Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel would like Rauner to use his first days in office to raise the state’s minimum wage. During the campaign, Rauner said he would be open to seeing the wage go up if it also were accompanied by business reforms in the state.

Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times that he didn’t quite understand Rauner’s push for “pro-business” policies in conjunction with the minimum wage, and that he thought Rauner should take up the mantle of raising it with or without new business regulations. (Emanuel, of course, is in favor of raising the city’s minimum wage to $13.)

From the Sun-Times:

“My advice [to Rauner] is to understand that people [who] work at the minimum wage, over 50 percent of `em are women. Lion’s share are heads of the household. And if you want to break the cycle of poverty, no child should grow up in a home whose parent is working and be raised in poverty . . . It’s important for Illinois to be on record for increasing the minimum wage to meet the financial demands that are put on working middle-class families.”

Emanuel has another request for his good friend that Rauner has seemed less amenable to: extending the 2011 income tax increase from 3 percent to 5 percent instead of rolling it back to 3.75 percent. The mayor said the state’s extra revenue was needed to help fund Chicago schools.

The Sun-Times Editorial Board itself is next in line for Rauner’s ear during his pre-governor days. The board writes that it would like Rauner to focus on gun control after he takes office–to step up and be a “real leader” to combat violence on Chicago’s “blood-stained streets.” And even though Rauner ran as a pro-gun rights Republican, the Sun-Times said it believes Rauner’s political position makes him the perfect candidate to tackle the issue.

From the Sun-Times editorial page:

But it is precisely because Rauner is a Republican and a staunch defender of legal gun rights — and because he now faces the prospect of finding common ground with a state Legislature controlled by Democrats — that we believe his election offers Illinois the best chance in more than a decade to enact common-sense gun reforms. Rauner should seize the moment, leading the way on enacting bipartisan measures that take guns out of the hands of criminals and thugs, while doing nothing to threaten the rights of some 1.7 million law-abiding gun owners.

The Sun-Times reminds Rauner that many different groups–people who voted for him and who didn’t–want and could benefit from tougher gun control.

Rauner wants to send the message to minorities and the poor in Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods that he is their governor, too. Stepping up and taking the lead on gun sanity sends that message.

Rauner owes his election in part to women voters in Chicago’s collar counties, who as a group favor gun control reform. Rauner must return the favor, and this is how.

Taking action on gun control could also be a way for the governor-elect to find common ground with Democratic legislative leaders in the state so that they can work together on some of Rauner’s other ambitions (such as reframing the state’s budget).

In case he needs some ideas to get started, the editorial board offers a few specific points it said it feels Rauner and the General Assembly should pass into laws:

  • License all gun dealers
  • Require point-of-sale reporting
  • Improve background checks
  • Increase penalties for failing to report stolen guns

Perhaps Rauner is on board. His office told the Sun-Times:

“Bruce supports background checks and measures that keep guns away from criminals and the mentally ill. He looks forward to working with the General Assembly on common-sense proposals that keep our citizens safe while respecting law-abiding citizens.”

The Midwest program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Henry Henderson, also would like a turn to speak to Rauner. He wrote an open letter to the governor-elect, asking him to support clean energy policies for the state. New rules, he said, could serve a double purpose: protect the environment and create new jobs.

Henderson praised Rauner for his stated commitment to protecting the environment and moving Illinois forward to use new kinds of renewable energy. But he also appealed to Rauner’s competitive business mind to urge him to make energy a priority in his new administration to help create jobs and make the state more attractive to new companies.

Henderson outlined three points he would like Rauner to consider:

1. Illinois should invest in all the cost-effective energy efficiency efforts we can find. Right now, 62% of the 100,000 clean energy jobs in Illinois are held by the folks who make our homes and businesses more comfortable and affordable by reducing the energy those buildings consume (and, our resulting energy bills). There are plenty more jobs to be had by strengthening energy efficiency incentives. Those jobs will stay in Illinois, while saving Illinoisans money. A win-win.

 2. Illinois must fix its energy policy. Our Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) needs to be fixed to ensure continued development of new clean energy resources and all the jobs that come with them.

3. Consider multi-state approaches to reduce carbon pollution such as the nine states that belong to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on the east coast of the United States (which has achieved admirable economic growth, emissions reductions and minimal impact to energy bills!). Illinois can be a clean energy exporter.

Behind these three requests are surely the hopes of many other city mayors, newspaper editorial boards and organization heads. Plus, there are 177 state legislators and more than 12 million individual Illinoisans who each have their own to-do lists for Rauner. It’ll be a task fit for a governor to find common ground.

 

NEXT ARTICLE: Crunching the numbers: See how much each vote cost in the Illinois governor’s race

 

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