* Subscribers already know part of my take on last night’s debate and I’m putting a post together about another highly interesting moment, but you can chew on this stuff for a while until the other post is ready…

* Quinn, Rauner try to create fear about the other guy during debate: Quinn stuck largely to a class warfare script against Rauner, a wealthy equity investor from Winnetka, in delivering a more polished and aggressive performance reflective of his political experience. Quinn repeatedly suggested Rauner’s plan to cut taxes would hurt education funding… “Unfortunately, under Gov. Quinn, Illinois has been one of the worst-run states in America. We have rampant misspending of taxpayer money, massive waste in the system,” Rauner said. The Republican challenger attacked the state’s system of purchasing goods and services as “part of the cesspool of cronyism and patronage that’s so endemic inside our state government. (Quinn) relies on that for his election. He relies on that for campaign cash. And that’s rampant throughout the departments.”

* Governor Candidates Debate: Rauner said Quinn has been a failure as governor. “Pat Quinn has been a failure on jobs. Under his administration, we’ve become the lowest state of job growth of any state in the Midwest,” he said. Quinn said Rauner has had is troubles as a financier. “My opponent talks about successful results – he’s been involved with 12 different bankruptcies involving other companies, and there’ve been six of his executives indicted and convicted and sent to jail. Two are under indictment now. They’ve got 150 lawsuits against a nursing home chain,” he said.

* Quinn-Rauner debate: Each casts other as state’s worst nightmare: “My opponent, all across Illinois, went across this state, saying eliminate the minimum wage. A person taking in $53 million a year running around Illinois saying eliminate the minimum wage. He’s adamantly against the minimum wage. Well, I’m adamantly for raising the minimum wage” [said Quinn]… “Pat Quinn has been governor for six years, and he’s had a super majority of his party in the General Assembly,” Rauner said. “And he has not increased the minimum wage in that time. If he was serious about this, he could have gotten it done. He’s playing political football with people’s lives and with our economy.”

* Illinois Governor Candidates Square Off In Debate: “Politicians in Illinois said every time they want to raise taxes it’s for schools,” Rauner said. “We put the lottery in Illinois to fund our schools. The money doesn’t really fund our schools. Our current Governor raised income tax by 67 percent, said it would be for education then he cut half a billion from school funding.” “When it comes to education funding, my opponent makes up things,” Quinn said. “We’ve increased education funding in the classroom by $500 million, independent fact checkers have indicated that. We’ve also paid the teacher pension every single year.”

* Little focus on downstate issues in first gubernatorial debate: Little else directly related to downstate came up, save for a single question on a proposal by state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, to change the funding structure for primary and secondary education. But while that’s a measure that “is having a regional fault line,” Mooney said, it’s as much related to wealthy districts versus poorer districts as specific regions of the state.

* Quinn, Rauner clash over Illinois economic climate: Democratic Sen. Andy Manar’s proposal would direct more state money to poorer rural districts at the expense of wealthier suburban districts… Quinn said the state needs to increase education investment. But he says Manar’s proposal needs “a lot of oversight and review” as well as more debate. Rauner said he “probably wouldn’t support that particular bill.” He said he favors an overhaul of the current formula.

* Quinn, Rauner detail regrets in governor’s debate: Quinn says he’s “definitely not perfect,” and doesn’t think any human being is. He says he regrets not cutting lawmakers pay — and his own — to spur an overhaul of the state’s underfunded pension systems sooner. Rauner says not every company his private equity firm has created or acquired has been successful. He also noted he’s “rarely” seen business executives engage in unethical behavior. He says he’s tried to take action to quickly correct that.

Your own take-away?

*** UPDATE *** From the Quinn campaign…

After a panelist hoped against hope during Thursday night’s debate for Bruce Rauner to make his fantastical tax plan “add up,” Governor Pat Quinn set the record straight on the Rauner Tax Plan that not only doesn’t add up, but would devastate Illinois education in order to give billionaires like Rauner a $1 million tax cut.

“I don’t go for that,” Governor Quinn is shown as saying to the new Rauner Tax on services and consumption, and a budget hole that would result in the layoff of 1 in 6 schoolteachers in Illinois.

In a new Quinn for Illinois web video, here’s the question asked by a WUIS reporter that Bruce Rauner just couldn’t answer:

“Outside of your own campaign, nobody seems to make the numbers in your blueprint add up. You said you want to give more money to state parks, to education, higher education, while at the same time cutting revenues and rolling back the income tax to 3% in four years. Let’s try again: Make that add up, please.”

(He couldn’t.)

* The video is pretty cleverly done…