BRENDAN BOND
AUG 29, 2014
Generally Labor Day is the traditional start of the campaign season, but gubernatorial candidates Pat Quinn and Bruce Rauner have been sparring with each other for a few months now. Still, Daily Herald columnist Mike Riopell believes the holiday is an important date in the campaign season.
Riopell says it is a good time to remember just how important of a role labor union members are poised to play in the November election.
Writes Riopell:
That the upcoming Labor Day weekend is the traditional start of the campaign season might be considered a joke by people who have been following Illinois politics, where the campaign for governor seemingly has been boiling since the holiday last year.
No kickoff is needed when the two candidates have been kicking each other for months already.
Monday’s labor holiday, though, is a reminder of the role of politically minded union members in the race.
A recent flier from the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which backs Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, tries to tie his Republican opponent Bruce Rauner to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. A video does the same and quotes Rauner from his appearance at the Daily Herald’s candidate forum during the primary: “They try to say I’m anti-union or anti-worker. Baloney. Who’s anti-worker are the government union bosses.”
Union leaders hope many members’ dislike of Walker will push them to the polls for Quinn on Election Day, counteracting organizers’ earlier bashing of Quinn over his quest to save Illinois money by cutting into public employees’ retirement benefits.
Rauner has his own labor message, working to tie the state’s higher-than-average unemployment rate to Quinn.
“Instead of delivering jobs and quality education, Quinn delivered record tax hikes, high unemployment, massive education cuts and lower take-home pay,” Rauner wrote in an essay that ran Thursday in the Daily Herald.
Is Quinn saying Rauner has the Midas touch?
Let’s go back to the pre-Labor Day sparring between Rauner and Quinn, though. At a luncheon hosted by the Metropolitan Planning Council, Quinn and Rauner took turnstrading debate-style barbs, even though they weren’t on stage with each other.
Chicago Sun-Times reporter Natasha Korecki has more on the comments from the two candidates:
They weren’t side by side, but in a span of an afternoon, Democratic incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican challenger Bruce Rauner graced the same stage and traded debate-style barbs, with Quinn comparing Rauner to King Midas, and Rauner charging Quinn with presiding over a corrupt administration.
In a forum before the Metropolitan Planning Council, Rauner was asked how he would find $6 billion to fill an anticipated budget hole next year.
Rauner spoke of overhauling the tax system with a plan that includes less reliance on income taxes and property taxes and a new tax on services.
“It’s painful, I hate to put new taxes in place but it’s an important, pro-growth, investment policy,” Rauner said. “We shouldn’t tax investment and income, we should tax consumption.”
After his own appearance about an hour later, Quinn pounced on the remark, accusing Rauner of seeking to tax working people while protecting the investment industry, charging that’s how Rauner created his own fortune.
“I hope everyone heard today that a billionaire running as a Republican for governor in Illinois said we should tax consumption of everyday people and not have to pay a tax burden that’s appropriate on investment income,” Quinn said. “We’ve been hearing that all over America over the last decade or so. This crowd that has more money than King Midas wants to shift more of the tax burden onto the everyday people. We can’t have that in Illinois.”
Below are video highlights of the event from the Sun-Times:
Ex-Quinn aide to remain unemployed
News recently emerged that Quinn’s former deputy chief of staff, Sean O’Shea, was leaving the Quinn administration for a private sector job. The timing was curious given the fallout from the Illinois Department of Transportation hiring scandal, but the Quinn administration insisted O’Shea’s departure was not related.
It turns out O’Shea was leaving to become the chief of staff for venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker, but now that’s not happening. Chicago Sun-Times reporter Mitch Dudek has more on the latest twist in the O’Shea tale:
He’s the wandering chief of staff without a staff.
Sean O’Shea is Gov. Pat Quinn’s deputy chief of staff, but he resigned Tuesday amid allegations that dozens of workers had been clouted into positions at the Illinois Department of Transportation — an agency O’Shea was charged with overseeing.
And now comes news that O’Shea had a new job lined up as chief of staff to billionaire venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker, but walked away from that position this week as the IDOT hiring scandal increasingly became a political hot potato and ammo for Quinn’s republican gubernatorial rival Bruce Rauner.
Quinn spokesman Grant Klinzman denied that O’Shea is leaving the administration due to fallout from the IDOT controversy. Klinzman said that O’Shea’s last day at work would be Friday.
Crain’s Chicago Business on Thursday was first to report the news about O’Shea’s job with Pritzker. A Pritzker spokesman confirmed that O’Shea would not be taking the job after all.
Pritzker issued this statement Thursday:
“I met Sean a few months ago through our search process and was impressed that he was universally praised by every reference I spoke with as a man of high integrity with exceptional professional accomplishments. Unfortunately, the kind of political blood-sport that smears a guy like Sean O’Shea is exactly what drives good people away from public service. I wish Sean nothing but the greatest success.”
O’Shea was not immediately available for comment.
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Brendan Bond is a staff writer at Reboot Illinois. He is a graduate of Loyola University, where he majored in journalism. Brendan takes a look each day at the Land of Lincoln Lowdown and it’s often pretty low. He examines the property tax rates that drive Illinoisans insane. You can find Reboot on Facebook and on Twitter @rebootillinois.