In the race for governor, opponents are ganging up on Bruce Rauner today.
No less than three press events dumped on Rauner.
One about his handling of the deadly Legionaries disease at the Quincy Veterans Home, another about him equating the undocumented with crime and a third claiming he’s breaking the law by not paying state workers their step increases, which the governor’s office denies.
State Comptroller Susana Mendoza was at that last one saying that the state will have pay 7% late payment interest on those step increases, and she added this about Rauner, “This is just his personal grievance with state employees. It’s his obsession with right-to-work, and ya know, I think the governor has a right to work, just someplace else!”
* Everybody is doing their best to get the other side off their game. The governor is holding a 3 o’clock press conference in Quincy (I’ll update with whatever I get), and his campaign just sent this out to his supporters to urge them to watch the debate…
You can expect Governor Rauner to hold JB Pritzker accountable for his “scheme to defraud” taxpayers out of $330,000. Pritzker wants to raise taxes on every single Illinoisan, but he won’t even pay his own taxes. That means hardworking Illinois families just like yours have to pick up the tab.
Governor Rauner is going to speak the truth tonight. He’s standing up for taxpayers and fighting corruption in state government. This is the most important election of our lifetime. Be sure to tune in to see Bruce fight for our state’s future!
Click here to watch the debate, which begins at 7 pm. We’ll have a live coverage post.
* Pritzker campaign…
As the son and grandson of Veterans, I have so much respect for the sacrifices brave men and women make for our country. So I was especially moved when I heard the story of Illinoisan Eugene Miller, who, when he turned 17, went to serve in the United States Army in Germany. Eugene was proud of his military career. That’s why, when he started to get older, the choice to move into the Quincy Veterans’ Home, surrounded by his fellow service members, was clear. But one day, Eugene’s family got a call saying he had fallen ill. In the next few days he continued to get sicker and within a week he had died.
His son Tim found out later that the state knew that there was a Legionnaires’ outbreak at the Quincy Veterans’ Home and had chosen to keep that information concealed from the public and even from family members. “At that moment my dad needed for the state to honor him and serve him the way that he served his country.” Instead, Bruce Rauner let down Eugene and 13 other Veterans and their spouses, who died after getting sick with Legionnaires’ at the Quincy Veterans Home.
Rauner has failed Illinoisans in many ways. But his handling of the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at the Quincy Veterans’ Home is one of the most egregious things he’s done while in office.
* The campaign also released some raw footage of Tim Miller talking about his dad. As we’ve already discussed, Miller appears in Pritzker’s new TV ad…
As the son and grandson of Veterans, I’ve seen the sacrifice brave men and women make for our country. That’s one reason why it was so heartbreaking to hear the story of Eugene Miller, a Veteran who tragically died at the Quincy Veterans’ Home during the Legionnaires’ outbreak. Eugene, his family, and Veterans across Illinois deserve better than Bruce Rauner. We need a governor that will honor Veterans and work to provide them with vital resources, not one that will turn their back on the needs of our nation’s heroes.
Posted by JB Pritzker on Thursday, October 11, 2018
* ProPublica takes a look at the attorney general’s public access counselor, known as the PAC…
The PAC’s heavy caseload is one reason the office rarely uses its full authority to order compliance with the transparency acts. Under the laws, the PAC has 60 days to issue a binding opinion. If the case is too complicated to make that deadline, or if the PAC’s attorneys aren’t able to move faster, the most the office can do is issue an opinion that’s nonbinding.
And binding opinions are rare. While closing 26,000 cases through mid-August, the PAC only used the weight of the law to issue binding opinions in 127 of them — less than half of one percent of the total. And four of those opinions sided with government bodies blocking the public from information.
Officials in the attorney general’s office said they issue binding opinions on issues of broad public interest, and each one is researched to ensure it could withstand a court challenge.
“Our binding opinions in particular we’ve been exceedingly careful about,” [Ann Spillane, the attorney general’s chief of staff] said. “We’ve only been overturned once. We thought it would be a devastating blow to our credibility if we didn’t have success with the courts.” […]
Spillane said the office has “struggled” to decide the best way to deal with public agencies that ignore requests or PAC opinions, opting in most cases for the “ask again and again and again” approach. But the office has started to respond more forcefully with binding opinions, she said.
The state attorney general has found the governor violated the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to turn over emails on his decision-making process on government appointments to One Illinois.
The office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan ordered Gov. Rauner in a binding opinion issued Tuesday to turn over 1,783 identified emails on appointments to various state boards and other bodies.
One Illinois first made the request in June for emails from either Rauner or his wife, Diana Rauner, on a series of issues. Told by the Governor’s Office that there were none applicable for the governor, One Illinois narrowed the scope of the request in July and focused instead on emails to or from seven current or former state employees on appointments to 13 state boards, councils, and commissions, and narrowed the scope additionally after that.
The Governor’s Office nonetheless replied that was “unduly burdensome,” and that it could not identify specific search terms to narrow the focus, even though there’s nothing in state FOIA law requiring adequate terms for a search. […]
At that point, on Aug. 10, One Illinois asked the Office of the Attorney General to review the FOIA process. The Public Access Bureau asked the Governor’s Office for an explanation, a request that at first was ignored entirely. On Aug. 29, the bureau repeated the request, and eventually the Governor’s Office revealed it had found 44,536 “potentially responsive emails,” but that narrowing the focus with the search term “appoint” had produced 1,783 emails, which it still found unduly burdensome and not of sufficient public interest to merit the work required to redact and otherwise process them.
The binding opinion is here. The governor can challenge the order, but he’ll have to sue the attorney general to do it.
* This One Illinois explainer video is very good. The FOIA basically focuses on Mrs. Rauner’s impact on the appointment process in the wake of the governor’s hiring of several Illinois Policy Institute staffers…
* The Sean Casten campaign sent along a few news clips today. New York Times…
In a tactical retreat, Republican groups have already withdrawn some or all funding from a few embattled incumbents, mainly in suburbs where President Trump is unpopular, including Representatives Kevin Yoder of Kansas, Mike Coffman of Colorado and Mike Bishop of Michigan. They have abandoned more than half a dozen seats where Republican lawmakers are not running for re-election, including most recently the Tucson, Ariz.-based seat of Representative Martha McSally, who left to run for Senate.
Party strategists said several other incumbents must recover quickly or risk losing funding, including Representatives Peter Roskam of Illinois and Mimi Walters of California, who represent white-collar suburbs near Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. […]
Former Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said … “This is the kind of year where Republican are going to have to give up on some races and they’re going to have to make some hard choices.”
The same dynamic is taking place outside Chicago, where veteran Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.) is in the fight of his life against Sean Casten. A clean-energy entrepreneur, Casten has reserved $4.6 million worth of ads, well ahead of Roskam’s $2 million in ads. […]
This energy among liberal donors has forced Republicans into making hard choices about where to spend their dollars. At the moment, the NRCC has no money reserved to defend Roskam, a former member of Republican leadership.
Of the 31 seats rated a “tossup” by the nonpartisan Cook Report, the NRCC is only playing in 14 of them. That means teetering Republicans like Reps. Mimi Walters, in Orange County, Calif.; Peter Roskam, in Illinois’ Chicago suburbs; and Dave Brat, in Virginia’s Richmond suburbs, aren’t receiving air cover from the NRCC’s independent expenditure unit; neither are Reps. Andy Barr, R-Ky., Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, or Rep. David Young, R-Iowa.
But the NRCC believes its strategy, while counterintuitive, is paying dividends. By forcing Democrats to spend in Colorado 6 and Virginia 10, there is less money to throw against other endangered Republicans who aren’t as well known or battle tested as Coffman and Comstock. Essentially, the two are being used as cover to distract Democrats from easier targets. Additionally, some incumbents, like Roskam, are to begin benefiting from NRCC advertising in the form of “hybrid” ads that are coordinated with the candidate.
So, Roskam may be getting some money after all. We’ll see.
The League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund is launching a digital campaign targeting GOP Rep. Peter Roskam in IL-06 over the environment. The $291,000 campaign features two ads saying “polluters heart Peter Roskam” and that the “polluter in chief” Donald Trump can count on Roskam’s vote.
Sleazy Illinois politicians Mike Madigan and Sean Casten. Madigan and Casten are two sides of the same coin.
Madigan supported a state budget that would raise taxes on our families. So did shady Sean Casten. Madigan opposed the property tax freeze. Casten also opposed it. Higher gas taxes? Madigan supports those. And you guessed it, Sean Casten supported them too.
Mike Madigan and Sean Casten, shady Illinois politicians who’d make you pay more.
According to Roskam’s campaign, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House campaign committee, just committed $1.5 million to a new TV ad buy in the expensive Chicago media market, $702,000 of which will go out the door in the next week.
* I was wondering when they were gonna get around to this, partly because I heard about a polling question on the topic several days ago. A new CLF Super PAC ad…
Liberal Betsy Londrigan is out of touch.
Londrigan belongs to an exclusive yacht club that costs thousands of dollars to join…
…but opposes middle-class tax cuts that are saving $2,000 a year for families like you.
Liberal Londrigan is so far adrift…
…her radical health care plan could cost $32 trillion – and drown us in debt.
Liberal Betsy Londrigan. Too expensive for Illinois.
The Illinois Republican Party has been sending out fliers backing U.S. Rep. RODNEY DAVIS, R-Taylorville, and attacking his opponent, Democrat BETSY DIRKSEN LONDRIGAN.
Among descriptions of Londrigan on fliers is the word “lobbyist.”
Turns out that in 2013, when Londrigan was a consultant to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, she registered as a lobbyist for the foundation for just that year.
CARLA KNOROWSKI, CEO of the foundation, also registered that year, as the foundation — which purchased the Taper collection years earlier, including a purported Lincoln top hat — was seeking state funding help to supplement private funding. Knorowski said there were “a handful of meetings that Betsy helped me as a staff member, but I was basically the one making the presentations.”
She said no state money resulted from those meetings, which included officials like Senate President JOHN CULLERTON, state Sen. ANDY MANAR, and perhaps representatives of other legislative leaders. Knorowski also said as she and Londrigan weren’t paid as lobbyists, they didn’t have to register, but did so to be “abundantly cautious.”
I’m told that Davis has a new TV ad about the allegedly fake hat, but I haven’t seen it yet.
And with that ad, all four embattled Republican congressional incumbents are using Mike Madigan to attack their opponents.
* This story is based on a tweet that cut off part of the polling memo. I tried getting more info from the CLF Super PAC yesterday, but never heard back, so I didn’t post it. Also, the poll is old (September 29 through October 1), and was released shortly after Londrigan released a poll showing her down by a point, making it a bit suspect. And it was released ahead of the Vice President’s trip to the district. Anway…
Two days after Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigan’s campaign released a poll showing her running neck-and-neck with GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, a top Republican polling firm has released its own poll showing Davis with a comfortable lead going into the final month of the election.
The poll released Wednesday shows Davis with a 50 percent to 37 percent lead on Londrigan in the race for the 13th Congressional District, with 9 percent undecided. It also shows Davis leading among independents, 45 percent to 38 percent, and independent women, 40 percent to 35 percent.
Vice President Mike Pence is coming to Springfield Friday for a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville.
According to the Sangamon County Republican Party’s calendar, Pence will be special guest at the luncheon at Panther Creek Golf Course.
Wait. Isn’t Panther Creek Golf Course an “exclusive” club “that costs thousands of dollars to join”? Why, yes, it is. /s
* From the Rodney Davis campaign…
Today, Rodney Davis called on his opponent’s supporter, EMILY’s List/Women Vote, to remove a negative TV ad featuring his children. The ad says Davis wants to gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions and features their three children. Davis’ wife Shannon has a genetic form of colon cancer that could also be passed down to their children.
“In my book, kids are off limits in politics and it’s appalling to me that this outside group, who is spending nearly a million dollars in support of my opponent, would use my children in a negative TV ad against me,” said Davis. “My opponent has spoken about her son several times throughout this campaign and I would never use him, nor condone an outside group using him, in a negative way to make a political point. Lying about my voting record over and over again and using scare-tactics to do it is bad enough, but bringing my kids into it is a new low. At some point enough is enough in politics.”
Click here to view the ad. It uses footage of Davis’ own ad which features his kids. And since this is an independent expenditure, Londrigan can’t do much about it either way. We’ll see if the media picks up on it or if Davis uses this in an ad.
Also, it’s clear that Congressman Davis has voted to undermine preexisting condition protections. That’s the bill the late US Sen. John McCain killed with his dramatic thumbs-down.
Republican leaders on Wednesday said they were “appalled” to learn of Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker’s efforts to get property tax breaks on his Chicago home, and contended that he shouldn’t be elected as a result of the findings.
Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Taylorville and Dan Caulkins, the Republican state representative candidate for the 101st District, criticized Pritzker and rallied support for Gov. Bruce Rauner’s re-election campaign during a joint news conference at the Macon County Republican Party headquarters, 445 N. Franklin St. […]
On Wednesday, Davis said he hopes that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is working to initiate an investigation, and said that the calls for it to move forward will not stop.
“Let this sink in: The Cook County inspector general accused the Democrat gubernatorial candidate in the state of Illinois of committing a ’scheme to defraud’ the taxpayers of the same state that he wishes to represent,” Davis said.
First of all it’s heartbreaking that Legionella bacteria got into an ancient Veterans’ Home in Quincy. It breaks my heart ’cause I’m an advocate for veterans. And we’ve done everything humanly possible to protect our veterans there. But this investigation by Lisa Madigan is a fraud, it’s phony. She declared this investigation started 24 hours after her ally, Pritzker, got accused and found to have committed criminal fraud. She said ‘Oh, let’s distract the media. Let’s distract all the discussion. Let’s trump up a phony investigation of criminal fraud.’ The Quincy tragedy of infection has been reviewed by the legislature. It’s been reviewed by the press. We’ve had testimony. All our emails. And there’s been no evidence of criminal behavior whatsoever in the Quincy Veterans’ Home. None.
* Pritzker campaign…
Ahead of the final gubernatorial debate in Quincy, the Pritzker campaign released a new TV ad, “Heroes,” featuring Tim Miller, the son of Eugene Miller who died after contracting Legionnaires’ disease at the Quincy Veterans’ Home.
In the ad, Tim Miller recounts visiting his father at the hospital during his final days and talks about how his family wasn’t told about the Legionnaires’ crisis even while the state was emailing back and forth about the outbreak, concerned about public relations. While Bruce Rauner continues to maintain “our team did exactly what they should have done, exactly when they should have done it,” Tim Miller sees things differently, saying “Governor Rauner was more interested in protecting his image than he was the heroes who served our country.”
“Eugene Miller and 13 others lost their lives too soon because Bruce Rauner cared more about headlines than our heroes,” said JB Pritzker. “This failed governor chose to manage his public image instead of managing a health crisis. The Rauner administration waited six days to tell families why their loved ones were sick, six days when treatment could have started and families could’ve helped keep their loved ones safe. Bruce Rauner’s fatal mismanagement and his cover-up is callous, baffling, and frankly, it’s criminal. Eugene Miller deserved better, all of our nation’s heroes deserve better, and as governor, my administration will serve our Veterans just as they served our country.”
Tim Miller: I met my dad at the ER, and when I walked into that room, he was laying in a fetal position, unresponsive. He just looked like he was about to die. It was not the dad that I saw before.
On screen: For six days the state of Illinois knew of a Legionnaires’ Disease outbreak and said nothing.
Tim Miller: At that moment, my dad needed for the state to honor him and serve him the way that he honored and served his country. Nothing was said about Legionnaires’. While the state was sending back emails about PR and different things, my dad was dying.
On screen: Emails paint a sad, cold reaction to crisis
Bruce Rauner: Our team did exactly what they should have done, exactly when they should have done it.
Tim Miller: My question to Governor Rauner is: If it were your parents who were living at that home, would you have handled it differently? Would the response time have been quicker?
On screen: Eugene Miller was one of 14 people who died after getting sick with Legionnaires’ Disease.
Tim Miller: I looked up to my dad a lot and I loved him, and whatever life he had left on this earth, it was his, and Governor Rauner was more interested in protecting his image than he was the heroes who served our country.
Tonight’s debate is in Quincy, so this sets it up pretty well.
* Related…
* Hugs, Handshakes, And Anger: Before Debate, Quincy Legionnaires’ Families Gather To Reflect: “That’s what makes me sick. Do they think we’re all stupid? Here they are, not telling us for six days, and our family members are in there. We could’ve had a choice, people. We could have took our fathers and others out. We could have gotten them other help, and they have the audacity not to tell us for six days?”
