(dramatic music) - Welcome to Capitol View, where we discuss the latest in state government and politics.
I'm Hannah Meisel with NPR Illinois.
Joining us this week is Kent Redfield, Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield.
Welcome back, Kent.
- Good to be here.
- And here for the first time is Mike Miletich, State House Bureau Chief for Gray TV.
Welcome, Mike.
- Excited to be here, Hannah.
Thank you.
- Well, this week we finally saw the official announcement of Richard Irvin, the mayor of Illinois' second largest city, Aurora, the first black mayor of that city, announced for governor.
We've been talking for weeks.
It's been expected.
We've been talking about this kind of interesting slate that a group of moderate Republican political operatives, the folks who were kind of behind Bruce Rauner 2014, Mark Kirk before that, folks who have a vested interest in trying to keep Illinois Republicans where they've been historically and not lose more power within the State House.
But Mike, tell us a little bit about this slate.
What else do we know about it at this point?
- I think the biggest thing that's stood out to people, obviously this is a long time coming.
It was rumored the fact that Richard Irvin would be the candidate for this slate that's being funded, pretty much considerably funded by one of the richest people, the richest man in the state of Illinois, and of course that's Ken Griffin.
It's funny though, because a lot of people are looking at the past history here and seeing that, obviously, there's some democratic decisions that were made, and many people consider Richard Irvin to be a Democrat.
So he's already facing a lot of questions about who he is as a person.
He's coming out really with strong words in some of his announcement video.
I mean, he's saying that he is a police supporter and all lives matter when he previously was black lives matter when he was running for mayor of Aurora.
But the other thing to note is that his running mate is Avery Bourne from downstate Illinois, Morrisonville, and clearly, they had strong matching there.
So they'd be sure to look at the suburbs for Richard's case and downstate, because I think he's going to need a lot of help to gain some traction down here near Springfield.
I don't know if people are willing to be willing to jump on a train for someone that may lean to the right to the left a little bit like Bruce Rauner did back in the day.
- Yeah, and Kent, I mean, you've been around Illinois politics for a long time.
Have we seen something similar to this before?
I'm racking my brain, and really the only slate I can kind of think of, if you could even call it that, is the LaRouches.
I mean, this is obviously not that, but has this been done before?
And also, interesting to note that it's not a full slate of statewide candidates.
They could not get someone to run for US Senate against Tammy Duckworth.
- No, this is pretty unprecedented.
I mean, historically, plus political parties, the Republican party is kind of a statewide organization and the Democratic party as kind of an adjunct of the Cook County Democratic organization slated candidates and back those slates.
In this situation, you have a Republic state, Republican party, you've got a state Republican chairman, Don Tracy, and yet, you basically have political operatives associated with former governor Ryan and the former money man for Republican politics, at least half of the team of the money man for Republican politics for the last eight years coming out with, announcing a slate of candidates.
And so, it speaks to the dependence of the Republican party on Ken Griffin's financing because they're broke, and also, to kind of the sad state of the Republican party as an organization, as an entity, and we can overstate how much the democratic party is kind of this unified well-functioning machine and stuff, but it is pretty stark in terms of the contrast.
And it's an interesting set of people that they put forward to say the least.
We should, just to quickly note, we're talking about crime and corruption and fiscal responsibility is kind of the big theme.
And so, we've got a former US attorney and state's attorney who's been slated to be the Secretary of State candidate, which in my less charitable moments, I would characterize as kind of a file clerk who also was in charge of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
And then for the Attorney General, which is really the only office that you could talk about being crime fighting anti-corruption, we have a person who is basically an international trade attorney, has been an advisor to governors.
And so, it's interesting collection of people, and all we've seen so far from our press releases and the press releases from the slate are all basically cheerleading for Richard Irvin.
So there's a lot of blanks to be filled in here.
- Yeah, Mike, tell us a little bit more about, you mentioned obviously Avery Bourne who's a kind of millennial Republican wunderkind who has been a rising star in the party as Richard Erin's running mate, but tell us more about who is on the slate.
- Well, one of the interesting parts, you also have a younger lawmaker that will be running against Michael Frerichs, and that's Tom Demmer.
For people that don't know, he's been rising up in leadership in the House GOP caucus.
And it's interesting to note that he was considering a run as well for Secretary of State and looking at other ways that he could possibly move into a higher role.
You look at the lawmakers that are leaving their spots, and this could certainly be interesting because what if they end up in a position where this slate doesn't all go across and win in the primary?
I mean, they lose their seat and they're relatively young, do they come back to politics down the road?
It's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens there and we're also looking at the race for comptroller against Susana Mendoza.
It's interesting where you see someone that's coming out right off the bat talking about Mike Madigan and looking at investigations that the comtroller's office has no control over it.
It definitely seems that, in the messaging that's been put out there, which mind you, this has only been press releases, none of the slate has talked to reporters at this point, everything is catering to Mike Madigan, the machine.
We're going to be tough on crime and address corruption in Springfield, but there's been no discussion of actual changes that will happen.
And that it's not everything that's coming from the Republicans.
The Democrats are also saying that this is the Rauner redo, and they're very much going with old talking points.
So I'm curious to see what'll happen in the next few weeks here.
- Yeah, Kent, I think I asked this question on the program last week for our guests, but are we just doomed to watch the same race and flights play out again and again and again?
Is Madigan versus Bruce Rauner, you know, it was a very long two year budget impasse and it was very long four years with them.
I mean, I guess five, you could say with a campaign in 2014, but I mean, are we just doomed to see this whole fight play out again and again?
This is the defining thing?
- Well, I think, you know, from the Democrats, I mean, you've already seen Pritzker's commercials.
I mean, he's on the air.
He's running about fiscal responsibility, about change, about the state going forward and progress.
And so, they're gonna say Mike who, you know?
That's old news and why would you ever wanna go back?
I mean, we're back to Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy Carter, you know?
It's morning in America.
Why would we ever want to return to those terrible four years that we suffered through under substitute loose rounder for Jimmy Carter, and we've got basically the same theme, so.
The Democrats are gonna talk about all of the good things that they've done in terms of keeping people alive, balancing budgets, and just, this is all noise in terms of the Republicans trying to find a theme.
And, now there's no control over the pandemic.
So that may be back and in a vengeance, who knows?
The Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade.
The pro choice people in Illinois, those organizations, Personal PAC are heavy hitters in spending on candidates.
They've got a ton of money that they are gonna roll out.
And so, and the other thing is, one part of the imbalance is that the Republicans really don't have the kind of manufacturing money, and the old base that they used to have within, like the medical association, you know?
Now it's all hospitals and we've got international trade, and the Democrats have a very stable base of union money.
Trade unions, service workers, state employees.
So the Republicans have a real problem if they don't have a Bruce Rauner.
Pritzker for the Democrats is, he's a luxury.
He does his own thing in terms of funding the governor's race, and then they can focus on legislative races.
So there's no talk in all of this about how we're gonna resurrect the Republican party within the Illinois general assembly, so.
Yeah, it does have some familiarity.
The Democrats are gonna try and say that we don't want it tuned to an oldie station anymore.
Let's get some new wave kinds of themes going on here.
- As long as we're extending this eighties metaphor.
Yeah, let's do that.
But Mike, I mean, Richard Irvin and the slate candidates is not the only Republicans in the game.
But as Kent alluded to you, I mean, in comparison, we saw the most recent quarterly reports filed this week, and the rest of the Republicans truly do not have that much money.
Tell us a little bit about what everyone has.
- Yeah, right now it's a stark comparison to see the amount of money that each campaign has.
But keep in mind, some of these candidates that were out there for a while, talking Senator Darren Bailey, Jesse Sullivan, are saying that they'll be able to win without the support of these large Republican operatives.
Darren Bailey, in his report, we saw made some very interesting decisions, spending a lot more recently than some may expect.
And it's making him look as if he's not structurally sound in terms of budgeting.
He came in and a negative, and it's interesting when you also look at the amount that Jesse Sullivan has because he had a decent amount of donations going in.
I mean, you're talking money coming in from California, people that he knew previously when he was younger.
And that still has him sitting at around the $11,000 that had, and people are curious to see how long that could stick around because, is he going to be able to move forward?
He doesn't have a running mate at this point.
And clearly, you're going to have to have the running mate in order to move petitions and everything.
Is that money going to go somewhere else at this point?
And you're also looking at former Senator Paul Schimpf and his campaign kind of on the lower end, is he really going to step up with campaign fundraising?
Important to note that for the Bailey campaign, they're really strong with small donations from supporters in terms of comparison to what's happening with large donors with other campaigns.
And Gary Rabine has all personal donations to his campaign, but is that really going to stick well?
He's been very silent except for early on after he announced his campaign.
- Yeah, I mean, Kent, you talked about the Ken Griffin money.
He reportedly has vowed to spend upwards of $300 million in this cycle.
Of course, not all of that will necessarily be going to the Irvin slate, but you know, it's money to match what governor Pritzker himself, a billionaire, can and has dropped.
I mean, Friday night, last Friday night, the governor, it was reported he dropped 90 million more dollars into his campaign fund.
So clearly, you know, this is gonna be another like grossly expensive race.
We should also mention that Ken Griffin, he funded a lot of the Stop the Graduated Income Tax amendment campaign that was successful.
But there is another power player here in Illinois politics, and it's Richard Uihlein, and he, he's someone who is definitely more of an ideologue than Ken Griffin, and his political donations have reflected that.
For example, in 2018, after Bruce Rauner signed an abortion bill into law, which surprised a whole lot of Republicans and really ticked them off, you know, Dick Uihlein, he funded Jeanne Ives primary to the right of Bruce Rauner, one that was almost successful.
But I mean, do you think that he is gonna step in here and try to counter it and try to give his money strategically to someone who is more ideologically to the right, or do you think he's gonna sit this one out?
What do you think?
- I view Uihlein as being more calculating in terms of what's my best return on my money?
This is definitely personal with Griffin.
I mean, Griffin was, you know, he was offended that Pritzker had somehow linked him to Bruce Rauner destroying the social service network within the state of Illinois.
So it's very personal with Griffin, and he's plus more than $20 billion.
He can spend wherever he wants.
Uihlein has more money than Pritzker, I believe, but he is much more calculating.
I mean, once you had a Pritzker elected and the Republicans not having their act together, he had spent $10 million backing Liberty principal's backing Republican candidates to a legislature two cycles in a row.
He spent $10 million.
Last cycle, he pulled the plug on it.
And he's had no money in the game for at least two years.
So, his name has come up as backing Republican candidate Missouri governor, his name has come up with the DeSantis campaign down in California.
I really don't expect Uihlein to get involved because he's interested in what are my longterm successes?
You know?
I'm not sure Griffin, he doesn't want people to raise his taxes, and he'd like to get back at Pritzker, but I don't know that he wants to be king of Illinois politics.
And so, I don't expect Uihlein to engage.
And just to quickly, in terms of the kind of money the Republicans have, Sullivan probably had the biggest fundraising, $11 million.
Pritzker spent $170 million getting elected governor.
Rauner spent $60 million trying to stay governor.
You know, that's 220, 30 million dollars.
And so, when people are saying, you know, I've got $1 million, I've got $11 million, you can't run a statewide campaign that kind of money.
Yeah, you know?
You could spend $500 million on the governor's race and probably not move the needle any more than spending $250 million on the race, but that's not gonna stop, Griffin will spend whatever he wants to spend and Pritzker will match him.
And so, that's the reality of Illinois politics right now.
- Honestly, it begs the question though, like, isn't there a limit for how much money is even practical, because I mean, there's only so much TV time that you can buy, you know?
- No, no.
- No?
- Absolutely.
You can't, you know, it's not like, those last eight mailers I got, I was on the fence, but this one really nailed it, you know?
And so, voters, don't don't think that way.
The problem is, what the pros will tell you, half the money on any campaign is wasted.
We just don't know which half.
And so, nobody wants to not spend that extra little nickel that might've made the difference.
It's gonna be an interesting year.
- I guess, at least their job creators.
Hey, Mike, one of the big themes, as you guys pointed out earlier, is gonna be crime.
Fighting crime.
We have definitely seen an uptake in violent crime and also retail theft, organized retail theft during the pandemic.
And, you know, it's, obviously Republicans, this is a message that they're coalescing around, but Democrats too.
I mean, we live in the same areas.
It's not like the divide is geographically everywhere.
In lots of areas, people coexist, and it is a problem that all of us live with.
But you know, it's something that House Speaker Chris Welch in a round of interviews he did last week, he acknowledged that it is an issue and that he wants to see an anti-crime package of legislation this year.
How do you think though, how does he have to tow the line between doing that, but also then defending criminal justice stuff that the Black Caucus passed last year, you know, historic things.
Which by the way, some things have not even gone into effect yet, although those on the right have made it a message of, yeah, even if these things have not gone into effect, it's the whole demoralizing thing where this is why so many cops are quitting their jobs, et cetera.
So how does he tow this, that line?
- Well, I think it's going to be a very careful tap dance on where you go here.
One of the things that speaker Welch told me is that he wants to make sure that there's more funding in the budget to specifically address the rising violence along with plans to tackle some of that rise in carjackings, and as you mentioned, the organized retail crime that that's been happening so much because people are ordering online.
What you aren't going to see is something that the House Republicans are trying to do, repeal the Safety Act.
And for those that don't know, that was that huge Black Caucus package for criminal justice.
And that's simply not going to happen.
I mean, that of course, as Hannah alluded to, included in that is the changes to police, police reform, that many people said that they were going to leave office.
2023 is when we're going to see some of the changes to cash bail.
And so many people are assuming the fact that the rising crime had to do something with that, but it hasn't even happened at this point.
I think a lot of people are just seeing this and taking it as an opportunity to yell out that everything that happened recently is because of that bill.
But they're definitely going to have some intense conversations.
I will say that the lawmakers that are in charge of the committees to address this said we have to be civil when we talk about this, and Republicans and Democrats need to be heard.
(indistinct) - Yeah, go ahead, Kent.
- No, I just, I expect you will get some legislation that is specific about trying to flesh out risk assessment in terms of eliminating cash bail, and you're going to get a piece of legislation that says here are the things here, are there particular crimes and circumstances under which electronic monitoring would not be appropriate.
And so they'll, you know, and again, these are essentially perception, feel good kinds of things.
Nobody knows exactly how we're going to go about administering the risk assessment that's necessary to make pre-trial confinement involve efficient effective decisions, you know, balancing not locking somebody up for a year who may or may not be guilty versus letting somebody out with an ankle monitor or a very high bail that will go out and commit another crime.
So this takes a lot, this is gonna be difficult to implement and take money and commitment, but it's a perception at this point.
It's not, you know, if people believe they're at risk, that's how they're going to vote.
The reality is not as important as the perception.
- Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, some economists kind of think it's a little bit different, but some economists think that a lot of inflation has to do with people's perceptions.
And, you know, after a certain point, it doesn't matter because when perceptions shape reality, then you have a new reality to contend with.
But I feel like some of that's the same on the criminal justice belt, but hey, we're gonna have to leave it there.
I'd like to thank my guests, Kent Redfield, Mike Miletich.
I'm Hannah Meisel, and we'll catch you again next week on Capitol View.
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