* Gov. Pat Quinn loves him some Michael Sneed, and he gave her an exclusive interview for today’s paper…

Amongst Quinn’s running mates on the state Dem ticket were those who treated him as “toxic and did not want to have their pictures taken with me,” he said.

“It was hard to take watching them shy away, but in the end we had the connection to ordinary people and that’s what counted. It has all been inspiring.”

From yesterday’s Sneed…

Click. Click. Nix pix. Sneed hears failed U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias felt Gov. Quinn was so toxic weeks before the election, he steered away from posing in pix with him until just before the election.

It wasn’t just Giannoulias, however. Quinn has been upset for months that legislative Democrats with anything close to a tough race refused to go anywhere near him. Considering how badly Quinn was beaten Downstate, that’s quite understandable. And while he won the Cook County suburbs, he was never anywhere near 50 percent, so he was seen as a needless drag. Legislative leaders prefer to position their candidates in isolation during years like this. But Quinn thought that meant they despised him. It wasn’t personal, it was just business.

* For instance, Brady had some coattails in Decatur…

Though the Decatur area will feel the effects of a number of statewide elections, the ousting of state Rep. Bob Flider might mean the most significant change for the city and the Illinois House district that includes most of it. […]

Flider’s defeat means Decatur will no longer have any Democratic representation in the General Assembly

Flider wanted nothing to do with Quinn during the campaign. I can’t hardly blame him.

* And check this out…

Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias did not win a single precinct within Adams County in Tuesday’s election, and U.S. Rep. Phil Hare was only able to claim one precinct.

Reports from the Adams County county clerk’s office also show that two Republican statewide candidates, Mark Kirk and Bill Brady, won all 80 precincts and collected more than 70 percent of the vote in Adams County. Kirk defeated Giannoulias in the U.S. Senate race, while Brady trails Quinn by nearly 20,000 votes despite winning 98 of the state’s 102 counties.

As expected, Bobby Schilling, the Republican candidate in the 17th U.S. House District in Illinois, received 72 percent of the vote overall and won 62 of 63 precincts the district covers in Adams County. U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, represents the other precincts.

Hare, a two-term incumbent, received less than a quarter of the vote in Adams County and won one precinct in the city of Quincy. & not; In 2006, the last time Hare faced an opponent (Andrea Zinga), he won 39 percent of the vote in Adams County and 19 precincts, all in the city of Quincy.

* Gov. Quinn won on a platform of moderate cuts, “strategic” borrowing and raising taxes. But a key component of that plan stalled again yesterday in the Senate…

Illinois senators will try again in two weeks to figure out how to make $3.75 billion in payments to state pension systems this year.

After hurriedly returning to Springfield two days after the election to address the issue, the Senate adjourned Thursday without voting on a plan to make the payment by borrowing up to $4 billion. The bill, previously approved by the House, didn’t even get a vote in committee.

* And lawmakers don’t appear to love any of the options…

Illinois also has a backlog of nearly $6 billion in unpaid bills to schools and vendors that do business with the state. Jacobs said the state has to clear its name of that debt.

“I think at the end of the day you’ve got to pay your bills,” Jacobs. “So that gives you a couple of options: You either borrow it, you raise a tax to get it or you cut something to get it.”

Thursday’s inaction on the pension bond plan appears to kick borrowing off the list.

State Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, said cuts most likely are on the horizon.

“Primarily we’re going to have to cut as much waste as we can, and we’re going to have to cut programs that are not waste but that are good programs but that we can’t afford anymore,” Haine said. “We just can’t afford some of the good things that we do.”

Public opinion polls have shown voters support cuts, but when given specific programs to cut, they balk. Same goes for an income tax increase.

“The polls indicate the people at this time do not believe a tax increase is justified,” said Haine. “So we have to have a dialogue and have them tell us what their priorities are and how we get to a state of solvency. We are in a state where we are critically in danger of being insolvent.”

* And the general feeling under the Statehouse dome yesterday was similar to this longtime subscriber’s, who wrote…

After being pounded for being incompetent and a flip-flopper, Quinn decides to spend his lunch hour [yesterday] in Chicago glad-handing voters at Manny’s Deli, rather in Springfield glad-handing senators at the session he asked Cullerton to call. I know they didn’t have the votes, but it might have been nice to send the message that he was engaged on the solutions he proposed.

The really frustrating thing is that Quinn is probably going to take this election as some kind of mandate and vindication of his governance, management style and all-around brilliance, rather than realizing that he got very lucky, and that a lot of people pitched in and helped even though they were upset with his leadership. I count myself among them.

It’s going to be a long four years.

Yes, it is. Without a doubt.