* I have so very much to be thankful for this year. Isabel is proving to be even better than I’d hoped. My family is doing well. My life is on a good track. My friends are a joy. My subscribers, readers and commenters continue to be outstanding. If I’ve have said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I have the best job in Illinois. I am deeply grateful for all of you and I truly hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving break.
We’ll start the Golden Horseshoes Awards next week. We’ll also start actively fundraising for Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. If you’d like to get your contribution out of the way now, you can click here. I’ll be prettifying the landing page during the break.
History will be made in Lansing after Democratic State Rep. Joe Tate was selected as the first Black speaker of the house. […]
FOX 2: “I was just going to ask you, when you hear: Joe Tate - first Black Speaker of the Michigan House. What kind of title does that mean to you?”
Tate: Standing on the shoulders of others. For me, having the opportunity, again being historic. But understanding it’s a responsibility not only to the residents of Michigan but also the men and women who have come before me, and those that look like me. Knowing that this is something that a lot of people have worked for as a team effort. No, I am not an island in getting this done.”
Democrats have flipped the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, unexpectedly gaining control of the legislative chamber for the first time in a decade. […]
“One thing we’ve seen after decades of gerrymandered maps, that it turns out, 50% of Pennsylvania voters vote Democrat,” state Rep. Joanna McClinton (D), who will likely become the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the Pennsylvania House, said the day after the election, according to local TV station WHYY. “It’s an amazing thing. It’s an amazing thing what a fair opportunity and fair maps and a fair district will provide.”
A Portland representative made history on Thursday when she was became the first Black lawmaker ever nominated to preside over the Maine House.
Rep. Rachel Talbot Ross defeated a fellow lawmaker from Portland, Ed Crockett, to secure the House Speaker nomination from her fellow Democrats for the upcoming legislative session. A longtime campaigner on civil rights, social justice and criminal justice reform issues, Talbot Ross was first elected to the Legislature six years ago and made history two years ago by becoming the first Black lawmaker elected to a leadership position within her caucus. The 62-year-old formerly headed the NAACP in Maine as well as Portland’s equal opportunity and multicultural affairs program. […]
Talbot Ross’s ascension to House Speaker comes 50 years after her father, Gerald Talbot, made history to become the first Black person ever elected to the Maine Legislature. It was a history that obviously weighed heavily on the Speaker-elect as she recalled first visiting the House chamber with her father decades ago and seeing the lack of diversity among lawmakers. She is also only the fourth woman to preside over the Maine House, which is the third-highest elected office in Maine after the governor and Senate President.
“Only” the fourth woman to preside over the Maine House? We’ve yet to see that happen here, and we’ve been a state longer than Maine has.
* Anyway, I reached out to House Speaker Chris Welch’s office when I saw the news about Rep. Tate in Michigan. I was told that Welch, Illinois’ first Black House Speaker, sent congratulatory messages to all three legislators and plans to follow up with an invite to visit Springfield and speak to the House next year.
Not exactly big “news,” I know, but, hey, it’s a holiday week.
The Illinois Supreme Court, in an unsigned order Monday, rejected a request by the DuPage County clerk to lift a local judge’s ruling directing the clerk on how she should verify the authenticity of late-arriving mailed-in ballots.
The ruling comes as Tuesday marks the final day ballots sent on or before Election Day on Nov. 8 can be verified and counted — with a close race between GOP state Rep. Deanne Mazzochi and Democratic challenger Jenn Ladisch Douglass, both of Elmhurst, hanging in the balance. […]
Mazzochi, an attorney and an assistant House GOP leader, alleged DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek was improperly verifying the signatures on mail-in ballots by using vote-by-mail applications instead of the voter registration signature on file in the clerk’s office.
Mazzochi filed suit to challenge the signature-verifying method and last week DuPage County Circuit Judge James Orel sided with Mazzochi and ordered Kaczmarek to certify the validity of mail-in ballots using the voter registration signature on file in her office and prohibited the clerk’s office from using signatures of vote-by-mail applications to verify mailed-in ballot signatures.
“Use of the Vote by Mail ballot application to qualify signatures on the Vote by Mail ballot itself would be an obvious way to commit ballot fraud,” Orel said in his order.
Except, the signatures on the applications have already been verified as matching signatures on voter registration cards. Whatever. The state loophole needs to be closed one way or another.
Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson called on the Illinois General Assembly Friday to improve the city’s voter access, particularly for Black and Latino residents, after what he said was dismal turnout in their communities during this month’s general election.
Wilson, a business owner who has recently been known for his free gas and grocery giveaways, said the Nov. 8 election left him concerned that a recent change in polling locations led to primarily South and West Side wards seeing the lowest voter turnout. He said he will send a letter to Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other Springfield leaders demanding they pass legislation allowing Chicagoans to vote at any polling location. […]
As for voter turnout in this month’s general election, all but one of the 10 lowest-turnout wards were indeed on the South, Southwest and West sides, where most of the city’s Black and Latino communities reside. Those turnout percentages ranged from the mid-20s to low 30s, election data show.
But total vote counts don’t finalize until Nov. 29, and there are still over 10,000 mail-in ballots to process. The 2022 elections also saw low voter turnout in general, with the citywide percentage landing at 44.3% this November and at 22.8% in the June 28 primary election, which was organized under the previous ward map’s precincts that Wilson sought to keep.
* WICS | $9 million to address education and career equity in Illinois: The funding will be used to help minority and low-income students as well as individuals with disabilities remove barriers to completing their education and career goals through the Innovative Bridge and Transition Grant program (IBT).
* Tribune | UIC dentistry professor used racist imagery and treated students of color unequally, lawmakers say in letter to school: “Students and alumni of UIC College of Dentistry have expressed to us that racist teachings and the unequal treatment of students has been ongoing for years,” the letter went on. “A recent revelation made us aware of a noose appearing in a PowerPoint presentation for seven years, which is disturbing. … This professor has continued to teach without any response or action from the university. Students of color have reportedly continued to be targeted at the university from being asked about their ‘natural hair’ to being called the N-word.”
* Crain’s | How Lynn Osmond plans to bring conventions and tourists back to Chicago: Osmond has some wind at her back as the pandemic wanes. Leisure travel has recently returned at a faster clip, with downtown hotel revenues exceeding 2019 averages in two of the past four months, according to hospitality data and analytics firm STR. Conventions and trade shows are back—albeit with crowds that in many cases are smaller than they were before COVID—and Osmond enjoys broad support from local civic and cultural leaders who have known her for more than two decades.
* Crain’s Chicago Business | Tim Degnan, influential Daley aide, dies at 82: For the Crain’s profile, a colleague recalled Degnan’s blunt message to one bureaucrat: “Look, this is not on your schedule next year. This is on our schedule today.” Even Michael Madigan, the long-reigning House speaker, got that message. “Tim walks up to me and says, ‘You wanna help us, right?’ ” Madigan told Crain’s in 1995. “He hands me a piece of paper (a draft of a bill). ‘See that word? Take that f—— word out of there.’ We did.” Madigan added, “His effectiveness lies in his simplicity.”
* Washington Post | LGBTQ club shooting suspect’s troubled past was obscured by a name change, records show: In June 2021, Aldrich was arrested for an alleged bomb threat, one that prompted a partial evacuation of the Colorado Springs neighborhood where his mother lived at the time. He was charged with kidnapping and felony menacing, but was never prosecuted, for reasons that remain unclear. No bomb was ever found. … Suthers and other officials deflected questions about whether Aldrich’s 2021 arrest could have led to a legal action, perhaps under Colorado’s 2019 red-flag law, to prevent the suspect from obtaining a weapon.
* Washington Post | The upside to FTX’s downfall: While FTX’s downfall may be the first cryptocurrency scandal of this scale, the story is all too familiar. Allegedly, Bankman-Fried loaned $10 billion of his customers’ dollars to his investment company, Alameda Research, and used it for risky day trading. When consumers lost confidence and tried to pull their money out, they learned that FTX did not have their funds on hand. FTX covered up the misuse from its customers, its auditors and its own employees. Heard that before? John Ray III has. Ray was the man who oversaw bankruptcy proceedings for Enron. Yet taking over as chief executive of FTX after Bankman-Fried’s departure, Ray said: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls.”
* Sun-Times | Chicago mobster gets 4 months in prison for stealing Social Security money: It wasn’t the first time Marcello made his case before a federal court. Marcello, the half-brother of Chicago mob boss James Marcello, was sentenced in March 2008 to 8 ½ years in prison — the first to be sentenced in the Family Secrets case. He once ran a lucrative video poker machine operation in the western suburbs and carried out his half-brother’s orders while James Marcello was in prison, authorities have said. He admitted his role in the mob in a 2007 plea agreement.
* WCIA | Iroquois County Public Health Department holds long-awaited meeting Monday night: McGinnis said board members received complaints about Schippert from her employees, claiming there was mistreatment of workers, gambling during the work day or simply not showing up to work. But he said the overtime pay is the biggest concern, with nearly $100,000 worth of overtime being paid to her over two years.
State Sen. Jason Barickman said Illinois voters punished Republicans in the midterm election, in part, because of the GOP stance on abortion. He said his party needs to acknowledge there are instances in which abortion should be legal and be willing to say what those legal conditions are.
“That type of a statement, I think, is wildly controversial in Republican primaries. But the fact we are unwilling to even say that has created among many, especially women, an unwillingness to even entertain a Republican as a vote,” said the Bloomington Republican.
Barickman, speaking on WGLT’s Sound Ideas, said the GOP has put itself in a corner on social issues.
“In that corner there is a limited pool of votes that are available to them. It’s not even that all those Republicans standing in that corner believe in all those issues, they simply have become more silent on them,” he said.
* The Question: Should the new Republican legislative leaders put special emphasis on recruiting pro-choice candidates for 2024? Explain.
SEIU, the big union that’s expected to play a major role in this winter’s city elections, is asking candidates seeking its endorsement to take a position on that subject, and the group appears quite serious about that and other strongly pro-labor positions it’s pushing candidates to back. […]
Council President Greg Kelley said the council already has started getting responses from candidates. “No one has said no.” Kelly declined to say if a “yes” came from Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who has already been endorsed by two SEIU locals. Johnson’s spokeswoman failed to return calls seeking comment.
“We’re the union that started the move for a $15 minimum wage, and that was 10 years ago,” Kelley said in a phone interview. “Just a few days ago, Nebraska, of all places, approved a $15 minimum wage in a referendum. . . .We obviously don’t expect to move to [$25] tomorrow. But we do think it’s time that Chicago move farther than it has.”
30. Research has found that increasing Chicago’s minimum wage would not only help many low wage workers but would also help the city’s economy. Would you support a $25/hour minimum wage to bring more money into the working-class economy and grow the tax base?
* At one time, I posted photos of Oscar almost every week. To this day, people recognize him on the street. Sometimes, they even ignore me as they fawn over the little guy….
* He loves everyone and has such a big heart. Here he is with his buddy, the late Steve Schnorf, just before we all went out for a cruise on the pontoon boat…
* Oscar loves that boat and will bark at you if you sit in his seat…
* Oscar can be a little odd. For instance, he had a weird reaction to a JFK bust…
* The Americans with Disabilities Act took effect in 1990 - 32 years ago. From April 20, 2017…
The United States Attorney’s Office today announced a settlement with the Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago to ensure accessibility of polling sites to persons with disabilities.
The agreement requires the Board of Elections to ensure that every polling site is accessible to persons with disabilities by the Nov. 6, 2018, election.
Chicagoans checking where to vote on Election Day may have been surprised to find that fewer than 10% of the city’s polling places were marked as accessible for people with disabilities — and a third of the city’s 50 wards had no sites considered compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners admits they have not met a deadline arising from a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that required the city to make every voting location fully accessible to people with disabilities for this past election — despite receiving a four-year extension.
Although the United States agreed not to presently institute a civil action alleging discrimination under the ADA, it may review the Board’s compliance with the settlement at any time during the duration of the agreement. If the United States believes the agreement has been violated, it reserved the right to institute a civil action in the appropriate U.S. District Court to enforce the agreement.
One of the challenges facing lawmakers in the upcoming session is that any measure that passes requires a three-fifths majority in both chambers if it is to take immediate effect. While Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, rounding up enough votes on controversial matters to clear that hurdle isn’t always a given.
That’s a major reason why any action on hot-button issues like gun control and abortion is more likely to come after the new year, when only a simple majority would be needed.
Many Democrats, including Pritzker, have been pushing for a ban on the sale military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines since the mass shooting in Highland Park on the Fourth of July that left seven people dead and a couple dozen others hurt.
Amid other issues, Pritzker aims to ban certain types of firearms and further enshrine access to abortion, even as early as next week when lawmakers return for veto session, if the votes are there.
“The fact is, whether we get it done in November, or we get it done in January, early in the session, whenever that may be, we are going to work on passing an assault weapon ban and making sure that we are protecting women’s reproductive rights by expanding capacity and making the investments that are necessary here in our state to protect women,” Pritzker said.
* From WGN TV’s interview of House Speaker Chris Welch this week…
Q: What will it take to get the assault weapons ban passed? What’s the resistance?
Welch: Well, let me also clarify that if we want to pass something that’s effective, immediately, veto session, you would need 71 votes. I don’t think we get 71 votes on that.
Q: New term?
Welch: January, it only needs 60 votes. I think an assault weapons ban in January is possible.
Q: Are you comfortable enough to say you think you can commit to getting an assault weapons ban on the governor’s desk in the new term?
Welch: I certainly hope so. I’m going to work to make sure it happens because I think it’s that important.
Regarding assault weapons regulation, Welch said that issue will have to wait until the 2023 session begins in January, when only a simple majority of votes is needed to pass new laws with an immediate effective date. That’s because the Illinois Constitution requires a three-fifths majority for bills passed after June 1 to have an immediate effective date.
“Anything that we do on assault weapons, we would want it to be effective immediately,” he said. “And I just don’t think we would have 71 votes to get something done in this shortened veto session. But I do believe that we’re going to be able to deliver for the people of Illinois an assault weapons ban next year, and we’re going to work real hard to make that happen.”
When asked whether gerrymandering played a role in those results, Welch said it did not.
“What I would say is that the maps reflect the diversity of our state,” he said. “And one of the things that I said as the leader of our caucus and the speaker of the House last year when we were going through that process, that any fair map would reflect the diversity of our state. And if you look at the election results, the election results show that.”
He said the results in the House were an example of that.
“We elected our first Vietnamese American to the House,” he said. “We elected our first Korean American to the House. We elected our first Arab American Muslim to the House. We elected our first Indian American Muslim to the House. We elected our first South Asian, Pacific Islander American to the House. Diversity is well represented in the Illinois House, and we look like Illinois, and we look like America. And we should be proud of that.”
The House is significantly more diverse. No argument there.
But the East St. Louis-based House district has been represented by a Black person for what seems like forever, but it lost about a fifth of its Black population in the remap and was then lost on election day to a white Republican named Kevin Schmidt, who was backed by Eastern Bloc members, campaigned against the SAFE-T Act, blamed Rep. LaToya Greenwood (D-East St. Louis) for those refugees being bused to Chicago, blasted the Climate Equity and Jobs Act as “radical” legislation and opposes abortion rights.
