Just hours after we reported here that the state comptroller was among those on the list to possibly run for mayor, Mendoza took the stage for a City Club luncheon. “There’s a been a big development for me and for others in Chicago,” she told the hushed crowd. “It was a huge gut check for me. It was pretty emotional. In hindsight I guess I should have seen it coming. I thought I was prepared, but when it happened I just kind of lost it.” She paused. “My husband and I dropped our son off for his first day of kindergarten.” The crowd roared, expecting, of course, an announcement about her possible mayoral ambitions.
Mendoza went on to talk about her work as comptroller, explain Illinois’ budget mess and how she’s worked to bring about government and financial transparency. During the Q&A and later with reporters, Mendoza ducked questions about whether she’ll run for mayor. “I’m not thinking about mayor right now,” she said, adding her focus is on running for comptroller.
A possible scenario if Mendoza wants the mayor job: She keeps running for comptroller and wins re-election Nov. 6. Then (if J.B. Pritzker also wins) Mendoza has three weeks to gather signatures to run for mayor. If she were to win the mayor’s race, then Pritzker would appoint her replacement. If she loses, she’s still comptroller. Lots of ifs.
After a speech to the City Club of Chicago on Wednesday, the first-term Democratic comptroller said she was “fielding a lot of calls yesterday.” She did not say whether she’d join the crowded mayoral field, which is expected to grow between now and November when candidacy papers need to be filed.
“I’m not thinking about mayor right now,” she said. “I’m thinking about the next 62 days. … I think I would be great at any job I do, and I would never run for an office if I don’t think I’m the best person for that office. Right now I’m running for comptroller.”
“These next 62 days are no joke. I mean this is what it’s about. And then, you know, time will …” Mendoza said, pausing. “I don’t even want to talk about the mayor’s race, frankly, until after November.”
Asked later if she was ruling out a mayoral bid, Mendoza didn’t answer directly, again saying she is focused on her re-election campaign.
“In an attempt to deceive voters, Susana Mendoza is hoping to dodge questions about a Chicago Mayoral bid until after Illinoisans have cast their vote for Comptroller in November,” Illinois Republican Party Executive Director Travis Sterling said. “Illinoisans deserve the full truth when they head to the ballot box, and Mendoza has made it clear that she is not committed to four years as Illinois’ Comptroller.”
In concert with J.B. Pritzker’s campaign, a $1 million voter registration program was launched. It will target people who traditionally vote Democrat but often do not have the same ballot access as others. These groups include transient workers, college students, and people of color. There could not be a more important time to make these investments as the face of our party rapidly changes.
In addition to our voter registration initiative, the Party is working with the Pritzker campaign to execute a massive vote-by-mail program, targeting nearly two million eligible voters to ensure broader access and engagement during the traditional “drop-off” (non-presidential) midterm election year.
We’re also facilitating increased data sharing from the top of the ticket to the bottom, giving down-ballot races access to additional data from which they can produce more sophisticated targeting and better coordinate their field operations.
Mitchell also recently hired Sam Salustro away from the Democratic Governors Association. Salustro will be the party’s new director of statewide communications.
…Adding… Mitchell announced the voter registration program when he was appointed, but it’s now underway.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan today announced her office and the City of Chicago agreed to a draft provision in the draft consent decree for reform of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) that requires Chicago police officers to report when they point a firearm at a person.
Under the agreement, beginning in July 2019, (1) Chicago police officers must report when they point their firearm at a person, (2) an officer’s immediate supervisor must be notified each time the pointing of a firearm is reported (3) once notified, CPD supervisors must then review the incident to ensure that the officer followed CPD policy and any misconduct is addressed, and (4) beginning in January 2020, the independent monitor will review any instances in which an officer points a firearm and recommend any changes to the way the incidents are documented.
In addition to review by the officer’s supervisor, the agreement requires CPD headquarters to review and audit all incidents involving an officer pointing a firearm at a person, including documentation and information collected during the stop. Headquarters’ reviews of pointing incidents must be completed within 30 days and must:
* identify whether the pointing of the firearm at a person allegedly violated CPD policy;
* identify any patterns in such occurrences and, to the extent necessary, ensure that any concerns are addressed; and
* identify any tactical, equipment, training, or policy concerns and, to the extent necessary, ensure that the concerns are addressed.
At the conclusion of the review, CPD must make appropriate referrals for misconduct investigations or other corrective actions for alleged violations of CPD policy. CPD headquarters must also issue a written notification to the supervisor of its findings and include whether any further actions were taken or required.
Under the agreement, after each incident when an officer has pointed a firearm, officers must radio the information about pointing their firearms to the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC). The information will be electronically linked with corresponding police department reports and body-worn camera recordings from the same incident, all of which must be retained and accessible to the officer’s supervisor, be reviewed by the Department, and available to the independent monitor.
The agreement also requires that by January 1, 2019, CPD must instruct officers on weapons discipline and when officers should and should not point a firearm at a person. New training on when an officer points a firearm must be incorporated in the annual use of force training required under the draft consent decree in 2019. Also under the agreement, CPD will clarify in its policy that officers will only point a firearm at a person when it is objectively reasonable to do so.
Beginning in 2020, the independent monitor annually will assesses instances in which an officer points a firearm at a person to determine whether changes to CPD policy, training, practice or supervision are necessary and to recommend any changes to the process of documenting, reviewing, and analyzing these occurrences.
“Knowing when police officers point their guns at someone will allow CPD to improve officer and community safety,” Madigan said. “I believe this is critical in achieving true reform of the Chicago Police Department.”
* Press release from Sen. Kwame Raoul…
“As the consent decree moves closer to its final form, I am encouraged by the prospects for meaningful and sustainable change. The latest point of agreement is an important advance, one that acknowledges the seriousness of the CPD’s need to earn the trust of the people it polices,” said state Senator Kwame Raoul.
“This difficult and necessary work and the public participation informing it were made possible by Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s decision to step up and take responsibility for the reform process when the Department of Justice stepped back from its duty to enforce civil rights laws. State attorneys general are often the last line of defense, and I am ready to step up whenever needed.
“I look forward as attorney general to building on these positive steps, implementing and monitoring the consent decree to bring about lasting reform.”
…Adding… Karen Sheley, Director, Police Practices Project, ACLU of Illinois…
Last night’s filing announcing the agreement reached about recording each time a Chicago police officer points a weapon at someone is welcome news. The City heeded recent public demands supporting this common-sense proposal. The City should also adopt the other demands that the ACLU and our clients have raised in our detailed response to their draft decree. The decree they file in court must be revised to ensure the City has an effective crisis intervention program, addresses police interactions with people with disabilities, and makes the reform plans enforceable and transparent.
Today, Erika Harold’s campaign for Attorney General unveiled RaoulMadigan.com to highlight Kwame Raoul’s and Mike Madigan’s failed fourteen-year partnership in Springfield.
The website will detail at-length the many times Raoul and Madigan worked together to protect their power, line their pockets, and push failed policies, such as:
* Gerrymandering legislative districts
* Voting to raise their own pay
* Skipping pension payments
* Passing unbalanced budgets
* Pushing tax hikes
Paid digital advertising will educate voters on the failed Raoul-Madigan record by directing them to the website.
State Senator Kwame Raoul. House Speaker Mike Madigan. Two career politicians who share the same failed agenda. They might be in separate chambers in the General Assembly, but make no mistake - Raoul and Madigan have worked hand-in-hand over the last fourteen years, pushing policies that have run our state into the ground.
Since 2005, Kwame Raoul and Mike Madigan have worked together to gerrymander legislative districts, skip pension payments, push tax hikes, pass unbalanced budgets, and even vote to raise their own pay.
And when allegations of patronage, sexual harassment, and heavy-handed politics over the years shook Mike Madigan’s political organization, Illinois voters heard nothing from Kwame Raoul. Why? Because he puts the political class and his own personal ambition before the people of Illinois.
Fourteen years of working with Mike Madigan in Springfield have revealed Kwame Raoul for who he is - just another career politician who’s turned his back on us.
Raoul called her attempt to link him to Madigan as carrying out “the lines handed” to her by Rauner in trying to repeat “that broken record (heard) over and over again in the gubernatorial campaign.”
“It’s not ironic that she was given $1 million a couple of weeks ago from Bruce Rauner and introduced herself in a general campaign with an ad comparing me to Mike Madigan,” Raoul told reporters.
“My name is Kwame Raoul. My last name is not Madigan. I’ve never served in the House of Representatives. Mike Madigan did not ask me to run for attorney general. Mike Madigan did not support me in the primary for attorney general. I was not recruited by anybody to run for attorney general like my opponent was,” Raoul said.
…Adding… From Aviva Bowen at the Raoul campaign…
Anything not to talk about Erika’s extreme views on marriage equality or a woman’s right to choose, I guess.
Harold is holding a fundraiser with Rep. Peter Breen tonight. Breen is currently battling in court with Attorney General Lisa Madigan over HB40.
* As we discussed months ago, most of Maryann Loncar’s allegations against Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) were full of holes. Her “bribery” claim had changed (and grown) over the years, but was easily disproved. Her claim that Lang had killed legislation because of her involvement was flatly denied by others working on the bill. Her ex-husband denied an allegation that Lang had reached out to him with an offer to help him “bury” Loncar. After Rep. Jeanne Ives told a reporter that Loncar wouldn’t be making sexual harassment allegations, Loncar went on Dan Proft’s radio show the morning of her press conference…
Proft asked her whether the still-unnamed legislator had said if she wouldn’t “play ball, and play ball means of a sexual nature, then you’re not going to get what you want.”
“In every nature,” Loncar replied. “It all starts in Springfield of a sexual nature if you’re female. All of it.”
However, when her statement to Proft was read back to her later that day by my associate Hannah Meisel, Loncar admitted Lang had made no such demand.
Loncar then claimed at her subsequent Statehouse press conference, “I was harassed. I was intimidated. I was humiliated.”
* But now the Legislative Inspector General has cleared Lang of all claims, including harassment…
But in a report issued Wednesday, Julie Porter, the acting legislative inspector general, wrote that there is not enough evidence to support Loncar’s claims and that the matter is now closed.
She also wrote in an email to Lang that she found Loncar’s allegations “unfounded.”
“Given her unwillingness to speak to me, and taking her descriptions and those of her colleague at face value, I do not have sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that such occurrences, if they even happened, constituted sexual harassment,” Porter wrote.
Lang said in a statement issued Wednesday that “the allegations were absurd and false and remain so today.
“Therefore, I welcome the Inspector General’s conclusion that completely dismisses the allegations as ‘unfounded,’” Lang wrote. “As far as I’m concerned, I have been vindicated and this matter is now closed.”
“It is ridiculous to think that any person who feels victimized by a member of the House or Senate would be consoled to reveal their plight to a hand-picked I.G. appointed by the Speaker of House,” Loncar said in the statement.
“What I have seen played out since my press conference confirms everything I assumed about having a Legislative Inspector General appointed by the Speaker of the House: it is a joke,” her statement read. “The joke is on the victims. The joke is on the Illinois taxpayers.”
Today, the Rauner campaign is launching a new TV ad featuring Diana Rauner titled “This Election is a Choice.”
In the ad, Diana directly addresses Illinois voters about the stakes of this election. She outlines the clear choice voters face in November: continue fighting for reform with Governor Rauner or go back to the same policies that have hurt Illinois for decades with JB Pritzker and Mike Madigan.
I’m Diana Rauner. Bruce ran for governor to try and save our state. It hasn’t been easy, but nothing important ever is. Bruce took on the big problems: education funding reform, Medicaid reform, criminal justice reform. He stopped the insanity and delivered. But 40 years of mismanagement can’t be turned around in 4 years. This election is a choice. Do we keep moving towards reform, or go back to the status quo that got us into this mess?
…Adding… Jake pulls up her 2014 ad…
Bruce Rauner's 2018 campaign released an ad today featuring his wife. Here's a look back at Rauner's first 2014 ad featuring Diana (released 10/16/14)#twill#ilgovpic.twitter.com/flKZmecc3b
In featuring Diana Rauner, the Rauner campaign is acknowledging the need to appeal to female voters, particularly socially moderate women in the traditionally GOP suburbs, in his re-election contest with Democrat J.B. Pritzker.
At the same time, the governor, himself, has been spending time campaigning Downstate to try to unify a socially conservative GOP base unhappy with his signature on laws expanding abortion, immigrant and gay rights. […]
Diana Rauner’s script also is noteworthy.
By talking about education, Medicaid and criminal justice, she’s talking about issues of interest to those moderate suburban women without touching on the more controversial issues surrounding the governor — such as abortion rights — that could anger conservatives.
