I omitted a couple of other interesting things about the negative advertising I’m seeing today. Illinois negative advertising now routinely attacks characteristics that describe the Illinois political system itself.
The first example is that her opponents are trying to tie Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton to Mike Madigan who is presently serving a prison term in federal prison on charges of corruption in office. As a reminder Mr. Madigan was the long-term Speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party.
The other interesting thing is Rep. Robin Kelly’s ads complaining about billionaires holding political office.
The former is interesting because given Speaker Madigan’s decades of control over the Illinois Democratic Party and House organization, a very large share of Democratic officeholders inevitably had some political interaction with his organization.. That is what decades of party control means: eventually your organization touches almost every political career in the state.
The latter is interesting because it’s not entirely clear whom Rep. Kelly’s ads are alluding to. She may believe she’s complaining about President Trump but the sitting governor of Illinois is a billionaire, too. Illinois voters have elected two consecutive billionaire governors. Complaining about “billionaires in politics” therefore risks indicting the political choices of Illinois voters themselves. Democrat JB Pritzker was preceded by Republican Bruce Rauner.
I agree with both of those points. That so many Illinois politicians are connected to former Speaker Madigan and that our last two governors have both been billionaires is suggestive of a deep pathology in Illinois politics and a reckoning is long overdue. Illinois has had four governors and literally hundreds of other elected officials imprisoned in the last half century.
Illinois politics contains the seeds of its own indictment. The question is what forces, if any, could produce the reckoning the system seems to require. More likely we will see Illinois politics as usual: complaining about the influence of billionaires, i.e. the other party’s billionaires, and ongoing corruption in office.
