April 24, 2024
AS CALIFORNIA GOES, SO GOES AMERICA -- OR MAYBE NOT, PLUS FUBAR REIGNS IN SCHOOL BOARD RACES
Bellwethers are utterly obsolete, if not totally absurd. This column is not about doorbells, church bells or Christmas sleigh bells. It’s about spotting political trends. Way back in the 1930s (and that was a bit before I started writing this column), President Franklin Roosevelt’s political strategist James Farley remarked after the 1936 election that “as goes Maine, so goes Vermont.” But consider California, admitted to the Union in 1850. The state is a bellwether because it demonstrates the demographic fluidity of politics, with swings of up to one million from cycle-to-cycle, and an uptick of nearly 2.4 million from Hillary Clinton (2016) to Joe Biden (2020). TINKER, TINKER, MAKES A STINKER: The latest state legislative incarnation of the elected Chicago School Board (CSB) is somewhere between a SNAFU and FUBAR. Those acronyms are WWII military slang for Situation-Normal-All-(Expletive)ed-Up and (Expletive)ed-Up-Beyond-All-Repair. Just be patient. Springfield can be counted on to mess up everything.The CSB race in the 1st Dist. includes Custer, Pierre and Hernandez, but no CTU candidate yet. Attached is a CHART detailing CA presidential results from 1948 to 2020. Full Article...
April 17, 2024
RETROGRESSION PROGRESSION AS WHITES REPLACE OF-COLOR DEMOCRATIC OFFICEHOLDERS
It may sound strange in identity-obsessed Illinois or Cook County Democratic political circles, but it looks like Whites are displacing and/or replacing non-White Democratic leaders in some key elected offices. Latinos have been ousted from three major countywide offices – State’s Attorney (Anita Alvarez), Assessor (Joe Berrios) and Clerk of Circuit Court (Iris Martinez) – in 2016, 2018 and 2024, respectively. The Latino population in the county (including Chicago) is 26.2 percent, but the only remaining Latino officeholders are MWRD commissioner Marcelino Garcia, city clerk Anna Valencia and comptroller Susanna Mendoza. That’s retrogression. Eileen O’Neill Burke will reclaim the office of state’s attorney from Kim Foxx next year and Alexi Giannoulias succeeded the iconic Jesse White as IL Secretary of State in 2022. That’s “retrogression 2.0.” A White man is also a sheriff and the assessor and now a White woman is likely to be the clerk of court. A Black woman is IL lieutenant governor (Juliana Stratton) and a Black man is attorney general (Kwame Raoul). When JB Pritzker (D) retires, likely in 2030, the Dem primary may be Giannoulias vs. Raoul. POGO DOES NOT WANT TO GO: MWRD commissioner Dan “Pogo” Pogorzelski is in a pickle. He won a 2-year term in 2022 by 1,500 votes and lost a 6-year term by 10,000 votes on March 19 despite being on the slate. Attached is a CHART detailing recent office flips from Of-Color to White. Full Article...
April 10, 2024
CONGRESSMAN DANNY DAVIS "GOES AROUND THE BLOCK" AGAIN; LOPEZ BIG LOSER; TRUMP CARRIES BOST
Congressman Danny Davis (D-7) has been around the political block so many times that his well-beaten path is now a moat. If each political endeavor is counted as a lap then Davis, who will be age 83 on Sept. 6, has notched 24 around-the-block laps and won 20 of them. That’s impressive. But he did lose for mayor and for Congress twice (1984, 1986) and got ousted as committeeman (D) in the 29th Ward. The 2024 vote was a measly 70,413, a turnout which was down an astounding 62,000 from 2020’s 132,005 and equal to 2022’s off-year 68,046. Davis won 37,416-25,271-12,649 with Collins in last place. This was predictable. Two opponents mean victory. The 2022 vote was 35,366-31,054. The non- or anti-Davis vote was 48 percent in 2022 and 48.7 in 2024. Other congressional primaries: Trump's endorsement critical to Bost's narrow win Downstate. Lopez a big loser to Garcia. Full Article...
April 3, 2024
BURKE BEATS HARRIS BY 1,556 VOTES: BLAME IT ON 390,000 DEM MIAs, CCDP INCOMPETENCE
It should have been easy for the “machine.” Instead, the Cook County Democratic primary for state’s attorney was a squeaker and a sweater, with Eileen O’Neill Burke beating the slated Clayton Harris III by an apparent margin of 1,556 votes. The unofficial vote as of March 31 was 264,289-262,733 in a 527,022 turnout. Just 4 years ago turnout was 917,743 (see chart) Foxx got 447,974 votes countywide, carried Chicago with 55.4 percent and 284,955 votes, the White progressives on the north Lakefront and North Shore flocked to Foxx. Yet 390,721 fewer Democrats voted on March 19. So what has changed since 2020? If the county Democrats could renominate Kim Foxx with 447,974 votes why was it so difficult to deliver 35 percent of the past Foxx vote to Harris this time? There are 1,509,554 registered voters in Chicago (RVs) and 342,983, or 22.7 percent, took a Dem ballot on March 19, while 40,773 a Republican. In the suburbs the RVs are 1,600,364 and 216,076 ballots cast, just 13.5 percent. Compared to 2020, the Democrat primary vote was down 211,438 from 554,421 and the Republican vote up from 21,557 to 40, 773. As an aside, this uptick in Republican voters was seen as detrimental to Burke, who unofficially was trying to persuade cops and firefighters to vote in the Dem primary but officially didn’t. FOP president John Catanzara suggested that cops vote in the primary for Burke and endorsed her; she rejected FOP support. “She needed that (Republican) vote,” said alderman Nick Sposato (38th). “It almost cost her” the election. The bland and boring Harris’s theme was “equity and justice,” a preposterous word salad which means justice shall be imposed equitably, a standard different from equally. The Safe-T Act codified no bail, so neither called for any repeal. Burke kind of avoided running as the tough-on-crime candidate, but she didn’t mind when people began to perceive it as such. She let 3 perceptions – that crime is rising, that prosecutions are falling and that jails are emptying – do the work. Burke won because she was less like Foxx than Harris. Harris almost won. But the fact that he didn’t proves Chicago is not yet on life-support. Full Article...
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