{"id":620,"date":"2014-02-11T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T08:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/this-is-why-i-blog-tribunewgn-tv-poll-rauner-jumps-out-to-lead.html"},"modified":"2014-02-11T08:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T08:54:00","slug":"this-is-why-i-blog-tribunewgn-tv-poll-rauner-jumps-out-to-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/this-is-why-i-blog-tribunewgn-tv-poll-rauner-jumps-out-to-lead.html","title":{"rendered":"This is why I blog: “Tribune\/WGN-TV poll: Rauner jumps out to lead”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

By \u201cwhy I blog\u201d I mean, of course, \u201cwhy I spend my time writing about politics\/policy issues, rather than getting involved in politics\u201d, and the \u201cthis\u201d refers to the Illinois governor\u2019s race.\u00a0 The Tribune today reports\u00a0that the latest polling shows millionaire businessman Bruce Rauner far ahead of his three GOP political establishment competitors.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On top of this,\u00a0dirty-tricks style charges were levied at Rutherford in the form of an accusation by a former male staffer that Rutherford\u00a0had (a) forced him to work on campaigns while on-the-clock and(b) had made rather clumsy sexual advances at him.\u00a0 Will the charges stick?\u00a0 They\u2019re fairly unprovable, especially the sexual piece \u2014 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\u2019t stay overnight because he was too embarrassed).\u00a0 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\u2019m 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.\u00a0 The staffer in question, Ed Michalowski, had also recently filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and, according to the Tribune<\/a>, the Rutherford campaign claims he asked for $300,000 to keep silent.\u00a0 In any event, he\u2019s now asking <\/a>for \u201cCompensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial\u201d as well as \u201cAll wages and benefits Plaintiff would have received but for the discrimination\u201d (based on his\u00a0claim that when Michalowski declined the advances, he was denied pay raises and promotions otherwise due him).<\/p>\n

Now, I had been\u00a0inclined to\u00a0support Rutherford<\/a> based on what I had seen of these candidates already, but I wasn\u2019t happy with his inability to articulate a good set of policies any more than the others.\u00a0 His website is stunningly deficient in any actual content; his message is \u201cvote for me because I\u2019m the only candidate\u00a0that has ever been elected to a statewide office.\u201d\u00a0 And he does indeed have a better shot than the others at defeating Quinn.\u00a0 Not a great shot \u2014 but a better shot.<\/p>\n

But Rauner is spending his money, getting name recognition, and in a field that\u2019s so divided, it\u2019s not that hard to get enough votes to defeat the others on name recognition alone.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And, in the unlikely event that he does win the general election, he has no chance of navigating the complex politics that\u2019s our legacy in Illinois, in which the unions have outsized influence, and it\u2019s not called Madiganistan for nothing.\u00a0 He can\u2019t pull a Scott Walker and neuter the unions, based purely on his position as governor alone.\u00a0 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 \u201cpeople\u201d issues and unions, and \u201crunning Illinois like a business\u201d doesn\u2019t really mean much as a slogan if the type of business he knows doesn\u2019t have much resemblance to the actual problems that Illinois faces.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By \u201cwhy I blog\u201d I mean, of course, \u201cwhy I spend my time writing about politics\/policy issues, rather than getting involved in politics\u201d, and the \u201cthis\u201d refers to the Illinois governor\u2019s race.\u00a0 The Tribune today reports\u00a0that the latest polling shows millionaire businessman Bruce Rauner far ahead of his three GOP political establishment competitors. The survey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThis is why I blog: "Tribune\/WGN-TV poll: Rauner jumps out to lead"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/this-is-why-i-blog-tribunewgn-tv-poll-rauner-jumps-out-to-lead.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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