a Democrat in Tuesday’s elections. […]
In a change for the mostly Democratic Granite City area, longtime Democratic board member Arthur Asadorian lost his seat to Republican newcomer John “Eric” Foster. […]
It was a mixed bag in countywide elections with incumbent Democratic County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza defeating Stephen Adler with 53 percent of the vote. Republican incumbent Treasurer Chris Slusser kept his seat, too, with 55 percent of the vote.
“He (J.B.) knows what he doesn’t know,” said Edgar, who had been critical of incumbent GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s leadership style.
“That’s quality is huge. It’s the trait or characteristic of someone who is a success at what he does . . . and is very savvy,” added Edgar, a popular governor who served two terms in the ’90s. […]
“I know we will have our differences, but J.B. knows how important it is to reach out to both sides and work on the art of compromise.
“This guy listens. Really listens. And is willing to compromise.”
In an interview scheduled for broadcast Thursday (Nov. on The 21st, Pritzker said he hopes Edgar’s presence will demonstrate his bipartisan intentions.
“After all the rancor and the unwillingness to work together I think it’s time that we actually started talking across the aisle — Republicans and Democrats — because we’ve got some real challenges in this state and we can only get things done for working families if we work together,” he said.
This love fest is gonna drive the Raunerites up a wall.
“Campaigning is easy. Governing is a lot harder. So, any person becoming Governor of Illinois has to really kind of come to that job with that understanding. Being the governor is a hard job. (You’ve) got to work at it every day.” […]
“We definitely have to raise the minimum wage in Illinois, it’s far too low,’’ [former Gov. Pat Quinn] says, “The current governor has failed to do that. That should be job one for the new governor.” […]
“Honor and respect the process, as well as honor and respect those people who make up the process,” [former GOP Sen. Pam Althoff] says. […]
“Many governors of both parties lost sight of the fact that Illinois is an extremely diverse state, and it’s very important for us to continue to carry on dialogues; to learn what we do have in common and what our concerns are,” she says. […]
“The governor’s job is to come in with his own agenda and collaborate, and say, ‘This is what I would like to see. How is it we work together to achieve this?’”
* The Question: Your own advice for the next governor?
“I intend to live at the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield, but I will of course be commuting as often as possible.” [Pritzker] said the children would continue schooling in Chicago, but “there will be a lot of travel back and forth by all of us.”
“I am looking forward to spending time in Springfield, as I have during the course of the campaign,” Pritzker said. “I think it allows me not just to get to know people in Sangamon County better, but also to get around Central and Southern Illinois easier. That’s something that’s been really important to me during the course of the campaign — just listening to people who live in different areas of the state than where I live.”
He was asked about what tax rates he would propose, as he often had been during the campaign. Pritzker said his administration will have to work with lawmakers on specifics.
“We need to make sure that we’re listening,” Pritzker told reporters. “I know that you all don’t want to accept that, but in order to get something done, we need to listen to all parties. It is a difficult process to get a constitutional amendment passed.”
More than 116,000 McHenry County residents voted in Tuesday’s midterm election – but unofficial election results showed about 21 percent of them did not pick candidates in statewide races. […]
Issues with the county’s election reporting software may be the culprit, according to McHenry County Clerk Mary McClellan.
“We are looking at election reporting software,” McClellan told the Northwest Herald. “It is not showing all the numbers for some reason.” […]
That’s 20 points lower than the 99 percent of Will County ballots that included a gubernatorial vote. In Kane County, it was 98.6 percent. In Lake County, 98.6 percent. Cook County? 98.3 percent.
In a phone interview Thursday morning, McClellan said the gap isn’t that unusual.
“People just didn’t want to vote for governor,” she said.
Oh, please, that is just not true. The county clerk needs to look at her own vote totals.
That undervote was in way more than just the governor’s race. It’s literally everywhere in McHenry County.
* For instance, go to the clerk’s elections page and you’ll see that only 92,559 out of a total of 116,703 voted in the secretary of state’s race, so that’s about the same undervote as the governor’s race. Same goes for the 92,287 who voted in the attorney general’s race and the 92,427 who voted in the county’s two congressional races.
You can’t tell me that as many as 24,000 voters cast totally blank ballots. Those votes are either missing or the total vote count is way off. I called the clerk and she hasn’t gotten back to me.
It’s even worse down-ballot, by the way. Only 81,533 voted in the sheriff’s race and just 80,503 voted in the county auditor’s race. I can see that drop-off happening between statewide and local, but I cannot possibly see 24,000 completely blank ballots. No way.
*** UPDATE *** The county clerk has now fixed the problem. Turns out, the early votes were counted but not tabulated online. As a result, the Democrats have apparently picked up another seat on the county board and Democratic US Rep.-elect Lauren Underwood has narrowly won the county, boosting her final count in the race.
Thursday, Nov 8, 2018 - Posted by Advertising Department
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* It will never cease to amaze me that the people who were most worked up by Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios and the Tribune’s property tax assessment series ended up demanding the changes that lead directly to this result, while the folks who most strongly supported Berrios in the primary are receiving the greatest benefit from all the public pressure and his impending departure…
With all residential property reassessments now mailed out in Chicago, homeowners across the city are seeing dramatic changes in the estimated value that will be used to determine their property tax bill next year.
Improved methods of valuing single-family homes, compounded by rapidly shifting housing prices in some areas, have triggered “sticker shock” in affluent or gentrifying neighborhoods like North Center and Logan Square, where the median assessed value of residential properties was boosted by as much as 50 percent and many individual assessments rose even more.
At the same time, a number of areas with less expensive housing — such as Englewood and New City — saw nearly equal declines in the assessor’s median value estimates.
The new assessment methods were developed to address long-standing problems exposed last year by the Tribune, which found that the Cook County assessor’s office under Joseph Berrios tended to overestimate the value of single-family homes in poor or working-class neighborhoods while underestimating the value of homes in wealthier areas. Those problems put a disproportionate share of the county’s property tax burden on less affluent homeowners, whose tax bills often were inflated while others got an undeserved break.
*** UPDATE *** Sen. Nybo just told me that he has not conceded.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* This means the SDems have picked up two seats so far, with one still in the balance
BREAKING: State Senator Chris Nybo concedes the race to Suzy Glowiak in Illinois’s 24th Senate District, bringing the Democratic majority in the Senate to 39 seats! Congrats Senator-elect @SuzyGlowiak! #twill#Election2018
Sen. Mike Connelly (R-Lisle) is leading Democrat Laura Ellman by just 12 votes, with more to be counted or determined (uncounted mail-in, provisionals, challenged mail-in).
* Rep. Peter Breen’s (R-Lombard) fate has been sealed since election night, and he conceded via Facebook yesterday. It’s quite something…
Dear Friend,
In life, there are some things that you can’t really understand unless you have experienced them first-hand. I’ve reached such an understanding.
I can’t fully convey to you the feeling of cradling our newly adopted baby son, whom Margie and I brought home a little over a week ago. And I can’t fully convey the feeling of viewing ads on television trying to connect you to rapists and child molesters, while cradling that same baby. Or the feeling of having over $2 million in Madigan money used to smear your character to your family and neighbors, in a small targeted area of three lovely suburban towns.
If you want to see why capable and qualified people don’t run for office, this is why. The opposing effort against us was a vile, filthy campaign of character assassination. It was a campaign straight from the Madigan Machine playbook, which has no ethical constraints. I had hoped and prayed that the people of the 48th District would reject this brand of politics, but it simply didn’t turn out that way.
Providentially for me, our family now has a beautiful new baby, a fragile little life. His cries in the middle of the night put partisan politics in their appropriate perspective. Margie and I are truly blessed, and that’s what we’re focusing on today.
Reflecting on my four years in the Illinois House, I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish: passing 32 bills into law, more than any other two-term legislator; leading debate on many hundreds of Madigan agenda bills as Minority Floor Leader; and helping many individuals, families, nonprofits, and businesses in our district with a variety of issues.
I am very proud of how I did it: I never lied, I never cheated, and I never stole. I endeavored in every circumstance to act as a gentleman, in accord with my faith, my training, and how my parents raised me. And I hope that’s how folks remember me in the Illinois House: as a fierce advocate, and as a leader, but always as a gentleman.
As tough as today is for Margie and me, we feel most for the many, many hundreds of people who volunteered for and contributed to my campaign, going back to that first run in 2011 for the Lombard Village Board. We’re grateful for the 22,724 people who voted for me yesterday. Those folks rejected the Madigan Machine, his out-of-control spending, and his tax hikes. They deserve better.
You should feel as proud of this campaign as we do. We went toe-to-toe with Madigan on a variety of fronts, both in the mailboxes of our persuadable voters and on cable television. I’m told we talked to more voters on their doorsteps than any other GOP State House campaign in the Chicago metro area. We won the lone debate, and we secured the top newspaper endorsements, from the Tribune and Sun-Times.
We did everything within the rules that could be done to win, against incredible political headwinds, on a night when Illinois Democrats took the overwhelming majority of DuPage seats in the General Assembly, along with two suburban congressional seats.
One thing certain about politics is that the winds change. You’re up one day and down another. We will get through this.
It has truly been my honor and privilege to serve so many fine people as their Representative in the Illinois House.
Please know of Margie’s and my prayers for you and your family, and we appreciate your prayers for our family.
Pritzker told The State Journal-Register that on Election Night, he spoke with Senate GOP Leader Bill Brady and House GOP Leader Jim Durkin “to say that I look forward to working with them to solve the big problems, the big challenges we’ve got in the state, and I hope they’d be open-minded in working with me, and they both agreed that they would be.”
I confirmed those calls with both leaders, to make extra special sure these weren’t phantom election night conversations like the ones Gov. Rauner claimed he had with Speaker Madigan and Senate President Cullerton four years ago.
* But not everyone is hopeful about the future. Wirepoints…
How much closer to Detroit or Puerto Rico must Illinois go before it reforms?
That’s now the central question, and tonight we’ve learned we have much further to go. The primary culprits in Illinois’s collapse ran the field — Chicago machine Democrats retained firm control of both houses of the General Assembly and won every statewide office. Congressional election results were just as dismal. […]
In almost all other races, Illinois voters effectively chose to believe they can “vote themselves money,” as Benjamin Franklin put it, which, he said will “herald the end of the Republic.” Their lesson will come, though when remains unclear.
They chose, more precisely than ever, the malfeasance and corruption that long ago set the state’s trajectory into the abyss, and offered no indication of what or when would be enough to convince them they’ve reached the bottom. A bottom will come, but when? Something then will arise, but what?
Personally, it’s one of my favorite, historical pictures that haunts the short term but inspires hope for a later day. It shows the first business to reopen in Chicago after the Great Fire, marking the start of a hundred rip roaring years when Chicago was among the most dynamic cities on the planet.
A similar day, far, far off, is all we can hope for.
I think that may have topped the infamous Hurricane Katrina column.
A day after a decisive win over Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Democratic Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker pulled back on a campaign proposal that he’d temporarily raise the state flat income tax rate as he works to enact a progressive income tax structure.
Pritzker previous said Illinois could “do what other states have done with a flat income tax and that is to put exemptions in place, to raise the overall rate, but protect the middle class and those striving to get there with those exemptions and then increase the earned income tax credit.”
“That has the effect of a progressive income tax, but frankly it’s very temporary, so that’s why we have to go after immediately,” Pritkzer said on “Chicago Tonight” in January.
But he appeared to reverse course in a one-on-one interview Wednesday.
“That’s not something I’m looking at currently,” he said.
…But frankly it’s very temporary, so that’s why we have to go after immediately and I have put a plan forward for doing that, go after immediately for getting a constitutional amendment in place.
So he didn’t actually say that he would go after a tax hike with lots of exemptions immediately. He said he’d try immediately to get a constitutional amendment in place to allow for a graduated income tax system.
In April, Pritzker admitted his progressive income tax would take “a little time” — about two years — to get passed through the Legislature.
In the interim, he said he’d seek a Massachusetts model, “an artificial progressive income tax, in which we would raise the exemptions for those striving to get to the middle class … and raise the overall rate and then raise the earned income tax credit at the same time. All of which would create a kind of artificial gradual income tax in the state.”
“It would take us about two years in total to get it all done and said, that we would have a progressive income tax,” Pritzker said at a Loop news conference.
“So in the meantime, you could have what I would describe as … an artificial progressive income tax in which we would raise the exemptions for those striving to get to the middle class, those in the middle class too, and raise the overall rate and raise the earned income tax credit at the same time — all of which would create a kind of artificial graduated income tax in the state,” he said.
Sounds more like spitballing than an actual promise to do it, but whatevs. Upper-income earners aren’t facing an immediate tax hike so they can breathe a little easier.
* I have my nitpicks with this, but overall this is a pretty darned strong budget transition team. It’s also a nice touch to include former Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno…
Today, Governor-elect JB Pritzker and Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton announced the formation and members of the Budget and Innovation Committee of their gubernatorial transition.
The committee is the first of several working groups of the transition made up of subject-matter experts that will advise and guide the incoming Pritzker-Stratton administration. The Budget and Innovation Committee will be chaired by former state Comptroller Dan Hynes and consist of 17 members.
“JB and I are committed to hitting the ground running on day one, and we’re bringing experts with decades of experience to the table to help shape what will be a transformative administration for the state of Illinois,” said Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton. “The Budget and Innovation Committee will mold the guiding moral document that is our state budget and develop inventive solutions to move Illinois forward.”
BUDGET AND INNOVATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Former Comptroller Dan Hynes is a senior advisor on the Transition Committee and chairs the Budget and Innovation Committee. Hynes currently serves as a senior executive at UBS Asset Management in Chicago, after a distinguished 12-year career in public service as the Comptroller for the State of Illinois. Hynes was elected Comptroller in 1998 as the youngest state constitutional officer since World War II. He was re-elected in 2002 and 2006 by wide margins.
State Representative Greg Harris is the Assistant Majority Leader of the Illinois House of Representatives, serving the 13th House District and chairing the Appropriations-Human Services Committee and Violence Prevention Task Force. Harris is the first openly LGBTQ person in the Illinois legislative leadership.
State Senator Toi Hutchinson serves the 40th Senate District and chairs the Senate Revenue Committee. Hutchinson is the former Olympia Fields Village Clerk and has worked in governmental relations and legislative affairs. Hutchinson served as the Chief Professional Officer of the Southwest Suburban United Way and is a 2012 Edgar Fellow.
State Senator Andy Manar serves the 48th Senate District after years of service as city councilman and mayor of Bunker Hill and chair of the Macoupin County Board. Manar led the charge to overhaul our state’s outdated school funding formula, sponsoring bipartisan legislation to make sure every child has access to a quality education regardless of their ZIP code. He also reformed the state’s lead economic development agency to make it more accountable.
Mayor Tom McNamara represents the City of Rockford, elected in 2017 after serving as alderman of the city’s 3rd Ward. McNamara is an insurance agent with Eckburg Insurance Group and previously worked as Career Development Specialist for Goodwill of Northern Illinois.
Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe represents the City of Decatur, becoming the city’s first female mayor in 2015. Moore Wolfe previously served on the Decatur City Council for six years and as Director of Community and Government Relations for Decatur Memorial Hospital, a regional manager of the Governor’s Opportunity Returns program and President of the Decatur Chamber of Commerce.
Treasurer Kurt Summers currently serves the City of Chicago and manages city’s $8 billion investment portfolio. He previously served as Chief of Staff to the Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and as Trustee for the $9 billion Cook County Pension Fund. Summers most recently was a Senior Vice President at Grosvenor Capital Management where he was a leader of the Emerging and Diverse Manager business, which invested over $2 billion with minority- and women-owned firms.
Jessica Basham is the Chief of Staff to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. She previously served a revenue analyst for the state’s appropriations staff before becoming director of the research group.
Carole L. Brown is the Chief Financial Officer of the City of Chicago. Brown served on the State of Illinois Budget for Results Commission since 2011, chaired the Chicago Transit Authority Board and was a member of Mayor Emanuel’s first term Transition Team. She was previously the managing director at Barclays and was with Siebert Brandford Shank & Co LLC and Mesirow Financial. Brown serves on the boards of Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Metropolitan Planning Council and oneFund Chicago.
Pat Devaney is the President of the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois. Devaney first started his career with the Champaign Fire Department in 1995 and he served as lieutenant since 2006. He is a member of AFFI Local 1260 and served as the treasurer, vice president and president.
Ralph Martire is the Executive Director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. Martire also serves as president of the River Forest District 90 School Board and on the West Cook Division Governing Board of the Illinois Association of School Boards. He previously chaired the State Revenue Committee on the Budget Advisory Board of Governor Blagojevich’s transition team and served as the Deputy Issues Director on Dawn Clark Netsch’s gubernatorial campaign and Issues Director for David Wilhelm’s U.S. Senate run.
Dan Montgomery is the President of 103,000-member Illinois Federation of Teachers, a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and a vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO. Montgomery has worked on behalf of public education and the rights of working men and women for more than two decades. He taught English for 18 years at Niles North High School in Skokie and also taught in the City Colleges of Chicago and at Northwestern University. A proud union activist, he has been an IFT member since his first day of teaching in 1993.
Laurence Msall is the President of the Civic Federation. Msall previously served as a Senior Advisor for Economic Development for Governor Ryan, the Assistant to the Director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, and vice president of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Christine Radogno is the former Republican Leader in the Illinois State Senate who left office in 2017 following two decades of service. Radogno was the first woman to lead a legislative caucus in Springfield. She previously served a village trustee in LaGrange and ran as her party’s nominee for state treasurer in 2006.
Kristin Richards is the Chief of Staff to Illinois Senate President John J. Cullerton. Richards previously served as Policy and Budget Director for the Senate President and as policy adviser and liaison to various state agencies in the Office of the Governor.
Michael Sacks is a senior advisor on the Transition Committee and the Chairman and CEO of GCM Grosvenor. Prior to joining Grosvenor in 1990 he was an Associate with Harris Associates, L.P. He serves as the Vice Chairman of the World Business Chicago Board of Director and is active in various philanthropic and community activities.
Leslie Sgro is currently serving her seventh term as the elected President of the Springfield Park District. During her tenure, she has overseen the transformation of the District by building fully accessible parks and bringing its technology into the 21st century. Sgro served as Deputy Director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget from 2011-2015, where she oversaw the $26 Billion Illinois Jobs Now program and assisted in passing a transportation capital bill. Bringing together legislative and government partners, Sgro spearheaded an overhaul of the State’s procurement program. She also served as Deputy Director of the Department of Natural Resources for eight years.
Fox News has launched an improved approach for analyzing Americans’ priorities and vote preferences on Election Day. The Fox News Voter Analysis combines survey data from NORC at the University of Chicago with voting results from The Associated Press. As more people vote early or by mail, the new method overcomes the limitations of in-person exit polls and captures the views of all Americans by integrating probability-based, state-by-state surveys with a massive online poll.
* According to this analysis, JB Pritzker defeated Gov. Rauner among men 48-45, among women 59-33 and scored in the high 50s in all age groups except 65+, which Rauner won 50-40.
Rauner won white men 55-37, but Pritzker won white women 49-43. Pritzker won among African-Americans 91-6 and among Latinx 69-23.
Pritzker won all of the broad education categories, but Rauner won among whites who aren’t college educated 50-39. The two split college-educated whites 47-47.
Eight percent of Republicans and 12 percent of Republican women (you will recall they were targeted heavily by the Conservative Party) went for Sam McCann, and Rauner took 83 percent of GOP voters. Pritzker won 90 percent of Democratic voters.
According to the research, Pritzker won independent men 40-34, but lost independent women to Rauner 57-34. Not sure what’s up there.
Pritzker won moderates 52-39, while Sam McCann took 11 percent of conservatives to Rauner’s 73 percent.
Rauner won white evangelical/born again Christians 61-35 with no recorded support for McCann (very small sample size there, though).
Of those who voted to express support for President Trump, McCann took 9 percent to Rauner’s 78.
Part of Mendoza’s mayoral consideration has included tapping the services of an Emanuel ally to help her navigate the decision — political strategist Becky Carroll, who served as chief Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman in the mayor’s administration and ran an Emanuel-aligned Super PAC as part of his successful bid for a second term in 2015.
In a brief statement, Carroll said she and Mendoza have been “lifelong friends.” If Mendoza were to run for mayor, Carroll said, she “would gladly serve as one of her advisers,” but she stopped short of confirming any role in helping the comptroller prepare for a mayoral bid.
Carroll’s involvement and some of Emanuel’s allies pointing to Mendoza’s Chicago numbers Tuesday night are the most noticeable tea leaves yet that some of the top policy and political aides in the mayor’s orbit are starting to gravitate toward a Mendoza candidacy.
Many in Emanuel’s reliable network of big-money donors, however, largely have kept their powder dry and made no financial commitments, sources said, while a few have started to break for onetime U.S. Commerce Secretary and former Obama White House chief of staff Bill Daley, the brother and son of two former mayors. Some of Emanuel’s contributors and top labor supporters, however, still could end up aligned with Mendoza, who has been a favorite among the city’s major trade unions that were instrumental in Emanuel’s re-election bid four years ago.
Former Hispanic Democratic Organization chieftain Victor Reyes is a political operative who has spoken to several of the top-tier mayoral candidates but is “leaning toward” joining the Preckwinkle campaign.
Reyes argued that Mendoza is Preckwinkle’s “strongest challenger” — but has weaknesses. Chief among them, Reyes said, is a voting record in Springfield that includes “a lot” of tax increases and hard-line votes on criminal justice issues that earned her the nickname, “Electric Suzy.”
“Preckwinkle is a criminal justice progressive. The voting record would show that Mendoza voted for harsher penalties and does not have a progressive criminal justice record,” Reyes said.
Mendoza’s political consultant, Eric Adelstein, countered that Mendoza was the “deciding vote in Illinois in getting rid of the death penalty.”
So, as one of the top leaders in the Democratic Party hierarchy, will Pritzker get involved in the contest to pick a successor to outgoing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel?
“No,” Pritzker said, providing perhaps his most succinct answer to a question after a long governor campaign season.
Of course, there’s little reason for Pritzker to weigh in on a choice for mayor. His election represented a coalition of interests and activists within the Democratic Party. Choosing a mayoral candidate could be viewed as backing one group and alienating the others.
“My job is to work with whoever the new mayor of the city of Chicago is,” Gov.-elect Pritzker said. “That isn’t something that happened in the last administration, and I really think it’s important for the governor to work with the largest city in our state and one of the big economic engines of our state.”
Watch for women — particularly consultants Emily Miller and Becky Carroll — to play big roles in Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s mayoral campaign.
• To wit: Because of the #MeToo movement and Mendoza’s strategy to wage generational war against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and mayoral hopeful Bill Daley, there’s enormous pressure to put women under age 50 in top campaign positions.
Emily Miller called this morning to tell me Sneed’s story is not true and sent me this written statement…
That is false. I will not be joining any mayoral campaign, and will not be playing any role—big or otherwise—in any race. I have never had any conversations with anyone about playing a role in a Mendoza mayoral campaign.
I’m not sure why or by whom that was planted, but it was the first anyone had heard of it.
…Adding… The passage about Emily has now been removed.
* Tom Kacich writes about the historic Democratic vote in Champaign County this week…
The first Democratic county clerk since 1942, the first Democratic sheriff since 1934 and the first Democratic candidate for governor to win the county since 1936 were among the highlights of the stunning win in which Democrats took all five countywide offices on the ballot, all five statewide offices, added to their county board advantage and almost singlehandedly knocked off an incumbent Republican congressman. […]
Unofficially, 79,552 people voted in the general election, an increase of more than 24,000 votes over the last midterm in 2014. The vast majority of those new votes went to Democratic candidates, such as 13th Congressional District candidate Betsy Dirksen Londrigan of Springfield. She got 40,656 — almost twice as many in Champaign County as the 20,451 that Ann Callis received in the 2014 congressional election. […]
Turnout in campus-area precincts was off the charts. City of Champaign 4, which votes at the University YMCA on Wright Street, nearly quintupled its number of voters — from 185 in 2014 to 906 on Tuesday. In Urbana, the number of voters in Cunningham 4, who vote at the Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall, increased from 155 four years ago to 691 this time.
But the number of voters was up in every other precinct in Champaign-Urbana, and Democrats were the beneficiaries even in Republican areas. The most Republican precinct in the two cities — City of Champaign 24 — saw nearly 200 more voters than in 2014. While Bruce Rauner won the precinct four years ago with 54.3 percent of the vote, he lost it Tuesday with only 43 percent. U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, got 53 percent in the district four years ago but just 39.5 percent Tuesday.
The results reaffirm an important aphorism — be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.
For starters, the idea of creating the office of county executive was largely Republican-driven. It was intended to be a means of getting around the Democrat-controlled county board with a chief operating officer elected by all the voters of the county.
If past could be counted on to be prologue, it was a reasonable tactic for the GOP to adopt. But the political plan behind the idea went up in smoke. Voters can only hope it proves to be better policy for the public than it was politics for the Republicans.
The other move that backfired was the decision of John Farney to give up the auditor’s office to which he was elected in 2016 to fill a vacancy at treasurer. As a consequence, both offices were up for election Tuesday and were won by Democrats.
After a hard-fought campaign in the 13th Congressional District, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan congratulated Rodney Davis on his win in last night’s election. Londrigan released the following statement on Wednesday afternoon, following the tallying of absentee and provisional ballots:
“This afternoon, I called Congressman Rodney Davis and congratulated him on his win. While this outcome was not the one we had hoped for, it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to spend the last 16 months in this race. I put over 60,000 miles on my car, traveling across Central Illinois and meeting with thousands of hard working people. We focused on issues that matter most to our neighbors and communities — like access to quality and affordable health care and protections for those with pre-existing conditions.
“During this campaign, big promises were made about protecting people with pre-existing conditions. Those making the promises must be held accountable, and the fight for access to affordable health care must continue. Again, I want to thank my family, staff, volunteers, and our supporters across Illinois’ 13th Congressional District for a hard-fought and meaningful campaign.”
She’s right about Davis’ promises. He promised over and over that he wouldn’t harm pre-existing condition coverage. Speaking as someone with a pre-existing condition, I’m gonna remember that and hold him to it. Hopefully this will be a lesson for him and he can finally be the congressman I always thought he could be - someone who was eager to work across the aisle to get good things done for his district and his country. He went native out in DC. He needs to get back to being Rodney Davis.
Now the bailout of your junk rated government will accelerate in earnest as your favored sons and daughters use the rest of the state as an ATM to pay for your bloated, inefficient and corrupt institutions.
That’s really what last night was about.
In case the rest of you willfully uninformed voters across the state were confused about what is next.
* Press release with all emphasis in the original…
To: Interested Parties
FR: Democratic Party of Illinois
RE: Illinois Voters Roundly Reject Republican Attacks on Speaker Madigan
Last night’s election results definitively proved that the Rauner Republican playbook of attempting to make the entire 2018 election a referendum on Speaker Madigan, to distract from Republicans’ record, is a failure. Rauner and the Republican Party spent several years and hundreds of millions of dollars focused on tearing down one man, and last night that strategy definitively failed for Republicans up and down the ballot who joined in the effort.
Of the dozens of Illinois Republicans that ran on a platform tying their opponent to Speaker Madigan, nearly every one lost. Some attempts were hateful, others laughable, including suggestions that the Speaker is committing acts of violence against others, but after the votes have been counted, the tactic was a clear failure. It failed because Speaker Madigan and the Democratic Party of Illinois are champions of smart economic and social policies that better the lives of Illinoisans and create a state that works for all of us.
GOP Tactic Using Speaker Madigan as a Foil for Dem Candidates Fails
For most of his term, Governor Rauner has consistently attacked Speaker Madigan as a strategy to distract voters and the media from his own failures and poor decision-making in office. This election cycle, Republican candidates throughout Illinois mirrored Rauner’s actions and took part in the strategy in a desperate attempt to defeat their Democratic opponents by attaching them to Speaker Mike Madigan.
What did these GOP candidates get from these attacks? A clear rejection by Illinois voters. Nearly every one of the Republican candidates in Illinois who used this cheap tactic lost their elections. In fact, in a definitive statewide swing towards the Democratic party, Illinois Democrats added at least two U.S. congressional seats and six state house seats that gave Illinois Democrats a supermajority in the state’s House of Representatives.
Examples include:
• Bruce Rauner (R) v J.B. Pritzker (D)
• Erika Harold (R) v Kwame Raoul Raoul (D)
• Tim Schneider (R) v Kevin Morrison (D)
• Seth McMillan (R) v Andy Manar (D)
• Tonia Khouri (R) v Karina Villa (D)
• Eddie Corrigan (R) v Mark Walker (D)
• Peter Breen (R) v Terra Costa Howard (D)
• Christine Winger (R) v Diane Pappas (D)
• Jerry Long (R) v Lance Yednock (D)
• Sheri Jesiel (R) v Joyce Mason (D)
• Peter Roskam (R) v Sean Casten (D)
• Randy Hultgren (R) v Lauren Underwood (D)
It’s time for Illinois Republicans to recognize that their failed record for Illinois families is the problem. As Des Plaines Democratic State Representative Marty Moylan said:
“Mike Madigan is not the problem that we have in the state of Illinois. We have a leader. The governor is supposed to be the leader. Let him start leading and stop blaming Madigan for all of his problems.”
Voters Care About Action, Not Talk
Attempts to distract voters from the issues with campaign ads portraying opponents as “puppets” of Speaker Madigan not only tried to smear each opponent’s character, but also encouraged hateful rhetoric. One ad sounded a disturbing dog-whistle for discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
When they fill out their ballot, voters care about the pocketbook issues that impact their daily lives. A national ABC News–Washington Post poll leading up to the election found that the economy and health care are among the top issues for voters. The same was true for Illinois voters. In a late September poll, conducted by Center for State Policy and Leadership, University of Illinois Springfield and NPR Illinois, state voters reported the economy as their number one issue, then health care, followed by race relations and immigration.
Most notably, voters listed Speaker Madigan dead last among important issues for the next Governor in an October tracking poll.
While the GOP wasted time on cheap attacks, they ignored long-standing advice from political scientists, strategists and candidates from both sides of the political aisle: voters care about “pocketbook issues.”
“It’s focusing on local issues, not distancing or anything strategic like that but more so focusing on issues people care about.” … “Voters have a unique ability to cut through the clutter and focus on issues that actually have an impact on their daily lives,” - Jesse Hunt, spokesperson for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.
“But the bottom line is people are worried about getting their kids through college, making ends meet, and keeping their family running. Those are the things that they focus on.” - Governor Roy Cooper, North Carolina (D)
Madigan’s Record of Results for Illinois
The GOP’s attempt to attach their opponents to Speaker Madigan backfired for multiple reasons. Most importantly because Speaker Madigan is a champion of smart economic and social policies that protect Illinois residents, workers and families.
The GOP attacks against Democrats with ties to Speaker Madigan underestimated Illinois voters who understand that Speaker Madigan’s Democratic leadership has provided real, tangible economic benefits to the people and families of this state.
Illinois Democrats Will Tackle the Real Issues
Voting is a directly personal matter. A typical voter isn’t swayed by smear tactics or petty attempts to mischaracterize candidates. Instead, they want to know that the candidate who earns their vote will work to push forward the policies that directly and positively impact their lives.
Now that the elections are over, Speaker Michael Madigan, as the leader of the Democratic Party of Illinois, will continue to work with his colleagues to tackle the real issues.
Democrats in Illinois are united and ready to work together to advance policies that better the daily lives of all Illinoisans. Speaker Madigan has pledged to continue his work prioritizing policies that protect women’s rights, create a safer work environment for all, strengthen the economy, and create a fairer tax system that can work for all Illinois families.
The GOP attacks were a desperate, out of touch attempts to fracture the party and underestimate voters. They failed. Speaker Madigan and the Democratic Party of Illinois are ready to move forward and continue to make Illinois a better place to live.
Like I said earlier, I think where the Madigan attacks failed was also where the races were so thoroughly nationalized against DC that they fell by the wayside.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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A north suburban Statehouse seat remains a tossup after Tuesday’s polling totals show the candidates are separated by just one vote.
Republican Helene Miller Walsh, who was appointed to the seat in August after her predecessor Nick Sauer’s abrupt resignation, garnered 25,106 votes, while her Democratic opponent Mary Edly-Allen’s total stands at 25,105. […]
The race now could hinge on remaining provisional ballots and mail-in ballots, and could take up to two weeks to decide.
Provisional ballots — those cast by voters whose eligibility is in question — will continue to be evaluated and, where found valid, counted until 14 days after the election. Mail-in ballots continue to arrive, and those postmarked by election day will also be counted, explained election officials in Lake County, where all but one precinct in the 51st House District is located.
There are actually three things to watch here: 1) Mail-in ballots that haven’t yet been received or counted; 2) Provisional ballots; 3) A large number of challenges to mail-in ballots (particularly of signatures), mainly by Republicans. Those signatures are a tough issue because getting them approved requires a signed and notarized affidavit.
Even so, the odds appear to be against Rep. Walsh at the moment. We’ll see. Up to the lawyers now.
* Meanwhile, this outcome was last night’s shocker…
Newcomer Democratic candidate Anne Stava-Murray narrowly beat incumbent Republican state Rep. David Olsen in the 81st House District race.
Unofficial counts of all precincts in DuPage and Will counties show Stava-Murray with 23,671 votes to Olsen’s 23,326 votes.
* Stava-Murray raised almost no money, and is repeatedly on record as opposing House Speaker Michael Madigan. From her Facebook page this past April…
Deeply disappointed in today’s vote that keeps Speaker Madigan the Chair of the (D) party of IL (DPI). I will not accept funding or staff from DPI while he remains the leader.
Some people say: why not? (R)s will still call you a puppet, might as well take the money. To that I say, 3 things…
ONE: for a party that claims to support #endcitizensunited; this (D) machine controls big money and campaign messaging. I refuse to sell out the voice of my district for the chance at a pyrrhic victory.
TWO: for a party that claims to support labor; this (D) machine provides staffers unacceptable wages/working conditions. #clipboardsandcontracts
THREE: for a party that claims to support women; this (D) machine allowed Springfield to remain rife with sexual harassment and retribution for reporting. Ongoing coverups silence real change being made. #TimesUp
Fear and intimidation are used by this machine to silence voices before they speak a word of dissent. I believe dissent is patriotic; we need change for IL and that change cannot be brought by Madigan as Chair of the party.
I will gladly face whatever consequences come my way as a result of speaking up; because the cost of staying silent is too great.
Plain and simple, Rep. Olsen blew it. The HGOPs made some last-minute expenditures there, but the candidate has to work. He was spotted planting yard signs for other Republican candidates the other day.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday is scorching House Republicans who did not embrace him and lost election bids on Tuesday, including Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill.
“Peter Roskam didn’t want the embrace,” Trump said.
Democratic first-time candidate Sean Casten beat Roskam to represent the Illinois 6th congressional district. Roskam kept his distance from Trump in a district that went for Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. Casten linked Roskam to Trump throughout his campaign.
At a White House news conference, Trump noted the contenders who ran with him and won, including Illinois GOP Reps. Michael Bost and Rodney Davis.
Every Republican congressional candidate lost in DuPage County, the heart of Roskam’s district. It was a no-brainer for Bost and Davis to embrace the president because they represent Trump Countr. Roskam does not. The area is historically Republican, but it’s not “Trump Republican.” No disrespect intended, but it just doesn’t make much logical sense to equate those districts.
As voters cast ballots for governor and members of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, AP VoteCast found that 33 percent of Illinois voters said the country is on the right track, compared with 67 percent who said the country is headed in the wrong direction. […]
A majority of voters in Illinois had negative views of Trump: 62 percent said they disapprove of how he is handling his job as president, while 38 percent said they approve of Trump.
And that’s statewide, so those results are diluted by the more rural areas that support the POTUS. Imagine what they’re like in the suburbs, most of which turned pretty darned “blue” this week.
Roskam had his own issues, but a failure to embrace the president wasn’t one of them.
* Related…
* How the SALT tax doomed Peter Roskam: Two key authors of the GOP tax overhaul—Illinois’ Peter Roskam and Minnesota’s Erik Paulsen—were among the casualties as voters vented frustration over a new cap on state and local tax deductions.
That is the kind of wrongheaded thinking that got us into this mess.
“Governors own,” but you do not govern successfully by making the fixation of blame your primary objective.
Yes, Republicans are in the minority, but they still hold public office, they still bear some responsibility, and they should not abdicate all responsibility or refuse to work with Democrats just because they are hoping by doing so they can make Pritzker fail.
Senator DeWitte and Senator-elect Gillespie both need to represent not just the people who elected them, but also the people who voted against them. The 48% who voted against Senator DeWitte don’t want him to be an automatic No vote on every idea Democrats offer, and I am betting that alot of the folks who voted for him share that view.
By the same token, the 48% who voted against Gillespie do not want their Senator to vote to cram everything through the Senate just because Democrats are in the majority so they can. And I bet alot of their Democratic neighbors share the same view.
Purple districts, folks. A lot of purple districts, and we need a lot more purple thinking.
After winning yesterday’s gubernatorial election by 15 points, today, Governor-elect JB Pritzker announced his Transition Committee and his administration’s Chief of Staff. Serving as his Transition Committee Chair is Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton and campaign manager Anne Caprara will serve as chief of staff.
“I am honored to be chairing the transition committee with a remarkable group of leaders who represent the diversity and strength of our state,” said Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton. “From day one, JB and I have made a commitment to making sure Illinoisans across the state have a seat at the table as we build an administration to put Springfield back on the side of working families.”
Chair, Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton
Co-Chair, Barbara Bowman
Co-Chair, Mike Carrigan
Co-Chair, Former Governor Jim Edgar
Co-Chair, Sol Flores
Co-Chair, Marty Nesbitt
TRANSITION COMMITTEE STAFF
Chief of Staff, Anne Caprara
Transition Director, Nikki Budzinski
Deputy Transition Director, Sean Rapelyea
Senior Advisor, Former Comptroller Dan Hynes
Senior Advisor, State Representative Christian Mitchell
Senior Advisor, Michael Sacks
Counsel, Jesse Ruiz
TRANSITION COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Chair, Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton: State Representative Juliana Stratton has been serving the public, solving problems, and fighting for what’s right throughout her career. As a state representative for the 5th District, Stratton has worked to reform our criminal justice system, raise the minimum wage, and protect a woman’s right to choose. As the Director of the Center for Public Safety and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she worked to build trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. She graduated with a B.S. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a J.D. from DePaul University and is a proud former delegate at the Illinois Women’s Institute for Leadership. Stratton was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and currently resides in Bronzeville.
Co-Chair, Barbara Bowman: Barbara Bowman is a nationally recognized advocate for early childhood education and is the Co-Founder of the Erikson Institute and an Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Development. She has worked as Chief Officer for early childhood education for the Chicago Public Schools and served as a consultant to U.S. Secretary of Education during President Obama’s first term. She is a professor, author and award winner.
Co-Chair, Michael Carrigan: Michael Carrigan is currently president of the Illinois AFL-CIO and will be a partner in putting Springfield back on the side of working families. He has served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO for seven years before becoming president. Prior, he was Business Manager and Financial Secretary for IBEW Local 146 in Decatur from 1992 to 2000. Carrigan served as a journeyman wireman in Decatur before becoming Assistant Business Manager of Local 146.
Co-Chair, Former Governor Jim Edgar: Governor Jim Edgar served as the 38th Governor of Illinois and brings decades of government experience to his role on the transition. During his time as governor, he eliminated a backlog of $1 billion of unpaid health care bills, provided income tax relief and left an unprecedented $1.5 billion in the treasury for his successor. After retiring from elective office, he has continued his commitment to responsible and responsive government as a distinguished fellow at the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs and he spearheads the Edgar Fellows program.
Co-Chair, Sol Flores: Sol Flores is an emerging leader in her community with a strong knowledge of the social service structure. She is Founding Executive Director of La Casa Norte and founded the organization in 2002. La Casa Norte is a nonprofit organization that provides housing and social services to homeless Latino and African American youth and families in Chicago. She was raised by a single mother who came to Chicago from Puerto Rico and has been recognized as a national Champion of Change for her work by the Obama White House.
Co-Chair, Marty Nesbitt: Martin Nesbitt will bring his extensive business experience to focus on creating jobs and building an inclusive economy that works for everyone. Nesbitt is the Co-CEO of the Vistria Group, LLC and prior to that was the CEO of the Parking Spot, an executive with Pritzker Realty Group, L.P and an Equity Vice President and Investment Manager at LaSalle Partners. He was also the National Treasurer of President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. Martin serves on the Board of Directors of FowardLine Financial and Vanta Education. He serves on the Board of Directors of CenterPoint Energy, Norfolk Southern Corporation and American Airlines Groups, he is a Trustee of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Chairman of the Barack Obama Foundation.
TRANSITION COMMITTEE STAFF
Anne Caprara will serve as Chief of Staff for the administration and senior advisor during the transition. Anne Caprara recently served as campaign manager for JB Pritzker and Juliana Stratton’s gubernatorial campaign. Caprara is a political professional with over 17 years of experience in Democratic campaigns and legislative offices, Caprara has managed and consulted with candidates and elected officials at every level of state and federal government. Caprara served as chief of staff to Congresswoman Betsy Markey’s from 2008 until 2010. Before that, Caprara served as Chief of Staff for Ohio Congresswoman Betty Sutton. Caprara also served as political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Executive Director of Priorities USA during the 2016 election cycle. She obtained her Masters degree from George Washington University and her undergraduate degree from American University.
Nikki Budzinski will serve as Transition Director. Nikki Budzinski served as Senior Advisor to the JB Pritzker for Governor campaign. Budzinski led JB Pritzker’s exploratory effort for Governor and in her latest role she advised the campaign on political strategy, messaging and outreach. From 2015-2016, Budzinski served as the Labor Campaign Director on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign. Prior, Budzinski worked in the labor movement for ten years in Washington, DC, working for the Laborers International Union of North America, International Association of Fire Fighters and United Food and Commercial Workers Unions. Budzinski is a Peoria native and worked for Comptroller Dan Hynes from 1999-2004 in Springfield, Illinois, serving in numerous roles within the Office of the Comptroller and working on both Comptroller Hynes’ reelection campaign and the 2004 U.S. Senator primary election.
Sean Rapelyea will serve as Deputy Transition Director. Sean Rapelyea served as Political Director for JB for Governor He previously served as Illinois Political Director for the Hillary For America campaign during the general election, where she garnered a 17–point win margin. Rapelyea previously served as Deputy Director of Government Affairs for the Office of the Mayor in Chicago after working as a Regional Field Director and Advisor to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2011 and 2015 re-election campaigns. In 2010, he worked on Arkansas Senator’s Blanche Lincoln’s primary, runoff, and general election campaign.
Former Comptroller Dan Hynes will serve as a senior advisor. Dan Hynes currently serves as a senior executive at UBS Asset Management in Chicago, after a distinguished 12-year career in public service as the Comptroller for the State of Illinois. Hynes was elected Comptroller in 1998 as the youngest state constitutional officer since World War II. He was re-elected in 2002 and 2006 by wide margins. In 2011, President Barack Obama named Hynes as the United States Observer to the International Fund for Ireland, which makes investments in Northern Ireland for the purpose of promoting peace and stability in the region. Hynes also serves a member of the Democratic National Committee.
State Representative Christian Mitchell will serve as a senior advisor. Christian Mitchell is the State Representative for the 26th District and Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Illinois. Mitchell began his career as a community organizer, working with churches on the south side of Chicago. He went on to become a trusted advisor to reform minded political leaders. He served as a deputy field director on Lisa Madigan’s re-election campaign, managed the city council race of former 4th Ward Alderman Will Burns, and was Midwest Paid Media and Polling Director for President Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. He has consulted for State Assembly and Congressional races across the country, and was a Senior Advisor to Senator Tammy Duckworth’s successful 2016 race. Before being elected to office, Mitchell also served on senior staff for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
Michael Sacks will serve as a senior advisor. Sacks is the Chairman and CEO of GCM Grosvenor. Grosvenor specializes in the management of multimanager investment portfolios and is a leader in the alternative investment industry. Prior to joining Grosvenor in 1990 he was an Associate with Harris Associates, L.P. He graduated from Tulane University and received his M.B.A and Juris Doctor from Northwestern University. He serves as the Vice Chairman of the World Business Chicago Board of Director and is active in various philanthropic and community activities. He and his wife, Cari have three children.
Jesse Ruiz will serve as counsel to the transition. Ruiz is a Partner at Drinker Biddle and is the President of Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners. He currently serves as a member of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Ruiz has served as Vice President of Chicago Board of Education and Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education and President of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois. He was appointed to serves on the U.S. Department of Education Equity and Excellence Commission.
* This may or may not mean anything, but likely Chicago mayoral candidate Comptroller Susana Mendoza won the city with 696,596 votes. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, an already declared mayoral candidate, won the city with 674,357 votes.
So, Preckwinkle scored 22,239 fewer votes than Mendoza even though Preckwinkle was unopposed yesterday. There was obviously a sizable undervote.
Sheriff Tom Dart, by the way, is even lower on the ballot than Preckwinkle and was also unopposed and still got 711,564 votes, more than both Mendoza and Preckwinkle.
…Adding… A commenter mentioned something, so I checked it out. Mendoza received more votes than Preckwinkle in Preckwinkle’s own 4th Ward. And Sheriff Dart also outpolled Preckwinkle in that ward.
* By the way, the ward with the highest percentage turnout yesterday was the 47th, at 76.2 percent. The ward with the greatest numerical turnout was the 32nd, with 24,051. The Southwest Side’s 19th Ward was a close second.
* I asked the Chicago Board of Elections Commission for an age breakdown of yesterday’s vote…
Those are unofficial results as of 10:59 this morning.
The big news is that Democrats made modest gains while Republicans held their robust lead in terms of legislative control. Democrats gained control of six chambers, although Republicans still have a sizable overall advantage in total legislative chambers: R: 61, D: 37. That tallies to 98 chambers because Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature is technically nonpartisan.
In terms of overall legislative control (both House and Senate), Dems gained control of four on Tuesday. Republicans will control 30 versus the Democrats’ 18 when sessions convene in January. Minnesota is now the only state where legislative control is divided. It’s the lowest number of divided legislatures in more than 100 years, matching 1914 when Montana was the only state with a split legislature.
As for state control, which includes the governor along with the legislature, Democrats went from controlling eight to 14. […]
More than 330 seats nationwide shifted from Republican to Democrat. That is short of the typical losses suffered by the party in the White House. The average loss to the president’s party in midterms since 1902 is 424 legislative seats. […]
It is very likely that more women will serve in state legislatures come January than at any point in American history. The numbers are still being crunched.
Democratic State Senator Kwame Raoul in the race of Illinois Attorney General Tuesday night. Republican challenger Erika Harold called him to concede the race about an hour and a half after the polls closed.
The two had been locked in a tight race, with polls narrowing in the days before the election.
You don’t go from being “locked in a tight race with polls narrowing in the days before the election” to an 11-point, 471-thousand-vote win on election day. C’mon. People got carried away with the rumors and now they’re standing by them. Buzz ain’t always what it appears to be.
I mean, not only did Raoul get more votes than JB Pritzker, he also won Harold’s home county of Champaign. Yes, she received 176,000 more votes than Gov. Rauner, but Sam McCann took 188,000 votes from Rauner. So there’s that.
Obliterating concerns from some Democrats that the race had tightened in the final days, Kwame Raoul cruised to an easy victory Tuesday over Republican Erika Harold to become Illinois’ first new attorney general in 16 years.
Top party officials reported that late polling showed Raoul with a much smaller lead over Harold than the double-digit advantages enjoyed by other statewide Democratic candidates, including governor front-runner J.B. Pritzker.
The most recent Democratic poll I was told about had Raoul winning by 9. He won by 11.
In a sign of how tight the race had become as Election Day neared, Raoul reported receiving a $1 million donation from House Speaker Michael Madigan’s campaign fund on Friday.
So, you’re saying that a million bucks received just a few days out took it from a “tight” race to a blowout?
* What happened here is that a few weeks ago or so, a Democratic tracking poll had Raoul trailing. But that’s a single one-day poll out of lots, and it’s a mathematically possible that it was an outlier. Scientific polls are accurate to a 95 percent confidence level, which means one in 20 are outliers. It happens.
The Republicans had some polling that showed Raoul with a smallish lead, so the buzz built over time. And, hey, you gotta have some drama, so just about everybody bought into it, even though the Harold campaign was all but dark on TV the final week while Pritzker and others were pumping in millions into Raoul’s effort over the last three weeks to help move his margin up from mid-to-high-single digits to low double-digits.
Raoul didn’t magically pull out a huge win at the 11th Hour “because Madigan.” It was built over time and he earned it. Yeah, I didn’t like his TV ads, but they got stronger toward the end.
The overwhelming media narrative did serve a purpose, however. The warnings of a super-duper close race for an important job probably helped the entire Democratic ticket by motivating some folks to vote.
* Having said all that, I think Harold deserves a lot of credit here. She’s a natural campaigner and had a good team. If the governor had come through with all the money he promised her, she probably would’ve made this a more competitive race. She got game. I hope she runs for something else.
Here’s the first step: Mend the fracture between establishment and conservative Republicans — Rauner supporters and those who backed his primary opponent, Rep. Jeanne Ives — and begin the rebuilding process. Find common ground and bury old grudges. Coalesce around new, fresh leadership in the House and Senate.
The talent is there. House and Senate members who managed to fend off challengers — Sens. Neil Anderson of Andalusia and John Curran of Downers Grove, along with Reps. Mark Batinick of Plainfield, Tom Morrison of Palatine, Tom Demmer of Dixon, Grant Wehrli of Naperville, to name a few — will have to retread this party. And they’ll have to do it without worrying about the next election. Don’t go weak. Go big — that is, as big as a minority party can go. Give the people of Illinois fresh ideas for fixing this state’s government and economy.
So, they want Rep. Batinick (who is up by 692 votes before all mail-in and provisional ballots are counted), Rep. Morrison (who is up by 482 votes before all mail-in and provisional ballots are counted) Rep. Wehrli (who defeated an opponent who had suspended her campaign and didn’t even live in the district and was allegedly sought by the FBI for a case in Texas by just 5 points) to take the lead in the House?
I’m thinking Leader Durkin will be fine.
…Adding… Also, I’m thinking Leader Brady will be fine. The Tribune has been cheerleading Bruce Rauner for more than four years. Maybe it’s time to sit down for a bit.
* The Champaign County Board decided to create a county executive and hold the election in the off-year, perhaps because college students tend not to vote in off years. Champaign County Clerk Gordy Hultgren informs me this position was created by referendum. As you’ll recall from numerous posts over the last couple of days, however, area college students came out in droves. Oops…
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Democrats have swept all Champaign County [countywide] offices.
— Democrat Darlene Kloeppel won the race for the new position of county executive over current Republican Clerk Gordy Hulten.
— Democrat Aaron Ammons won the race for clerk with 54 percent of the vote over Republican Matt Grandone.
— Democrat Laurel Prussing won the race for treasurer with 54 percent of the vote over incumbent Republican John Farney.
— Democrat George Danos won the race for auditor with 56 percent of the vote over incumbent Republican Diane Michaels.
— And Democrat Dustin Heuerman won the race for sheriff with 55 percent of the vote over Republican Allen Jones.
JB Pritzker defeated Gov. Rauner in the county 55-38.
Champaign County Clerk Gordy Hulten (an old friend of this blog), won his last race four years ago 61-39. He lost for county executive yesterday 53-47. The Democrats didn’t even run candidates for county sheriff and treasurer four years ago.
So far early returns, Speaker Madigan regains supermajority and then some with Terra Costa Howard (Breen), Diane Pappas (Winger), Karina Villa (Fortner seat/Khouri), Walker (Corrigan-David Harris seat).
House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs said Tuesday’s results showed a gain for Democrats. “We got hit pretty hard, and statewide it was really difficult for the Republicans,” he said. “The governor underperformed in areas that were important to us.”
Durkin also said antipathy toward Trump in the suburbs hurt his party, as evidenced by losses of Republican U.S. Reps. Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren, even though the president helped Downstate Republicans.
* Related…
* Mark Brown: Bruce Rauner wore out his welcome long ago
on The 21st, Pritzker said he hopes Edgar’s presence will demonstrate his bipartisan intentions.
