Confederate values – Is that really what we’re fighting over these days?

The choice of entertainment for the Illinois State and DuQuoin State fairs is, strictly speaking, not a Chicago-area issue. Although I have no doubt that people exist who are going to somehow claim this is evidence of Chicago or urban values predominating over the way rural people want to live.

Cancelled in DuQuoin

Which is to say that a whole lot of nonsense is being spewed over the acts that have been hired, or not hired, to perform at the events taking place during August.

THE DUQUOIN FAIR in Southern Illinois is an alternative event to the Illinois State Fair that usually takes on a more rural character. More southern than the rest of Illinois. For those people who think of the Land of Lincoln as neighboring up against Kentucky, rather than Iowa or Wisconsin

Among the acts that had been scheduled to appear there was a band billing itself as Confederate Railroad. But it seems state government officials cancelled their contract with the band because there are those who take offense to someone using the symbolism of the old Confederate States of America.

Personally, I’ve never really heard the band. I had to use the Internet to do a search to find out anything about them, and from the snippets I heard, I don’t think there’s much of a loss.

But there are people who are prepared to think of this as some sort of snub to their idea of what a “real America” ought to be about.

PARTICULARLY WHEN THEY learned about the entertainment scheduled for the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. Where is seems that the rapper Snoop Dogg is scheduled to perform.

The same people who are prepared to think that Confederate Railroad is somehow worthy of our attention are offended – probably by the presence of any act that isn’t geared to a white, rural sensibility.

But Snoop Dogg particularly offends them because one of his many album covers includes the 2017 record “Make America Crip Again.”

Double-standard? Or over-reaction?

Which depicts the artist in a totally gangsta pose of standing over a flag-covered corpse, whose toe tag indicates it’s the body of none other than President Donald Trump.

ADMITTEDLY, THAT’S A tacky image to use. But it seems state officials have no problem with it, or with Snoop Dogg. As opposed to Confederate Railroad – whose own appearance in DuQuoin is no more for this year.

State Rep. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, is trying to make an issue of this, and claims there will be a significant boycott of the DuQuoin Fair – which potentially is a blow to the Southern Illinois economy that considers the fair one of its most significant events each year.

She’s gone so far as to use a lengthy Facebook post to denounce state officials, particularly Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whom she says is “hypocritical” and “will own the resulting economic damage.”

With Pritzker aides telling the Capitol Fax newsletter that Bryant is distorting many facts, and also tossed out threats implying that Pritzker’s personal safety would be placed at risk because of all of this.

WITH BRYANT SUPPOSEDLY telling the governor “I love my people, but they’re crazy.” Crazy enough to do bodily harm to our state’s chief executive? That’s more of an indictment against them than their willingness to get all worked up over the music of Confederate Railroad.

Personally, it makes me think the Taste of Chicago is a much more sane event than either of the state fairs – even though I’ve never thought of any of these events as THE place to go for top-line entertainment.

The most rational event of all -- regardless of the oversized turkey legs

I’m inclined to think the state fair in Springfield is particularly weak in that it usually features musical acts whose artistic peak occurred some two decades ago. In that regard, the idea that Snoop Dogg is reduced to playing in Springfield somehow seems fitting.

While I find it ironic any band would take the “Confederate Railroad” imagery for their own identity – since anyone who really knows their history would understand that one of the Southern states’ biggest weaknesses in trying to become an independent nation was their system of trains to ship people and goods from place to place. It stunk!

  -30-

It’s an urban/rural race to the top of the pay scale for minimum-wage workers

I was amused to learn that the City Council will likely be considering a measure that would boost the minimum wage for workers at Chicago-based companies.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed off on $15 by 2025; will we see demand for $15 by 2021?

The measure in question by 4^th Ward Alderman Sophia King wants to see the minimum wage – currently $13 an hour – rise up to $15 by the year 2021.

WHAT’S THE BIG deal? Illinois law already calls for increases in the minimum wage, with the General Assembly just this year passing a bill that boosts the minimum pay to that $15 hourly rate by the year 2025.

If the city does nothing, that $15 rate eventually will be achieved. It will apply to employees of Chicago-based companies just as much as those of companies based elsewhere in the state.

Yet King argues that the city needs to have a higher pay scale, so to speak, than other parts of Illinois, because the city has a higher cost of living than other parts of the state.

It’s important, King argues, that Chicago reach the $15 hourly rate for adults stuck working in menial jobs before everyone else in the state. Thereby making it a race to the top of the scale between those working in Chicago and those working elsewhere – which usually is more a matter of where one happens to live.

NOW I’LL ADMIT that in some aspects, urban life carries a higher price tag.

Although I also know of people who insist that suburban life is more expensive. Often these are the people who live their lives in parts of the city that those with more significant incomes can choose to avoid living in.

They say that a move to the suburbs would wind up being too costly.

More often than not, they’re likely to be the individuals who most likely are forced to eke out an existence on an income based on a minimum-wage job – often doing some sort of scut-work that those of us with opportunities can avoid having to do.

KING: Pushing for minimum wage raise for Chgo?

SO IS IT really the case that a Chicago worker needs a higher minimum-wage pay rate than someone elsewhere in Illinois? It doesn’t really matter how low a cost-of-living rate is in a community.

Truth be told, a minimum wage isn’t going to stretch that far. Even at a $15 hourly rate, one is not going to “live like a king” if they’re stuck laboring at a job that many people would associate with a teenager who’s never had a job before in their lives.

Who, by the way, would not be impacted by these increases in minimum-wage rates. Companies will still be able to pay those workers less -- $4.25 an hour, if under 20.

Which makes me wonder if an increase in the minimum wage rate (an issue that is popular amongst a certain type of person with activist mentality) will only result in more teenagers getting hired.

WE’LL GO BACK to walking into a fast-food franchise and seeing pimply-faced teens trying to earn spending money, rather than a middle-aged person whose job skills are such that they have few other options in life.

I do realize labor is labor. A job is a job – particularly since there have been points in my own work life that I did jobs whose only real purpose was to bring in a paycheck, no matter how minimal. There was nothing noble about the work – other than it brought in an honest income that enabled some bills to be paid.

Will minimum wage fight shift to City Hall?

But I wonder what happens come the mid-2020s when Illinois’ minimum wage rate reaches $15 – some four years after Chicago. Will city-based workers wind up demanding yet another raise in their rates?

Will we become too accustomed to city-based people in menial jobs having to be paid just a tad extra than those elsewhere doing identical work, leading to the urban-rural brawl of the future!

  -30-

Are secessionists (of sort) on the rise in Illinois? Or just anti-Chi trash-talk!

It’s one of those perennial political ideas that bop about from time to time amongst the denizens of Springpatch – separate the rural parts of Illinois from Chicago.

Would this be state of Chicago symbol?

Or as these people tend to prefer thinking about it – kick Chicago out of Illinois and onto its keister. Let the “Second City” become the 51^st state of our nation.

THE IDEA ISN’T new. It seems there’s always a bill pondering the concept of separation of the Land of Lincoln. The Washington Post reported this week about the latest effort – which actually has eight state representatives willing to put their names on the measure as co-sponsors.

Not that anybody seriously thinks Illinois is on the verge of separation. Even one of those sponsors – state Rep. Tony McCombie, R-Savanna – admits this is more about the symbolism of separation.

“This is a political bill. As the political arm of the Illinois House Republicans, it is my responsibility to remind Chicago that there is more to Illinois than Chicago,” she told the Capitol Fax newsletter.

As though the roughly 2.6 million people who live in the city proper will quake in their pants at the thought of a city just over 3,000 people sitting in cultural isolation along the Mississippi River across from Iowa doesn’t want to be associated with Chicago.

TO BE HONEST, I suspect most Chicagoans have never heard of Savanna, and probably will mistake it for Savannah, the city in Georgia.

Which is why I honestly believe that if there really was a move underfoot to split up the 12.73 million residents of Illinois into separate states, it would be more in the form of rural Illinois trying to split off into its own region. Or more likely, Chicago deciding that it no longer wants to be associated with the Land of Lincoln.

In reality, nobody’s about to split. Nobody’s going nowhere. This is one of those maneuvers that would provide no real benefit – other than allowing political people to spew all sorts of trash talk!

McCOMBIE: Should we respond to her message?

For one thing, it would turn out to be ridiculously hard to determine exactly where the border ought to be.

DO WE LITERALLY turn 119^th Street to the south (with portions of the border jutting as far out as 138^th Street) into the new Chicago/Illinois state line – something similar along the lines of 106^th Street and State Line Road now being the dividing line between Illinois and Indiana in Chicago.

Would it become the State of Cook, with Chicago as its state capitol? We’d have to wind up picking ourselves a governor. Just envision Rahm Emanuel making a political comeback as governor of the state newly-created by ideologue politicos trying to do so as some sort of political punishment.

“Cook Gov. Rahm Emanuel,” presiding over the Chicago mayor and the other 128 municipalities that comprise the county that makes up almost half of the Illinois population as things currently stand. It almost seems appropo.

Or would the reality of things remain in place, and all the people so eager to kick out Chicago wind up getting a shock of a lifetime in learning that the five surrounding counties (DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will) would realize they have more in common with a state of Chicago than they ever would with a state of rural Illinois.

WHICH WOULD MAKE the newly created state one that comprises about two-thirds of the existing Illinois. At roughly 8 million, the new state of Chicago/Cook/collar counties would be bigger than Indiana (roughly 6.67 million people who see no shame in calling themselves Hoosiers).

Which 'state' able to claim favorite son Lincoln

While the remaining state of Rural Illinois would wind up at about 4 million – falling somewhere between Oregon and Oklahoma in population, and lagging behind Kentucky’s 4.47 million people.

Just envision all those people currently of Southern Illinois becoming the place filled with all the bumpkins that denizens of the “Bluegrass State” shudder in fear that they have living to close to their homes.

Rural Illinoisans might not be ready for that level of isolation. Particularly if they come to realize that for many Chicagoans, their contact with “downstate” is if they have a four-year stint attending a college there – where far too many are eager to rush back to “Sweet Home, Chicago” upon graduation.

  -30-

Trump talk of “punishing” U.S. w/ foreigners shows ideologues know little

President Donald Trump’s latest trash-talk of taking all the people trying to come to this country and deliberately sending them to the big cities – particularly those cities that have enacted “sanctuary city” policies that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials and policies – show just how little he and his ideologue backers comprehend reality.

Not just Noo Yawk feels this way

Trump’s rhetoric from late last week further indicated his nonsensical beliefs that these non-Anglo, non-U.S.-born people are the dregs of humanity.

SO HE’S GOING to punish those of us who refuse to go along with his xenophobic-motivated immigration policies by flooding us with foreigners. That’ll show us, he likely thinks!

The problem with such a line of reasoning is that many of those municipalities already are foreigner-friendly, and the existence of those ethnic enclaves within the cities is a significant part of their character.

If anything, they make the municipalities places where upper-scale people might themselves want to locate. Even if they don’t live in the same neighborhoods right next to each other, they give the upper-scale individuals the ability to say they live in varied communities.

Compared to some of those rural places that are so overwhelmingly white and un-ethnic that they appear to be unfriendly to anyone who didn’t actually grow up there – and also often take on such a character that many of their younger, more-motivated residents feel the need to go away to college and find someplace else to live their adult lives.

I DON’T DOUBT that the people living in the rural, white parts of the country would find Trump’s nonsense-talk all the more appealing because it would reinforce their thoughts that they’re the only people who ought to matter.

But if it really happened, it would also further enhance the notion that these rural communities would become further isolated from the masses who are the real tone of our society.

If Trump really were to try to enact his suggestion, he’d be doing so much long-term damage to the areas where the people who like the Age of Trump we’re now in. The harm would be so long-lasting and permanent.

Would plans actually hurt rural Illinois political interests?

Which is why even Trump’s allies are pointing out the flaws of his idea, and are hoping that this is all just another example of Trump Talk – rancid ramblings meant to do nothing more than get the idiotic ideologues all worked up into a rage on the president’s behalf.

PERSONALLY, I’D THINK the idea would be reprehensible to Illinois politicos of the Republican persuasion – because adding to the Chicago population would do little more than further enhance the urban leanings that already work to the detriment of rural Illinois.

As in the one that ensures Illinois’ congressional delegation is 13 Democrats and five Republicans. With the likelihood that the next reapportionment of Congressional districts after 2020 will cost Illinois a seat, you have to wonder if those rural, isolationist-minded people realize that seat likely will come from their portion of the state.

Then again, there’s no accounting for sense when it comes to politicos.

Take the measure now pending in the Illinois General Assembly, where state Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville, wants his colleagues to pass a resolution that urges Congress to break Chicago away from Illinois.

Trump and Davidsmeyer (below) … 

HE TOLD THE State Journal-Register newspaper of Springfield that rural people are losing their chances to make Illinois more like rural Missouri or Indiana because Chicago, by its very nature, is in competition with places like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

I’ll agree that people have a right to live off in isolation, if that’s really all they want out of life, even though I can’t comprehend why they’d want to.

… both don't comprehend consequences

But I definitely don’t think those people have a right to dictate to tell the rest of us we have to live like them.

So if Trump thinks he’s punishing places like Chicago, I’d say we’ll take these newcomers – who would not only boost the city’s population count to our political advantage, it would also give us a slew of newcomers eager to work hard for better lives – unlike those who want to live in isolation and on the decline.

  -30-

The further away from Chicago, the better – that is, if it has to happen at all!

It has become the immigration-related issue that just won’t die, and manages to take on a more intense character of pathos with each evolution it makes in the process.

The old Dwight Correctional Center for women ceased to exist in 2013

No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump’s fantasies of erecting a wall of sorts along the U.S./Mexico border.

THIS IS ABOUT the notion of building detention facilities with which to lock up people awaiting immigration-related offenses that could result in their eventual deportation from this country.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have dreams of using facilities scattered across the nation – including one whose intent would be to hold people found living in the Chicago-area while lacking a valid Visa or legitimate citizenship status.

Currently, people facing immigration violations often get sent off to county jails with which the federal government has contracts with. In our case, many people caught here wind up in the McHenry County Jail to wait while their immigration cases are resolved.

A concept that offends many people because it means that people who haven’t committed a criminal offense (no matter how much the ideologues want to think it ought to be regarded as one) are being locked up with people who HAVE committed crimes and are merely awaiting the day they’re sent off to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections to serve their time.

THE IDEA IS that having these separate detention facilities means we can take the immigration cases out of jail with criminals. But we can still treat the individuals like criminals – which is what the ideologues are really after!

The problem is that people of rationality hate the idea of any kind of facility that is jail-like from being in or near their communities.

Dwight not far enough from Chgo for project

That is why local officials in places like Joliet, Crete and Hopkins Park in Illinois, along with Hobart, Gary and Elkhart County in Indiana, have all turned down the idea – not giving in to the fact that many of these places (particularly Gary, Ind.) could use the economic boost that could be derived from construction of a new facility and the possibility of jobs for people already living there.

This is just not a popular idea, which is why it seems officials are looking for a site further and further away from the heart of Chicago that will say “yes” and accept their plans.

THE BLOOMINGTON PANTAGRAPH is reporting that officials are looking at Dwight (a Livingston County community not far from the interstate connecting Chicago to St. Louis) as a possible site.

Local planning commission officials are considering annexation of a site near down so they can offer it up to federal officials for the plan.

Perhaps people are figuring Dwight is the right kind of place for detention facilities because, for many years, Dwight was the location of the Illinois Corrections Department facility for women found guilty of criminal offenses.

Maybe they also figure that a community with less than 2 percent Latino ethnic composition of its population won’t share the kind of hang-ups that communities up our way have with regards to such facilities.

ALTHOUGH THIS COULD be one of those instances where people surprise us by overcoming whatever hang-ups they may have and wind up doing the right thing.

As much as I like the idea that this ‘detention’ concept for immigration is now solidly outside of the Chicago metropolitan area (most of us only regard Dwight as a train stop between here and Springfield when they’re forced to use Amtrak), it is a concept that would be better off withering away altogether.

This detention center in Tacoma, Wash., could be replicated in Dwight

Because we ought to be trying to figure out ways to make better sense of our federal immigration laws and clean up the bureaucratic mess that we now have.

Instead of building facilities so we can house people with pending cases so we can let them stretch out even longer – before the ideologues try to have their way of deporting everybody from this country who isn’t exactly like themselves.

  -30-

Illicit narcotics sold in rural Illinois, yet locals insist on viewing them as ‘Chi’

I couldn’t help but get a chuckle from reading a downstate newspaper account of how a central Illinois man was found guilty of criminal charges related to his selling of cocaine and heroin to people in and around his hometown.

Of course, the locals want to believe that such substances don’t really exist in their community. Somehow, this has to be some sort of alien presence infecting them. Because there’s no way the locals would ever engage in such actions (either selling narcotics, or using them).

SO NATURALLY, THEY turn to the fallback accusation. Blame Chicago!!!

For as the headline in the Bloomington Pantagraph (of a story originally published by the State Journal-Register of Springfield) told us, “Lincoln man convicted of selling cocaine, heroin he bought in Chicago.”

It seem the man, who is 38, was found guilty last week in Logan County court of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance. Prosecutors claimed during his two-day trial that he made several trips to Chicago (about a three-hour drive up Interstate 55 from his hometown of Lincoln, Ill.), where he bought the drugs.

Then, he’d bring them back to his hometown (about a half-hour’s drive north of Springfield), where he’d sell them from his house. To add to the comical nature of this criminal enterprise, the man lived in a house located two blocks from an elementary school.

WHICH UNLESS YOU believe means that six-year-olds are stopping by his house on their way home from school to satisfy their fixes, could almost be seen as irrelevant.

Although I don’t doubt it feeds into the need of those people who are all too eager to believe that our beloved home city is representative of all that is wrong with and corrupt about our society.

This almost strikes me as being the kind of tidbit that Donald Trump himself would link to in another of his inane, nonsense-style Tweets on Twitter when he feels a need to get back to bashing Chicago.

Of course, Trump would have also felt the need to document that the drugs originated in Mexico, before going to Chicago, before being put into the hands of people who were then providing them to “real” Americans who comprise all that is just and proper about our society.

WHICH IS SUCH a nonsense thought to have – even though I don’t doubt there are situations where that very scenario could have happened.

To me, the sad truth of narcotics use is that there are people in all walks of society who have allowed themselves to become addicted.

Think of it this way, if there wasn’t a need felt by certain types of people, there wouldn’t be a market for those so-called despicable ghetto types from Chicago to be able to sell such product.

Then again, that image I just presented is equally as absurd as the one of so-called real Americans not using such substances to begin with.

THIS KIND OF story presented in such a manner merely feeds off stereotypical images that don’t do anything to truly inform us about the “scourge” that certain illicit substances can have upon us.

As for this particular case, it seems the man in question faces sentencing come February – and could get between six and 30 years for a prison term. With four previous convictions, he is regarded as a “habitual criminal,” which could make a sentence near the high end of the range likely.

Which as far as I’m concerned merely means crime and illicit behavior is capable of occurring just about everywhere.

And for all I know, when this man eventually winds up being sent to prison, his fellow inmates who happen to hail from Chicago will probably view this guy as an example of the kind of riff-raff they’ll be exposed to that will be a part of their punishment!

  -30-

Illinois gave us a low-key Bicentennial

Illinois officially turns 200 years old Monday, and there will be a celebration.

In fact, there have been activities taking place during the past year leading up to this day that are meant to make us fully aware of what a truly intriguing history our state has experienced during those two centuries of existence.

YET I WOULDN’T be the least bit shocked to learn that most of you weren’t the least bit aware of that – or of the activities that will take place at Navy Pier in the name of giving Illinois a proper birthday celebration Monday night.

For perhaps it is the result of the fact that Illinois isn’t exactly the most-unified of states. We’re certainly not Texas, with a strong self-awareness of who we are. Those of us from Illinois most often identify with the particular region of the state that we come from, rather than the notion of Illinois as a whole.

I suspect that has inhibited any true appreciation of Illinois’ existence through all those years. Too many of us probably wonder why any attention is being paid to the rest of Illinois, and not just our home region.

I’m sure I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. I’m not only Chicago-born, I’m specifically of the South Side (the South Chicago neighborhood, to be exact). I’m just as likely to think of a West Side neighborhood as alien turf as much as something in Southern Illinois.

Bicentennial celebration location historic in its own right

WHILE SOMEONE FROM central Illinois, I’m sure, thinks all of us are alien to his/her experience of what our state is all about.

Personally, I’m inclined to think the significance of Illinois’ existence is the way it has managed to incorporate all these different experiences into a single way of life. Almost as though what makes Illinois unique is that we have figured out a way to incorporate a bit of everybody into our state existence.

From an urban Chicago experience to parts of the state that aren’t too different from Appalachia – and to parts of central Illinois that actually give us those corn fields that too many people think are the entirety of the rural Midwest.

A long-gone part of what made Chicago and Illinois so significant

Then, there’s always the land of Forgottonia – as in the rural western part of the state that got that label as almost a joke of just how isolated it is from the rest of us.

THIS IS THE experience that will be in display Monday night at Navy Pier – where the program will try to give us a taste of bipartisanship (if such a thing can actually exist in Illinois these days). Both Gov. Bruce Rauner and Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker are expected to be on hand for the festivities.

Unless someone decides to have a political hissy bit and not show up – which always is a possibility.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon (which got its beginnings as just a band on the local music scene in Champaign) and bluesman Buddy Guy all will be amongst the performers.

We’ll even get acknowledgement of the musical “Hamilton” including Chicago as being amongst the places where it is being performed, and a historic program narrated by Bill Kurtis – whose deep voice is to a certain generation the sound of a quintessential Chicago newsman (unless you’re of the type who was watching Fahey Flynn) instead.

AND SATURDAY NIGHT Live, of sorts, will be included, what with George Wendt and Robert Smigel giving us a riff off their old “Superfans” sketches. Too bad that Mike Ditka himself couldn’t be on hand, what with him still recovering from a recent heart attack.

As for edibles, it should be noted there will be a 1,000-pound birthday cake from Eli’s – the place that many of us think is the ultimate for cheesecake.

Which could lead to questions about why we can’t have deep-dish pizzas – which some like to think is the ultimate local food item. Yet I can already see the problem with its’ inclusion.

We’d get into a serious quarrel over whether or not thin crust is truly more representative of Illinois, and whether it should be cut into slices or squares – a debate that likely will linger on to Illinois’ tricentennial some 100 years from now.

  -30-

New governor to live in Springfield, while family remains in Chicago

Excuse me for thinking it a non-issue in terms of recent reports that Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker says he intends to live in the Illinois capital city while serving in office.

PRITZKER: Moving to Springfield

The state does, after all, provide an official residence for the governor – the Executive Mansion, located one block away from the Capitol building in Springfield.

IN FACT, THE state in recent years performed significant renovations on the governor’s mansion, with some people going so far as to point out rather sarcastically that soon-to-be former Gov. Bruce Rauner kicked in some of his own money for the project, just to improve a house for his successor.

As though that makes the current governor the ultimate sucker!

But Pritzker says he’ll move to Springfield, although he admits his wife and two sons will remain in Chicago – they’re still in school and he doesn’t want to disrupt their lives, he says. Besides, the mansion is actually a series of formal ballrooms, with a private quarters on the top floor. Basically, it’s an over-glorified apartment.

Which is a fact I’m sure will manage to offend many of the people whom Pritzker was probably hoping to pacify with his residential announcement. Because there are people who are going to think anything short of the entire Pritzker family loading up the moving van to haul their belongings to Springfield is nothing more than a snub of the Illinois capital.

A Lincoln Park resident while governor

IT IS ONE of the laughable issues I recall from my days as a Springfield-based correspondent – downstate people convinced that everything had to be based downstate, and who resented those state agencies that maintained significant Chicago presences.

These are the people who were bothered by former Govs. James Thompson living with his wife and kid in a Lincoln Park neighborhood mansion, Rod Blagojevich eventually trying to run the entire state from a private office he maintained in his Ravenswood Manor neighborhood home, and Pat Quinn only occasionally staying in the mansion when not at home in the Austin neighborhood.

He rarely left Ravenswood Manor

Of course, even Jim Edgar wound up having a home in the Springfield suburbs (the “log house,” a home done up in a log cabin motif), while also maintaining an apartment in downtown Chicago for those days when his work brought him to the city.

If anything, George Ryan may have been the recent governor who made the best effort to get around the state – living in a Chicago apartment, the mansion in Springfield and spending weekends at his family home in Kankakee.

A West Sider (Austin neighborhood)

MEANING HE’D MAKE a complete circle around Illinois every single week!

As for Pritzker, he’ll use the mansion as a job-related residence, although we probably should expect he’ll be making many back-and-forth trips between Chicago and Springfield.

Which will bother those who want to think Illinois centers around Springfield – even though I’d argue the realities of the modern world mean we probably should have governors who are mobile and traveling about the state. The idea that he’s supposed to sit behind a desk inside the Capitol and never leave Springfield would be evidence of a governor not doing his job.

RAUNER: Helped renovate the mansion

Just as it can be argued that having a governor like Blagojevich who would have preferred never to have left his house was evidence alone that the job was not being done properly back in his gubernatorial era.

WHAT AMAZES ME is that some people will be willing to make an issue of all this – either that the governor never spends time in Springfield, or else is there far too often and neglecting the rest of the state’s needs.

RYAN: Actually lived around Ill.

You’d think with all the issues, financial and social, that confront Illinois government these days, there’d be far more important things for people to concern them about.

But then again, some people will want to find something to gripe about – no matter what.

Just as they’ll want to move along to the other statewide constitutional officers, who are required by law to maintain a residence in Springfield – even though the state makes no provision for their own housing. Just think how they’d moan if the state budget also included provisions for, say, an Illinois attorney general mansion?

  -30-

Could partisan political “trade-off” be detrimental to Illinois’ future as state?

Does Bost's congressional victory ...

Some might wonder how President Donald Trump can be delusional enough to think his political interests succeeded on Election Day. Yet if one looks at the political maps in a certain way, it becomes apparent.

For it would seem the parts of Illinois that were already Republican are now moreso.

THOSE AREAS MIGHT well be the parts of the state that lie outside the Chicago metropolitan area. But those are often areas that think of themselves as an entity to their own.

… console Republicans for Roskam's loss?

Which means I’m not surprised many of those people are feeling thankful they have so thoroughly chased Democratic Party interests out of their portion of the state. They may think they now have domination of the only portions of Illinois that matter.

Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn a similar sentiment exists within the Chicago area that isn’t all too concerned about these political losses, because they managed to take portions of the outer suburbs that oft were represented by Republicans in the past, but have now swung over to the Dems. Heck, Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider couldn't even win re-election to his post on the Cook County Board!

The bottom line is that Illinois’ congressional delegation come January will consist of 13 Democrats and only 5 Republicans – a two-seat gain for “da Dems.”

Are Underwood and Casten (below) … 

RANDY HULTGREN AND Peter Roskam will be gone, replaced by Lauren Underwood and Sean Casten. Throughout levels of government, the Republican Party became irrelevant throughout the Chicago-area.

Yet for those anxious to wear the Republican-tinged glasses to view things, Tuesday was the night that Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., fought off Democrat Brendan Kelly and Rep. Rodney Davis beat Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigan.

Albeit the latter was by a narrow voter margin of 50.51 percent to 49.49 percent.

But Davis is a member of Congress from the Champaign-area representing a swath of central Illinois, while Bost is from around Carbondale and is the lone representative on Capitol Hill of that region of Southern Illinois that thinks of itself as “Egypt.”

… gain, or losses, for Illinois?

THE FACT THAT Roskam and Hultgren will be gone? I’m sure the ideologues will think it was more important to keep Davis and Bost.

Heck, let’s note that when President Donald Trump felt inclined to come to Illinois to campaign on behalf of Republicans in general, he went to Bost’s district for a political “fly-in” rally. The president himself said earlier this week that Roskam’s defeat was because the two-decade political incumbent “didn’t want the embrace” of presidential support.

Although I suspect if Roskam had actively touted himself as a “Trump Man,” he would have had his political clock cleaned by an even bigger margin than the 52.84 percent to 47.16 percent tally he actually lost by.

What caught my eye in looking at the congressional district map for Illinois is that there is one point right down the middle of the state where one could go straight through from the Wisconsin border all the way to where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge (a.k.a., Cairo) and never set foot in a Democratic-represented area.

THE SAME WOULD apply if you traveled from the east edge of Illinois around Danville to the far west around Quincy. Nothing but political “red” on the map.

Too easy for Illinoisans to ignore other party

You’d be passing in between the Chicago and Quad-Cities areas, and also skipping over the Illinois portions of the St. Louis area – which, if you think about it, are the portions of Illinois that comprise nearly three-quarters of the state’s population.

Which is how Democrats were able to gain Illinois House seats in suburban portions of Illinois to once-again have a 60 percent “veto-proof” supermajority, while allowing Republicans to feel like they still kept control of the rural parts of the state. We in Illinois may come out of this year’s election cycle thinking our region prevailed, even though we’re progressing to the point of becoming two separate regions. 

Let’s hope Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker wasn’t just paying lip service when he said this week Chicago will “have no more special a role” than other Illinois cities, because having us work together as a state is how we’ll be capable of accomplishing anything of significance in the future for all our benefit.

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EXTRA: How many chances does Gov. Rauner need to say Madigan is corrupt?

Listening to Gov. Bruce Rauner say this week he wants there to be a dozen formal debates between now and Election Day reminds me of the 1998 election cycle.

Pritzker only wants three

Specifically, the portion of the cycle in which Democrats had their candidates fight it out for who would get to be the gubernatorial nominee who would ultimately take on Republican George Ryan.

THAT ELECTION CYCLE ultimately saw Southern Illinois favorite son candidate Glenn Poshard use his regional base to beat up on urban candidates John Schmidt, Roland Burris and Jim Burns. It also was one in which there were many debates.

It seems the candidates were traveling all over the state, making appearances and trying to make the locals feel like they were privileged to be in the presence of the gubernatorial aspirants.

Sounds great? Not really.

What I remember of that election cycle was that they became less about speaking to the would-be voters, and more about giving every broadcast organization involved in sponsoring an event a chance to pretend that THEIR debate was the ONLY debate that mattered.

Rauner must really want to say "Madigan evil"

WHILE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE wound up making these events all sound so repetitive of each other.

Largely because they were. Candidates mostly ignored the questions they were asked and used their time to issue rebuttals to whatever negative pot-shots were made against them. I can remember sitting through those events and feeling incredibly uninformed.

I was always thankful that election officials in the future went back to thinking in terms of three as the number of debates that were needed prior to an Election Day. Even though I do believe there is benefit to a structured-format event in which the candidates confront each other.

McCann will take 12 too

So to hear Rauner say he wants a dozen debates fills me with dread. How many times do we need to hear the man spew insipid claims of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s corruption? How many times do we need to hear rhetorical links of Madigan’s support for billionaire J.B. Pritzker’s candidacy?

THREE WILL PROBABLY be more than enough. Although I expect Rauner will insist on complaining he’s not being given ample times to screech “Dump Madigan!!!” to prospective voters.

If anything, Rauner is merely confirming my own political hypothesis – which is that the first candidate in any election cycle to complain about the number of debates is the loser.

So I’m inclined to be sympathetic to the Pritzker camp which has suggested three debates – although I’ll admit Pritzker is playing some hard-core politicking of his own in picking where they will be held, and pretty much making it a “take it or leave it” choice for Rauner to accept.

Two of the debates would be held in Chicago, with one to be co-sponsored by the Telemundo Spanish-language television affiliate along with the Chicago Urban League. Where I’m sure we’ll get tons of questions intended to remind us that Rauner is just a rich white guy who doesn’t get it. Along with reminders of all the vetoes Rauner made last week on measures related to immigration.

AS FOR THE one debate intended outside of metro Chicago, it would be set for Quincy, the city along the Mississippi River with a veterans’ home that has been the focus of instances of veterans who died from Legionaires’ disease. It’s probably the one place in rural Illinois where Rauner does NOT want to set foot.

Multiple debates didn't help Poshard win

And as for the traditional debate held by the League of Women Voters, that’s a group most likely not interested in cheap political pandering by any candidate.

I do find it intriguing that Conservative Party candidate Sam McCann is accepting Rauner’s offer of 12 debates. But that’s because he needs as much attention and opportunity as possible to let voters know he exists if he’s to be at all irrelevant come Nov. 6.

Which means it’s really sad that Rauner, an incumbent with significant personal wealth (he essentially bought the post in the 2014 election cycle) feels he’s just as desperate. All the more reason many voters have already shifted their focus to the mayoral election cycle of 2019.

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