Chris Kennedy on Thursday asked Cook County Democratic leaders not to endorse a candidate for the party’s governor nomination, a plea made as J.B. Pritzker urged city ward and suburban township committeemen to side with him and against contenders who attack their rivals. […]
“We need to install in everyone that notion that government is a good thing. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that government is squeaky clean, that it is free from conflict, that elected officials do not have an incentive to use their office for personal gain. We need to reaffirm with the electorate that we work for them, that we are servant leaders and not leaders of servants,” Kennedy said in a meeting at the county party’s Loop headquarters.
“I don’t think there would be anything that we could do that would signal that more powerfully than to say to the electorate, ‘We’re going to have an open primary in the governor’s race and allow you to make the decision for the Democratic Party as to who will be the Democratic nominee for governor,’ and I’m asking you all for support in that today,” he said.
In light of Kennedy’s criticism of the party establishment, ward committeeman and Ald. Ray Lopez, 15th, asked the candidate why he showed up if he did not want to “be endorsed by insiders.”
I’m here because I love the Democratic Party, I love Illinois and I think for Illinois to be saved the Democratic Party has to save it. We believe differently than the Republicans do. We believe government can be an agent of change, it can be helpful to people. But we need to ask the entire population of Illinois to make sacrifices, every taxpayer to make a sacrifice. I think they’re willing to do that. I think they’re willing to pay more for great government that will educate their children and keep their communities safe, but they’re only going to do that if the government is squeaky clean.
And I think calling for reforms like preventing elected officials from having a conflict of interest, mirroring the very laws that our United States Congressmen serve under, I don’t think that’s a big ask. I don’t think electing people who are banned from have a conflict of interest should be something that we’re stumbling over, that we’re wrestling with, that people think is a product of ‘aw, wow’ why would you ever think that would be OK. Because it’s OK everywhere else. Because it’s OK at the federal level. Because we need to return the faith people have in government and if we don’t we will never get the funding necessary to save the next generation.
A bit on the long side, but not a bad argument. It’s just not an argument that will work with party insiders, and you gotta figure Kennedy knew that going in.
According to the Tribune, powerful Thornton Township Democratic Committeeman Frank Zuccarelli told his fellow county Democrats that they need to endorse Pritzker “right away.”
I emphasized to Mr. Durkin that I am prepared to do a budget and am prepared to do revenue to pay for that budget. I’m prepared to work with every member of the Legislature on all issues before the Legislature.
I think that, again, the Legislature, especially the Democrats in the Legislature, have taken great steps to be responsive to requests from the governor in areas like governmental consolidation, procurement, sale of the Thompson Center, reorganization of the Lincoln Library. And unfortunately, we haven’t seen a comparable response from the governor.
We would feel that if we’re being responsive to the governor’s requests, he ought to engage with us on the budget-making and on raising the money to pay for the budget. And I haven’t seen that yet.
