* ABC 7’s Charles Thomas interviewed Rep. Ken Dunkin yesterday about missing last week’s crucial session day.

Thomas reported that other Black Caucus members he talked with yesterday said they were angry at Dunkin for staying in New York rather than coming back to the Statehouse and doing his job. Nonetheless, Thomas led his story with this line: “Illinois Democrats are worried that state Rep. Ken Dunkin’s independence could be contagious, especially among African-American lawmakers.”

Thomas also quoted Chicago consultant and Dunkin ally Maze Jackson as saying “When one guy breaks off the plantation, it’s gotta make a lot of people in Springfield nervous, real nervous.”

Dunkin, for his part, told Thomas that he was looking for ways to find common ground with Gov. Rauner. “If this governor wants to work with me, I’m working with him,” Dunkin said. And the governor told Thomas that he and Dunkin “share a passion around economic empowerment, especially in the black community.”

“Today is the time that we have to take charge of our own destiny here,” Dunkin told Thomas about black legislators.

* Click here to watch it all.

* By the way, Rep. Dunkin did not take listener questions when he appeared on WVON Radio earlier this week, but after he left the air some folks called in to vent their displeasure with the Democrat for working with Rauner.

Yes, Speaker Madigan is unpopular in that district (as he is pretty much everywhere), but Rauner scored less than 20 percent of the vote in Dunkin’s district during last year’s general election, and he is not a popular guy in Chicago and likely not with black, Democratic primary voters, either - hence the attempt to make this about Dunkin’s rejection of “plantation politics.”