* Shot…
* Chaser…
State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, a Democrat from Oswego, said she is leaning toward waiting but plans to make a decision after consulting her doctor — something she said every lawmaker should do. Kifowit said vaccinating lawmakers is important to state government’s ability to function.
*Facepalm* Just own it, please. C’mon.
* She still managed to get in a dig at Republicans, though…
Kifowit found it ironic that Republicans who voted against remote voting in the legislature would also be critical of Pritzker’s adding lawmakers to Phase 1B of vaccine distribution.
“They must not believe in the continuance of government like I do,” Kifowit said. “I think that we need to get to work. We need to do everything in our power to make sure we can do the work of the people.”
Um, OK.
…Adding… Eleni Demertzis from the HGOP…
Legislators can easily do their jobs by wearing a mask and following the guidelines put forth by IDPH on how the General Assembly can meet safely. Follow the science and stop thinking you are better than the hundreds of thousands of workers that have to show up to their jobs everyday, including your dedicated legislative staff.
* Meanwhile, WCBU has a story about some central Illinois Republican legislators who say they won’t be vaccinated until it’s their turn. But the reporter also interviewed a member of the Senate’s 41-member super-majority…
Meanwhile, State Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, said he and his wife, who already were in phase 1B prior to the governor’s change on Wednesday, have received the first dose of the two-dose vaccine.
“I think that whatever the governor does, (the Republicans are) gonna have a criticism,” said Koehler. “The legislature does need to meet.”
He said the General Assembly has numerous concerns it needs to deal with, including the state budget.
“I think this helps to ease the feelings that we can meet and somehow be safe,” Koehler said. “I think the real issue is that we have to have more vaccine, it has to be distributed quicker, in a more ethical way.”
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* Sun-Times…
With fissures dividing the national Republican Party as it searches for direction and a message after the presidency of Donald Trump, the Illinois GOP is waging its own, lower profile quest for unity as members prepare to pick a new leader who can bring them together.
But rather than disagreeing over Trump, freshman Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, stolen elections or other conspiracy theories, the Illinois Republican Party’s challenge is to bridge ideological differences, reach out to minority and urban voters — and go back to winning elections.
Members of the state GOP committee are planning to meet Saturday to elect a successor to outgoing Chairman Tim Schneider, who’s been in the seat since 2014.
Illinois Republicans are hoping a new face at the head of their party will bring the “new energy” and “new ideas” needed to unite Republicans and “appeal to the most people possible” to make gains in the statehouse, Senate and other higher offices.
There’s some pretty good stuff in there, so go read the rest. But nothing about how to handle three dozen county party chairs who want “One Mind One Strength and No Division.”
…Adding… The Daily Herald has an interesting point about the weighted vote for party chairman…
That’s because the votes of the committee members — each representing one of the state’s congressional districts — are weighted based on the number of people who voted in the March 2020 Republican primary. Rural districts tend to have more Republican voters — and thus a higher weighted vote.
Of the state’s 18 districts, the 15th District, represented by Republican Mary Miller of downstate Oakland, had the most GOP voters in that election. The 18th District, represented by Republican Darin LaHood of downstate Dunlap, had the second-highest total. Third place went to the 14th District, represented by Democrat Lauren Underwood of Naperville.
Northeastern Illinois is overwhelmingly blue, with every Chicago-area congressional seat except one — Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s 16th — now held by a Democrat. That would have been unfathomable a generation ago, when the suburbs were solidly Republican.
Kinzinger’s district is exurban and rural.
* Tribune…
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was one of 11 Republicans to cross party lines Thursday and support Democrats in stripping GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her House committee assignments in a rebuke to her controversial past statements supporting false conspiracies and violence against politicians. […]
The vote to remove Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia, from her positions on two committees, Education and Labor, and Budget, was 230-199. Except for Kinzinger, Illinois’ congressional delegation of 13 Democrats and five Republicans voted along party lines. […]
Appearing on CNN hours prior to the vote, Kinzinger noted that during the House Republican Conference held Tuesday night, Greene received a partial standing ovation, which he called an “embarrassment” and “disappointing by factor of a thousand.”
Kinzinger also was critical of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for not taking action to remove Greene from her committee posts.
* CNN…
Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger criticized House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Thursday for not taking action against far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and said the GOP leader “needs to stand for truth.”
“Kevin needs to be very clear that he’s going to stand for truth in this party,” Kinzinger told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day.” “He needs to stand for truth and he needs recognize this party, the future is not going down to Mar-a-Lago and being with Donald Trump.”
* And…
If his goal is to move the Overton window to the center for the national GOP after decades of rightward lurches, then I can see where he’s going here. And the Lincoln Project has proved there is money to be raised for this sort of message, so maybe his new PAC will take off (Lynn Sweet reports there has been a “strong response so far,” but didn’t specify any dollar amount). Other than that, his congressional career appears to be over and I’m not all that confident he can win a statewide primary here even if he gets really lucky.
*** UPDATE *** Press release…
Ten Republican members of the US House of Representatives have formally voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and a few in the Senate may join them as well. This action has created widespread division and anger among the Republican party both nationally and here in Illinois. In response the Illinois Republican Party has released the following statement:
“We strongly disagree with any Republican, Congressman Adam Kinzinger included, who voted to impeach President Trump or those who vote to convict him in the U.S. Senate, but we will let the voters be the arbiters of any vote taken by an elected official.
As we prepare to select a new chairman of the Illinois Republican Party on Saturday, it’s our collective belief that uniting the party will be the single greatest endeavor of the new chairman. Our elected officials must unite behind defeating President Biden’s radical left-wing agenda. In just two weeks in office, the President has already given into extremists by cancelling the Keystone pipeline, refusing to enforce our immigration laws, and cowering to the teachers unions who refuse to educate our children in-person despite all the evidence of its necessity.
The stakes of the 2022 election here in Illinois - defeating Gov. JB Pritzker and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, winning back congressional seats, and electing Republican judges to the Illinois Supreme Court - are too monumental to engage in a circular firing squad. We cannot play into Democrat hands by fighting amongst each other, so we encourage all Republicans to focus on the future rather than relitigating the past.”
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* Press release…
Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and CPS CEO Dr. Janice K. Jackson today issued the following statement regarding negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU):
“Yesterday afternoon, we received a counter proposal from CTU leadership and responded with our last, best, and final offer. We expect a response from CTU leadership today. We will be making further statements later today about school on Monday”
*** UPDATE 1 *** Not looking great…
*** UPDATE 2 *** OK…
Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and CPS CEO Dr. Janice K. Jackson today issued the following statement regarding negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU):
“We have yet to receive a formal response in writing today from CTU leadership. The ball is in their court.”
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* I told you on Monday (and updated since then) about how many vaccine doses that various public health departments had on-hand as of Friday. The lone exception was the City of Chicago, which wasn’t reporting its vaccine stockpile data to the state.
After much back-and-forth and claims that they didn’t have the number, I was finally able to get what Andrew Buchanan at the Chicago Department of Public Health says are its current numbers as of yesterday…
No other information was provided. But, if you click here and do a little math, you’ll see that Chicago’s average daily doses administered is 5,125 over the past 7 days. So, at this rate, it’ll take the city a little over 23 days to use up that stockpile.
…Adding… A different page within the city’s public health site shows an average dosage delivered at 10,338 per day when including those vaccinated who do not live in Chicago. It’s not clear if all those doses came from the city’s supply, but give ‘em the benefit of the doubt.
To put that number further into context, the Chicago Teachers Union has about 20,000 members and the union is clamoring for vaccinations for its membership before returning to work. The city could comply with that demand and still have 20 days’ supply on-hand at the current vaccination rate (or about 10 days when adding non-residents to the equation).
Just sayin…
…Adding… Andrew Buchanan at the Chicago Department of Public Health…
(T)hese numbers reflect vaccine that is being put into arms today and over the coming week, it’s been promised to people and providers who have appointments to fill. We receive our vaccine allotments on a weekly basis (typically arriving Monday-Wednesday) but they’re allocated already for appointments over the following week. For example, we received 10,725 doses of Pfizer that were just delivered to CDPH – that’s part of the 19,572 I reported to you – but all of our vaccine supply is already scheduled for appointments over the next week.
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* Mark Brown…
There’s going to be a lot of complaining about Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decision Wednesday to make state legislators eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine now instead of requiring them to wait until the next phase later this year, but I have no objection.
Legislators have an important job that’s best accomplished by meeting in person, and this should allow them to safely do that, eventually.
I just have one little caveat:
If they want to actually get vaccinated, legislators should be required to go through the same maddening process as the rest of us who are eligible but are still looking for an appointment. […]
If legislators want to get the vaccine, they should jump through the same hoops as the average person in the Phase 1B grouping who became eligible in Illinois last week — which includes frontline essential workers and anyone age 65 and older.
There are those out there who are claiming that legislators are being allowed to jump to the front of the line. Not true. They’re being moved to 1B and have to fend for themselves like everyone else. Also, unlike the governor, Mayor Lightfoot appears to have actually moved herself and city council members to the very front of the line for shots and got exactly zero heat for that. Maybe equal treatment from the news/opinion media is in order here as well.
But I do figure that some or even most legislators will try to use their connections, like everyone else who has connections. That doesn’t make it right. And I also figure that some of the folks who screamed the loudest yesterday will find a way to discreetly get their shots.
* Also too, it would help if legislators who complained the loudest would step up now. For instance…
So far, neither legislator has posted follow-up tweets about the governor’s policy shift in their favor, although Rep. Didech did speak to the Tribune…
“This has been framed as politicians jumping to the front of the line, but it’s really not about that,” Didech said in a phone interview. “It’s us being responsive to our constituents who want us to get back to work and doing it in a safe way that we’re not causing superspreader events.”
*** UPDATE *** I’m told that in response to requests from legislators, the Pritzker administration will set up a central location in Springfield for state legislators to receive the vaccine in the next few weeks.
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* Drudge…
* That headline links to this WBBM Newsradio headline…
Nearly 1.9 million seek vaccine appointments at Cook County site in first hour of website launch
* And that story links to this Daily Herald story…
As proof, “our website this morning saw nearly 1.9 million hits in the first hour,” Cook County Department of Public Health spokeswoman Deborah Song said. She was describing the onslaught of people trying to hook up with vaccinations at a second Cook County mass inoculation site opening Wednesday at Triton College in River Grove.
“We booked more than 3,400 appointments in the first 35 minutes,” Song said. “At its peak, the website experienced 65,810 hits in a single minute, which can slow down some of the functionality.”
* I reached out to Donald Bolger at the Cook County Department of Public Health, who said these were not unique site visits and the site stopped booking appointments after the first 3,400.
A “hit” is defined as “a request to a web server for a file.” Depending on the page, there can be numerous hits per page-view, and, take it from me, people can generate a ton of page-views by constantly refreshing their browsers.
We went through all this “hit” vs. “visits” vs. “unique visits” with reporters and others decades ago when the Web was still relatively young and people were unclear on the concept. There’s no excuse for that now.
This is not to say there isn’t intense interest out there, but the headlines are no less goofy and misleading.
…Adding… Phil Kadner described how this happened…
“We are pleased to announce that Cook County Health has released additional availability of vaccine appointments to Phase 1A and 1B residents of Cook County…To find an appointment, please click” — and an internet link was provided [Sunday evening].
I jumped for joy. Shouted to my wife that we were in. And clicked on the link.
Sorry, Charlie, there are no openings. Just toying with you, buddy.
The next day, in the morning, I received another text message:
“The additional availability of vaccine appointments at Cook County Health sites has been fully booked. More will be released as vaccine is received. Please be patient.”
Phil went on to write that he’d seen Gov. Pritzker vaccinated, which is false. Maybe he was thinking of Mayor Lightfoot.
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*** UPDATED x1 *** Tony Leone
Thursday, Feb 4, 2021 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Tony was probably best known these days for owning the Pasfield House, but he has a long local history…
Tony Leone, who served as clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives and ran the Pasfield House bed-and-breakfast near the Illinois Capitol Building, died Wednesday in Springfield.
He was 69. His cause of death was not clear.
Leone served as assistant clerk and clerk of the House from 1979 to 1992.
Leone was a longtime executive director of the Sangamon County Republican Foundation. He was also assistant treasurer of the state GOP.
My condolences to his many friends and to his family. I was able to confirm yesterday that arrangements are being handled by Boardman-Smith Funeral Home.
*** UPDATE *** Rosemarie Long also passed away, and the ILGOP has sent out a press release…
“When I think about someone who exemplifies the perfect union of a kind heart, genuine character, and commitment to a cause - I think of Rosemarie Long. Few people have made a greater impact on their community than she has. Sangamon County, Central Illinois, and the statewide Republican Party have lost a giant today. But more importantly, her family, countless friends, and loved ones have lost a beautiful soul. We hold them up in our thoughts and prayers at this time.” - Tim Schneider
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