By “why I blog” I mean, of course, “why I spend my time writing about politics/policy issues, rather than getting involved in politics”, and the “this” refers to the Illinois governor’s race. The Tribune today reports that the latest polling shows millionaire businessman Bruce Rauner far ahead of his three GOP political establishment competitors.
The survey showed Rauner at 40 percent support, more than his top two rivals combined. State Sen. Bill Brady pulled 20 percent and Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford was at 13 percent. State Sen. Kirk Dillard had 11 percent.
On top of this, dirty-tricks style charges were levied at Rutherford in the form of an accusation by a former male staffer that Rutherford had (a) forced him to work on campaigns while on-the-clock and(b) had made rather clumsy sexual advances at him. Will the charges stick? They’re fairly unprovable, especially the sexual piece — and one of the instances occurred at a business trip which the paperwork says never took place (the accuser says he faked the expense reimbursement request to indicate he didn’t stay overnight because he was too embarrassed). The timing is, as always, suspect, coming so close to the March 18th primary and so far after the events in question happened, though it seems (I’m not quite sure) that the timing was in part motivated by the staffer in question finding a better job and quitting only a short time ago. The staffer in question, Ed Michalowski, had also recently filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and, according to the Tribune, the Rutherford campaign claims he asked for $300,000 to keep silent. In any event, he’s now asking for “Compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial” as well as “All wages and benefits Plaintiff would have received but for the discrimination” (based on his claim that when Michalowski declined the advances, he was denied pay raises and promotions otherwise due him).
Now, I had been inclined to support Rutherford based on what I had seen of these candidates already, but I wasn’t happy with his inability to articulate a good set of policies any more than the others. His website is stunningly deficient in any actual content; his message is “vote for me because I’m the only candidate that has ever been elected to a statewide office.” And he does indeed have a better shot than the others at defeating Quinn. Not a great shot — but a better shot.
But Rauner is spending his money, getting name recognition, and in a field that’s so divided, it’s not that hard to get enough votes to defeat the others on name recognition alone.
And, in the unlikely event that he does win the general election, he has no chance of navigating the complex politics that’s our legacy in Illinois, in which the unions have outsized influence, and it’s not called Madiganistan for nothing. He can’t pull a Scott Walker and neuter the unions, based purely on his position as governor alone. And, from what I understand, he may be able to run circles around other business executives when it comes to his specialty of venture capitalism, but has not really had to deal with complex “people” issues and unions, and “running Illinois like a business” doesn’t really mean much as a slogan if the type of business he knows doesn’t have much resemblance to the actual problems that Illinois faces.
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