We are filled with pride and joy upon hearing that our Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister, Kamala Harris, has been selected to join Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. While individual members can support who they want, this history-making selection of Harris—the first Black woman on a major party ticket—is exciting for so many who never thought they’d see this day.
This year, our nation is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. But for decades, that guarantee did not include women of color. Now Harris will bring with her to the ticket, the spirit of women like Suffragist Ida B. Wells, Civil Rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, and the first black woman to run for president, Shirley Chisholm.
The legacy of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated is that of excellence and community service, traits which Kamala Harris has exemplified throughout her career. And we are so very proud to witness this historic day.
Juliana Stratton
Mattie Hunter
LaToya Greenwood
Toi Hutchinson
* More…
Congratulations to my Soror and Link sister @KamalaHarris on making history with your nomination as Vice-President! The party is energized and ready for the win! Let’s protect our democracy and bring honor and respect back to the White House! #BidenHarris2020pic.twitter.com/i9Rg6PIva7
Prominent women who are or have been AKA members include Eleanor Roosevelt, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Star Jones, Alicia Keys, Phylicia Rashad, Mellody Hobson, Wanda Sykes, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Hazel O’Leary, Sheila Jackson Lee, Suzanne Malveaux and Karen Yarbrough. In the Illinois General Assembly, my colleagues Sen. Mattie Hunter, Sen. Toi Hutchinson and Rep. Monique Davis are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
A north suburban legislator who has benefited from nearly $247,000 in contributions from House Speaker Michael Madigan is now calling for the beleaguered political powerhouse to step down, saying the Legislature can’t function below a cloud of “distractions, doubt or distrust.”
State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz is joining the slowly growing list of House Democrats calling on Madigan to immediately step down from his leadership roles in the Illinois House and the state’s Democratic Party, saying federal investigations into corruption “at the highest levels have created a crisis of confidence and undermined the integrity and public trust that leadership demands.”
“If we are to move our state forward, Speaker Madigan must not continue to serve in the role of Speaker of the House or as Chair of the Illinois Democratic Party,” the Glenview Democrat said in a statement. “I understand and agree with many of my colleagues’ concerns about due process.
“I fully support due process for Speaker Madigan and anyone else with respect to ongoing criminal investigations. However, whether someone should retain leadership positions in the General Assembly and the Illinois Democratic Party is a question of moral, ethical, and personal judgement, not criminal process. Leadership is a privilege, and we must hold our leaders to a higher standard.” […]
Gong-Gershowitz joins six other members of Madigan’s caucus calling on him to step down immediately: North Siders Jonathan “Yoni” Pizer and Kelly Cassidy, Stephanie Kifowit of Oswego, Lindsey LaPointe of the Northwest Side, Terra Costa Howard of Glen Ellyn and Anne Stava-Murray of Naperville.
IT IS ORDERED that the emergency motion for supervisory order is denied. On the Court’s own motion, pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 384, Darren Bailey v. Governor Jay Robert Pritzker, in his official capacity, Clay County No. 20 CH 6, is transferred to the Circuit Court of Sangamon County and consolidated with Riley Craig et al. v. Governor Jay Robert Pritzker, etc., Sangamon County No. 20 MR 589.
What this means is, the Supreme Court punted on deciding the issue at hand and moved the case to Sangamon County, where the governor has previously prevailed.
Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 384, James Mainer et al., etc. v. Illinois Department of Public Health et al., etc., Clay County No. 20 CH 13, is transferred to the Circuit Court of Sangamon County and consolidated with Governor J.B. Pritzker, etc., et al. v. Board of Education of Hutsonville CUSD #1 et al., etc., Sangamon County No. 20 MR 557.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) are elated that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has canceled the process to build a new privately-operated immigration detention facility in Dwight, Illinois. ICE was still working on the Dwight plan even though the General Assembly passed and Governor Pritzker signed the Private Detention Facility Moratorium Act in 2019 to block for-profit detention centers from being built and operated in our state. Thanks to the leadership of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Sen. Robert Peters, who spoke up forcefully in response to ICE’s continuing movement on the Dwight bid, ICE has received the message and ended the process.
Our organizations will continue to fight to hold DHS and ICE accountable, to stop the harms they are inflicting and the fear they are creating in our communities, and to make Illinois welcoming for all.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement no longer has a requirement for a Contract Detention Facility within a 180 mile radius of the ICE Chicago Field Office located at101 W. Ida B. Wells Drive, Suite 4000, Chicago, IL 60605-1074.
No word yet on why it no longer has such a requirement.
By their own admission, the plaintiffs’ lawyers filed this lawsuit for political purposes. I have occasionally made job recommendations for good people seeking jobs, believing that the applicant could and would do successful work. That is commonplace in all industries. Sometimes the applicant is hired, and sometimes the applicant is not hired. The decision is the employer’s and I do not act differently either way. And I have not, and would not, make a job recommendation believing that the applicant wouldn’t be asked to perform work by their employer.
The notion that the passage of two consequential pieces of energy legislation were tied to the hiring or retention of a few individuals is seriously mistaken. Those bills had broad support—from Democrats and Republicans; from the other legislative leaders, sponsors, and individual legislators; and from labor supporters, consumer advocates, and environmentalists. The bills couldn’t have passed otherwise, and they were the product of years of deliberation, negotiations, and consensus building. Nothing I or my staff did in the course of those bills was influenced by a company’s decision to hire or retain a person, nor did I ever suggest that such a decision could influence me.
I have never made a legislative decision with improper motives. We intend to defeat this transparently political lawsuit, which is wrong on both the facts and the law.
There have always been differences within the Democratic party. I have devoted my entire career to working with all Democrats in Illinois. I will continue to do that, especially as we face defeating Donald Trump, who has a track record of sowing division and suppressing minority voices. As Trump ends the Census count early, ensuring all of our communities are fairly and fully represented has been and will continue to be a main priority of mine as the Chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
Discuss.
*** UPDATE *** One more MJM statement…
Vice President Biden has made an excellent choice in selecting Senator Kamala Harris as our next vice president of the United States. Senator Harris has an impressive legislative and legal background that will help guide our country out of one of our darkest periods. Senator Harris has compassion and strength and is the right woman for the job.
* One of the Midwest’s largest tourist attractions is in serious trouble. Press release…
Per State and City orders, Navy Pier was closed to the public from March 17 to June 10 to help curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Since its reopening, the organization has sought to find solutions that would enable it to continue its operations with the safety and security measures currently in place. While we have been able to resume partial operations and safely welcome guests back to the Pier, we are seeing only about 15–20% of our typical summer attendance, making it difficult to generate revenues that support our standard operations.
Navy Pier has operated as an independent nonprofit organization since 2011. Although the organization maintains facilities on publicly-owned property, Navy Pier does not receive any public tax dollars to support its operating costs. The Pier relies on generous philanthropic support from individuals, foundations and corporations with the majority of revenues earned through operational income, such as rent and fees from on-site partner establishments (restaurants, retail shops, cultural anchors, etc.), private events, consumer and trade shows, parking and ticket sales from attractions.
To date, the Centennial Wheel and other Pier Park attractions—a primary source of revenue—have not been able to open and operate. On-site cultural anchors, such as Chicago Children’s Museum and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, have also not yet reopened. Additionally, the Pier has extended rent relief to all of its on-site tenant partners. The parking garages have also seen a significant drop in parking activity, even with discounted parking rates currently in place. And all private events, consumer/trade shows and other bookings have been canceled in our East End event facilities. We rely heavily on these sources of revenue. Furthermore, restrictive capacity limitations for many of our events, restaurants and venues have prevented the Pier from resuming full operations and offering full experiences to guests. The loss of those earnings has been devastating to the organization’s budget, resulting in a projected deficit of $20 million.
With the support of the government funding program, the CARES Act, we were able to temporarily retain staff through the Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan. Our hope was that once we reopened, revenues would be restored at a more sustainable level. Unfortunately, that has not been realized.
Financial Adjustments
To help limit costs, Navy Pier has implemented the following financial adjustments and measures:
• Navy Pier President and CEO has taken a 44% compensation reduction and the executive leadership team members have taken a 33% reduction since mid-May
• Many full-time administrative staff members have been furloughed
• Planned capital improvements have been postponed
• Hiring of critical positions has been suspended
• Contractual services have been significantly reduced
• Budgets have been drastically reduced
• As of Monday, July 27, we made the difficult decision to reduce our full-time administrative staff through layoffs (approximately 20 percent of our employees, totaling 11 positions, in addition to 9 trades workers)
These decisions are not ones that were made lightly and were done after a long and careful review of the Pier’s projected financials with knowledge that many good people would be affected. As an organization that cares deeply about its employees, we held off on making these changes for as long as our finances would allow.
PPP Loan
Navy Pier sought and secured a PPP loan, which granted the organization $2.5 million to help preserve the salaries and benefits for eight weeks to retain 55 full-time administrative employees while revenue generation was completely halted during the Pier’s closure. The loan also made it possible for Navy Pier to retain and provide essential job training remotely with pay to 170 part-time seasonal guest service and Pier Park employees to prepare for summer and retained 26 full-time tradespeople, 21 whom were previously laid off who were able to return and begin preparing the Pier for its impending reopening.
As outlined within the parameters of the PPP loan, funds were used to cover up to $100,000 of each full-time employee’s salary, support benefits, satisfy rent/mortgage payments, cover utilities, etc.
Unlike other similar nonprofit cultural institutions, Navy Pier does not receive public funding from city, county or state tax revenue, nor does it have an endowment to rely upon. The PPP loan was a critical source of funding that is helping to bridge the gap created by the Pier’s closure and lost revenues.
Payal Patel, a spokeswoman for the private operator of the government-owned pier, said the company “is not going out of business. Navy Pier is not going bankrupt. They’re looking at full closure, partial closure.”
Patel said the not-for-profit company has no plans to walk away from the pier, which it began leasing in 2011 under a $1-a-year lease from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, whose board is appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. […]
The company — whose board includes former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s daughter Nora Daley Conroy — had more than $57.9 million in debts at the end of 2018, according to records it filed with the Internal Revenue Service. It’s required to pay slightly more than $3 million on those this year. Patel wouldn’t say how it will make those payments.
Overheard in the hallway as lawmakers walk into the JCAR meeting, Senator Bill Cunningham assures @GovPritzker’s lawyer Ann Spillane there will be “no surprises.” Cunningham apparently expects the fines for businesses who defy Pritzker’s mask mandate to pass. pic.twitter.com/AIIVlDSolX
…Adding… The afore-mentioned DCEO emergency rule on distribution of federal aid to local governments has been approved.
…Adding… Press release…
Illinois Municipal League Executive Director Brad Cole issued the following statement regarding the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules’ approval of guidelines for the distribution of local funding from the federal CARES Act:
“Today’s rulemaking by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) and the Administration is both unfortunate and untimely. It is unfortunate that the state has chosen its own bureaucracy over the betterment of its communities, by disallowing local governments from using their allotted CARES Act funds in full compliance with federal guidelines. And it is untimely in that the state continues to withhold millions of federal dollars that were intended to aid suffering local governments, aid that was enacted by Congress and the President almost five months ago, on March 27.”
The core disagreement was that the “suffering local governments” wanted near carte blanche authority to distribute federal money to local businesses. If the locals had violated federal rules, state taxpayers would be held responsible.
*** UPDATE 1 *** JCAR took up a motion to oppose and suspend the IDPH emergency rule. That motion required a majority of 8 votes. It failed 6-5. The rule stands.
…Adding… IRMA isn’t pleased…
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association (IRMA) has released the following statement after the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules failed to stop Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposal to fine retailers for the failure of individuals to wear face coverings as required by the state:
“We are disappointed the administrative rule was not stopped. Contrary to the false narrative peddled by the administration in recent days, retailers have never been against masks. In fact, the retail industry helped develop many of the safety guidelines put in place by the state, including the use of face coverings in public,” said Rob Karr, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
“Instead of cooperation and collaboration, the Administration chose politics and confrontation in developing this rule, abandoning the partnership with retailers that has helped guide our state through this pandemic. While the Administration preaches the importance of individuals wearing face coverings, they are clearly not interested in taking responsibility for their own orders. Instead, they are exporting their enforcement responsibilities to others and playing politics with the pandemic. Make no mistake: their actions have once again put retailers and their employees in harm’s way.
“Throughout this pandemic, Illinois retailers of all types and sizes including but not limited to grocery, hardware, restaurant, taverns, pharmacy, apparel, fitness, convenience stores, and gas stations, have done all that has been asked of them, and so much more. That is why the enactment of today’s emergency rule is such an injustice to retailers large and small.”
IRMA is usually not so strident.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Press release…
Governor JB Pritzker released the following statement following JCAR upholding enforcement rule.
I have always put the health and safety of Illinoisans first, and I’m gratified that local governments now have an additional way to keep their communities safe.
I want to thank the broad coalition of Illinoisans from around the state for their input and advocacy in support of science. Groups such as the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, the Illinois Public Health Association, Open Safe Illinois and our Safety Net Hospitals. As well as the Chicago Federation of Labor, the Illinois AFL-CIO, the Illinois Restaurant Association, National Nurses United Organizing Committee-Illinois Chapter and SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana worked together to ensure the state remains focused on beating this pandemic.
The vast majority of our communities and business owners are doing what’s right. Working alongside these partners, these rules will provide multiple opportunities for compliance before any penalty is issued and will help ensure that the minority of people who refuse to act responsibly won’t take our state backward. These rules will ensure that there is a commonsense way to enforce public health guidelines with an emphasis on education first so that Illinois can continue to make substantial progress in our fight against COVID-19.
…Adding… Press release…
The Illinois Fuel and Retail Association, representing the state’s gas stations and convenience stores, today issued the following statement in response to the decision by a legislative panel not to block a rule requiring masks in public places.
“Doing business in Illinois during this unprecedented time of conflict and challenge is now even harder.
A panel of legislators known as JCAR today could not find enough votes to block a misguided rule from Gov. Pritzker’s Administration requiring masks in stores and public places and fining business owners for violations. We will be considering other options, but for now, this policy will move ahead.
We do not oppose a strong public push for wearing masks and taking other protective measures in the fight against COVID-19. Our stores have detailed policies in place to keep customers protected themselves and from others through masks, social distancing and more. These steps are saving lives.
But requiring masks and punishing business owners, not customers, for not using them just doesn’t make sense. Businesses are struggling to open and stay open. We are not the problem, and yet again we are being treated as criminals. It’s not right, and it will not work.
We urge the Pritzker Administration to rethink this misguided policy that will make life harder for our small businesses, and instead partner with and support us to end this pandemic as quickly as possible and get our state back on the right track. Every moment counts.”
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,549 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 20 additional confirmed death.
Adams County: 1 male 90s
Coles County: 1 male 80s
Cook County: 1 male 60s, 3 males 70s, 1 female 80s
DuPage County: 1 male 60s, 1 male 90s
Franklin County: 1 female 70s
Jackson County: 1 female 60s
Kankakee County: 1 male 60s
Lake County: 1 male 80s
Livingston County: 1 female 60s
Logan County: 1 male 70s
Peoria County: 1 female 90s
Perry County: 1 female 90s
Wayne County: 1 female 70s
Will County: 1 female 40s, 1 male 70s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 196,948 cases, including 7,657 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 41,362 specimens for a total of 3,147,703. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from August 4 – August 10 is 4.1%. As of last night, 1,459 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 336 patients were in the ICU and 127 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
Following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH is now reporting both confirmed and probable cases and deaths on its website. Reporting probable cases will help show the potential burden of COVID-19 illness and efficacy of population-based non-pharmaceutical interventions. IDPH will update these data once a week.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov.
* The city’s police superintendent did his best to pull stuff out of the air yesterday in order to shift the blame to the state’s attorney…
Brown went so far as to imply that looters reoffended this weekend after getting away with the same crimes during the widespread unrest earlier this year, eliminating any deterrent. […]
Foxx, who is no stranger to accusations that she is soft on crime, flatly rejected that narrative at a news conference Monday. Her office has not dropped any looting cases related to recent unrest, she said, calling for a response “beyond a sound bite and a finger point.”
Neither the superintendent nor the mayor have been able to point to any actual data backing up this claim. If they have it, they should use it. If they don’t have it, then they should apply for a job as a Tribune columnist.
Nearly 5,000 people were arrested countywide after the death of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer sparked days of protests and also looting, Foxx said.
In a statement released after the new conference, Foxx wrote that the Chicago Police Department arrested roughly “300 individuals [for looting and rioting] and none of these cases have been dropped. They are currently awaiting trial. These cases will be brought to trial beginning in August.”
Of 5,000 countywide arrests, 1,000 were for city ordinance violations, such as being out after curfew, she said. Another 1,000 were misdemeanor arrests, and 400 to 500 of those involved people she said were involved in what her office considers peaceful protests. Foxx said her office has “no role in the prosecution of city ordinance violations.”
Foxx announced in June that her office would focus on dismissing charges stemming from arrests at demonstrations and for citywide curfew violations after a week or protests and civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Critics said looters were additionally emboldened by a Foxx policy that raised the bar for prosecuting shoplifting as a felony — a theory Foxx also rejected Monday.
Retail theft charges are intended for people who walk out of an open store without paying for merchandise, not those who break into a store or loot, she said.
At her own press conference Monday afternoon, Foxx noted that in 2017, 2018 and 2019 — the three years analyzed by the Tribune — violent crime, shootings and homicide rates dropped in Chicago.
“In the wake of 2016’s violence, we saw communities come together… We cannot talk about ‘all hands on deck’ and seek simple solutions to complex problems, we must continue to work together,” Foxx said.
Foxx acknowledged her office enacted a policy not to prosecute peaceful protestors arrested in May and June, but said conflating peaceful protestors with rioters and looters, whom her office has prosecuted, was wrong and disingenuous. According to Foxx, the majority of charges filed in Cook County during those protests were misdemeanors and municipal violations.
“Last night was not an extension of a peaceful protest. Last night was not an extension of righteous anger. Last night was a blatant display of criminal behavior,” Foxx said.
* Foxx definitely has a different interpretation of yesterday’s widely shared Tribune story about how her office dropped lots more felony charges than her predecessor. For instance, Anita Alvarez’ homicide conviction rate was 83 percent during the three-year time period studied by the Tribune and it was 80 percent under Foxx in her first three years, something Foxx called “statistically insignificant.” I asked her office for a statement about the Tribune story…
State’s Attorney Foxx has secured over 2,700 more convictions related to violent felony offenses than her predecessor in the last three years of her tenure.
These violent and most serious offenses include cases of gun violence, homicide, sex crimes, aggravated battery, violence against police officers, robbery, domestic battery, and kidnapping. These cases represent 28% of the cases prosecuted by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. The conviction rate on these cases has increased from 81% to 83% under the Foxx Administration.
Yes, I know this goes against common beliefs, but the state’s attorney’s office has compiled a list of serious violent felonies and compared the two administrations’ record and there’s little to no statistical difference. Click here to see it.
Vehicular Highjacking conviction rates rose from 81 to 88 percent. Domestic battery conviction rates rose from 86 to 88 percent. Robbery conviction rates went from 87 to 90 percent. UUW went from 72 to 77 percent. Some went down, but mostly within a very narrow percentage range, or because of the low actual case numbers involved.
I watched on television Monday morning as Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Supt. David Brown engaged in fingerpointing, casting blame on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and the judiciary. Then Lightfoot exploded on a mild-mannered television reporter who rightly called her out on it, displaying a character trait that is growing tiresome.
Brown wanted us to know how smart police had been to deploy 400 officers to respond to the downtown unrest as soon as they caught wind of it on social media, never fully explaining why that was insufficient to quell the disturbance. Could it be that he needed to send 800?
The mayor had spent the weekend obsessing over an embarrassing party at Montrose Point where social distancing was not observed. She was so busy solving the problem by petulantly erecting snow fences around the shoreline that she may not have noticed her police brass were still unprepared to adequately respond to a real public safety emergency.
Later I drove downtown to see Foxx respond in person to what she called “dishonest blame games,” and not surprisingly, she did not accept any.
There’s always room for improvement, and Foxx definitely should’ve acknowledged that and did not. If everybody is all in, everybody needs to admit their shortcomings and mistakes. Everybody, Foxx included, needs to look inward to see what they can do to not only make things better, but to also stop making things worse.
At least one reporter at Foxx’s availability yesterday tried to make her the scapegoat for cops standing by in May while looters ravaged stores. That was on the police superintendent, not Foxx.
* Lots of progressive names on this list. Mostly unsurprising. But, as subscribers know, state central committee member Peter Janko had been keeping his powder dry on this topic even though he did not vote for Madigan’s reelection. See anyone else who surprises you?…
We come from across Illinois; from Bloomington to Rockford and from Carbondale to Chicago. We are or were elected officials, Democratic Party officials, or Democratic candidates. We represent the socioeconomic and geographic diversity that is the true strength of the Democratic Party of Illinois, and today we echo the call for new leadership for our party and for the Illinois House.
We’re each brought to this point by different circumstances, but are united around a simple belief: Illinois Democrats are in dire need of new leadership.
We’re not commenting here on guilt or innocence in the legal sense. This is about the ability to lead our party as we enter the most important election in living memory, and to lead the House as we encounter the most difficult challenges Illinois government has faced in decades.
We survived the Rauner administration, we’re making our way through this pandemic, and our hope for rebuilding this state lies in the Fair Tax amendment and our candidates up and down the ballot. It has become clear due to the ongoing corruption scandal that Michael Madigan’s leadership is threatening Illinois Democrats’ ability to achieve these goals.
Illinois Democrats are strong. We support the brave women in the General Assembly who called for new leadership before we did. We know when this anchor is lifted, our people and our ideas will rebuild our state. We urge Michael Madigan to do right by the people of Illinois and step down from his roles as Speaker and as Chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
Sincerely,
Florence Appell, DuPage County Precinct Committeeperson
Nathan Arroyave, Winnebago County Democrats Young Dems Chair
Daniel Biss, former State Senator and State Representative
Erica Bray-Parker, Wheaton City Council member and DuPage County Precinct Committeeperson
Muriel Briel, Plainfield Township Democrats Vice Chair and former IL-16 congressional candidate
Jennifer Carrillo, Bloomington City Council Member
Today, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan’s campaign released its first television ad, “Personal,” which introduces Dirksen Londrigan’s personal health care story. In 2009, her 12-year-old son, Jack, spent nearly a month in the pediatric intensive care unit in critical condition from a rare, life threatening illness during which he was in a medically-induced coma and read his last rites twice before starting his long road to recovery.
Jack’s story drives Dirksen Londrigan to fight to keep the health protections we have in place while working to fix the parts that need fixing, like lowering the costs of prescription drugs and premiums.
The 60-second ad will air in the Champaign-Springfield-Decatur media market as part of a districtwide buy that includes broadcast, cable and digital platforms. It highlights Dirksen Londrigan’s commitment to ensuring access to quality, affordable health care for Central Illinois families.
“I know health care is personal to you, especially now,” said Betsy Dirksen Londrigan. “I’ll fight for every family to have quality, affordable care that won’t bankrupt them if they get sick.”
What I see families going through today reminds me a lot of what our family faced eleven years ago…
A rare infection put my son Jack in intensive care for 21 days, he was on a ventilator and read last rites twice before finally going home.
Without good health care we could have never afforded all the bills.
I’m Betsy Dirksen Londrigan and I know health care is personal to you, especially now.
I’ll fight for every family to have quality, affordable care that won’t bankrupt them if they get sick…
With lower premiums and prescription prices that guarantee your choice of doctors and health plans.
But the drug and insurance industries are standing in the way.
They’ve given millions to Washington politicians to vote their way on health care…
To gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions…
And overcharge patients for prescription drugs.
Corporate special interests can’t buy me. I don’t take their money.
I approved this message, because when your family’s health is at stake, your Congressman shouldn’t be working against you.
* Rodney Davis campaign…
CQ Roll Call has moved the race for Congress in IL-13 towards Rodney Davis and away from Betsy Londrigan. Last week, Roll Call moved the race to “Tilt R” from its previous “Toss-up” rating. And today, in her first TV ad, Londrigan continues to push the false claim that she doesn’t take campaign contributions from corporate interests, even though news reports say otherwise.
“Betsy Londrigan is taking her ‘no corporate money’ lie to the airwaves because she knows this race is moving away from her. Her hypocrisy is stunning. Londrigan’s campaign is funded in part by corporate lobbyists from Madigan’s ‘inner circle,’ ‘Big Pharma,’ and others. Londrigan knows the only way she can win is if she lies her way into Congress.” – Aaron DeGroot, Davis campaign spokesperson
Londrigan pushes “no corporate money” lie in first TV ad
In her first TV ad of the General Election season, Londrigan says “I don’t take” campaign contributions from “corporate special interests,” but news reports reveal that’s not true. Londrigan’s campaign is funded in part by corporate lobbyists and executives to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Londrigan’s campaign is funded in part by corporate lobbyists and executives
From WCIA’s 7/24/20 story titled, Despite corporate PAC pledge, Dirksen Londrigan takes campaign cash from corporate lobbyists:
“…Since launching her bid for Congress, Dirksen Londrigan has accepted at least $82,930 in campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists, including some who have represented pharmaceutical companies, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, gambling companies, red light camera companies, suburban municipal governments, telecommunications giant AT&T and utility company ComEd.
“She’s taken far more from corporate executives, many of whom are also regular donors to Democratic causes.
“The donations from ComEd and AT&T lobbyists in particular came under scrutiny after ComEd agreed to pay a $200 million fine to avoid federal bribery charges last Friday, and federal agents delivered a subpoena to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s office searching for documents related to AT&T and its lobbying practices.”
“…Dirksen Londrigan reported $284,278 in household income so far this year, all of it coming from her husband’s salary at his corporate lobbying firm. It represents pharmaceutical clients like Horizon Pharma, which raised the price on an arthritis drug 11 times in seven years, reaching a price point of $2,979 for a 60-pill bottle.
“Another one of his pharmaceutical clients, Kaleo, was flagged in a recent Senate subcommittee report on the increasing prices of opioid overdose reversal drugs. The report found Kaleo contracted with pharmacy benefit managers to hike its prices from $575 per unit up to $4,100 — a spike of more than 600%.
“Londrigan’s campaign declined to comment on how she would handle any real or perceived conflicts of interest that could arise in Congress if she is ever in a position to vote on matters that pertain to her husband’s lobbying portfolio.”
Corporate lobbyists in Madigan’s “inner circle” are funding Londrigan’s campaign
A group of corporate lobbyists associated with Madigan, some of whom have lobbied for ComEd at varying times, have contributed a combined $9,350 to Londrigan’s campaign this election cycle. The Chicago Tribune referred to those lobbyists as members of Madigan’s “inner circle.”
Betsy is still holding onto corporate lobbyist cash from Mike Madigan’s cronies, and 16 days after she was called out for being a corporate money hypocrite, she remains SILENT as to whether or not she will return the money.
NRCC Comment: “No amount of television advertising can change the fact that Betsy Dirksen Londrigan is a corporate money hypocrite whose campaign is funded by Mike Madigan’s corrupt cronies.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Carly Atchison
