Tribune Endorses Rauner

The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Bruce Rauner, Republican challenger for the office of governor of Illinois:

You don’t see it in satellite photos, or from the Mississippi River gazing east. But Illinois has shrunk. If you’ve lived here for a while, you sense it: A place that for two centuries has been a muscular engine — a whole state of big shoulders, employed and building economic productivity — has petered toward the bottom of one national ranking after another. No garrulous political sweet talk can convince you that, on its present trajectory, desultory Illinois will, or even can, revive the growth that made it great.

The result is the sorry Illinois litany that troubles and embarrasses us all: Some $200 billion in taxpayers’ public debts. Including $100 billion in unfunded pension obligations. Even now, more billions in unpaid bills. Nation’s weakest public retirement system. Nation’s worst credit rating. And, five long years after the June 2009 end of the Great Recession, one of the worst job creation records in America.

Gov. Pat Quinn has had six years to lead the people of Illinois out of this morass. He has tried. He stalled legislators’ pay until they passed state retirement reforms. He signed several pension fixes into law. He closed several costly state facilities.

But despite Quinn’s efforts, the nearly 13 million citizens of this state remain mired in a slow-mo economy that grows too few jobs — an intolerable status quo unlike the robust Illinois they remember.

At this point Rauner is garnering the most newspaper endorsements. To date Gov. Quinn’s re-election campaign strategy appears to be class warfare: “But Rauner is rich!” What I think Quinn needs to do is to energize Cook County voters. I don’t honestly see how he’ll be re-elected with a 20% turnout or lower in Cook County. Chicago’s turnout for the primaries was just 16%.