March 16--Assorted postelection thoughts:
Forces allied with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner lost three marquee state legislative primaries Tuesday -- two in Chicago, one Downstate -- crushing, at least for now, the GOP dream of fomenting a rebellion in the Democratic ranks to end the nearly nine-month budget standoff in Springfield.
The city races weren't even close.
Allies of the governor poured more than $2.5 million into an effort to prop up Democratic state Rep. Ken Dunkin of Chicago, who had broken with his party on several key votes and taunted Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. But Madigan's allies poured as much or slightly more money into the campaign of challenger Juliana Stratton, who also got the formal backing of President Barack Obama, and Stratton thumped Dunkin by better than a 2-to-1 margin.
By a similar margin, Madigan himself turned back a GOP-supported effort by first-time candidate Jason Gonzales to dislodge him from the Southwest Side district he's served for 33 years.
Both were long shots. But by falling so pathetically short, Team Rauner merely served to underscore and therefore strengthen the power of the opposition.
Arguably worse for Rauner was his loss in a high-profile proxy fight in the Springfield area. There, revenge-minded Raunerites spent more than $3 million trying to defeat two-term incumbent Republican state Sen. Sam McCann, who'd committed the unpardonable sin of casting several meaningless pro-union votes on behalf of his heavily unionized district.
Even though McCann was dogged by accusations that he'd made up or embellished his military service and had misspent campaign funds, he beat challenger Bryce Benton by about 5 percentage points.
Superficially, the takeaway is that, by winning these hand-measuring contests, Madigan demonstrated that it's more dangerous for rank-and-file Democrats to cross him than it is for rank-and-file Republicans to cross the governor, and that his majority is nowhere near splintering.
But certainly any lawmaker of either party who was tempted to cross the aisle on key issues in the budget battle was cowed by the huge donations and the toxic campaigns, win or lose, that both titans supported.
Compromises or concessions, when they come, if they come, will have to come from the top. And in that respect, little has changed to alter the dynamic of paralysis in state government.
I don't envy Kim Foxx. Promising change, she won a jaw-dropping victory of nearly 30 percentage points over incumbent Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. And, barring a huge Republican upset in November, Foxx will take office with unrealistically high expectations at a time when demands for the wise, compassionate, constructive administration of criminal justice will be colliding as noisily as ever with demands for public safety.
Alvarez correctly noted during the campaign that the job of head prosecutor is enormously challenging and highly consequential. If the upward trend in violent crime here continues, Foxx will have very little room for error.
Donald Trump won by losing to home-state Gov. John Kasich in the Ohio Republican presidential primary. Kasich's solid victory gave him just enough hope to stay in the race, meaning that in upcoming primaries and caucuses he's likely to siphon anti-Trump votes from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, currently second behind Trump in the overall contest. This stands to deny Cruz the victories and delegates he needs to survive until the Republican National Convention in July.
My one-word question for voters who overwhelmingly renominated unaccomplished, sketchy incumbent Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown over two qualified opponents: Really?
The best name for this week's presidential contests has been attributed to CNN's Van Jones: Goodbye Rubio Tuesday.
In his fifth political campaign, atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove has finally prevailed. After previous failed bids for local library board, village clerk and, twice, for state representative, Sherman won 60 percent of the vote Tuesday in the Green Party primary in the 5th U.S. House District currently represented by Democrat Mike Quigley of Chicago.
Sherman's platform includes taking "In God We Trust" off of our money and eliminating the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, two propositions that are probably much more popular in today's secular climate than they were in the spring of 1986, when I wrote my first article about one of Sherman's many and often successful crusades.
Quigley can rest easy. Sherman plans to run a positive campaign -- "I can't think of a single negative thing to say about Mike Quigley," he told me Wednesday -- and his base of support, just 149 total votes with 99 percent of precincts reporting, is vanishingly small.
