Bill Daley announced yesterday that he's running for Governor of Illinois. If he wins, Illinois will have a governor and a mayor of its largest city who were both chief-of-staff to President Obama. His campaign has many Illinoisans asking if someone with a name so famously associated with the city of Chicago can bridge the state's regional divide well enough to win a statewide election. Speaking as a
downstater with many campaigns under my belt, I believe he can, but he's off to a bad start.
Since most downstate voters don't follow Chicago city politics, the Daley name is seen more as a dynastic legend. They're just as likely to think of
Richard J. Daley rather than his sons. There was some kind of controversy with Chicago parking meters? A TIF district scandal? If you're from downstate, you don't know or care much about that, but you probably notice how much downtown Chicago has improved since the early 90's.
The best thing working in Daley's favor is that Governor Pat Quinn would lose downstate in a landslide to a potted plant, both in the Democratic primary and general election. I don't think most Chicago politicians and pundits appreciate the intensity of anger over the attack on public employee pensions, and how much state facility closures hurt small communities.
State government and public schools are the top employers outside the Chicago region, which means everyone downstate has at least one family member or close friend whose livelihood is being threatened by the Scott-Walkeresque assault on pensions. Politicians in Chicago, where state employees make up a much smaller portion of the workforce, are having academic debates about what's fair and whether the state can afford its pension obligation. It's easy to argue that pension cuts are more appealing than tax hikes to people who don't have a family member with a state pension. It's more personal downstate and it's a losing issue for Quinn.
The closure of prisons, centers for the developmentally disabled, and other facilities
hit downstate communities hard. When you take 100 jobs out of a small town then
everyone in town either knows someone who lost a job or whose small business benefited from that facility. Every one of those people are convinced the facility could have been saved if the Governor hadn't given a special tax cut or other favor to a big campaign donor in Chicago. People are not going to forget between now and election day.
I know union members who worked hard to get Quinn elected but now cuss and spit at the mention of his name. Environmentalists made up part of Quinn's coalition in his last election but many are now furious at him for opening Illinois to fracking. Daley could win a two-way race downstate by showing up and not being Pat Quinn.
Despite those advantages, Daley's
introductory video doesn't sound like someone who plans to campaign outside Chicago and the suburbs. Like Quinn, he pits pensions against school children, which will be viewed as an inflammatory personal attack on state workers. There are many pro-gun Democrats and independents in rural Illinois, so his mention of gun control isn't helpful either. I have trouble thinking of two worse issues to raise if he wants to show he'll be a statewide governor rather than a Chicago governor.
He also says, "The News from Springfield always seems to be bad... We expect Springfield to fail. We've gotten used to it."
I understand that, like many Chicago politicos, he's using "Springfield" as a reference to state government, but as a Springfield native, this phrasing sounds awkward and mean spirited. Springfield residents often say that our town's leaders are sometimes its own worst enemies, but you don't want to hear an outsider rubbing it in that he expects us to fail.
The unintended message is that Daley views "Springfield" as a general concept representing state government rather than as an actual town with 116,000 residents, it's own local problems, and voters who care deeply about the gubernatorial election because the local economy is closely tied to state politics. Would you want someone to be Governor if he thought you live in a metaphor that represents failure? He should break that habit unless he wants to be reminded at downstate campaign stops that it's Chicago politicians who create most of those problems, not the city of Springfield.
Does downstate matter?
In his last general election, Quinn proved you can win statewide while losing most downstate counties. But, it wasn't a landslide. What Quinn's narrow 31,834 margin of victory also proved is that you can't lose downstate by a landslide and still be Governor.
The gubernatorial model for a Chicago politician doing well downstate, I hate to admit, is Rod Blagojevich. Blago (or someone on his campaign team) understood that rural Illinois is tired of feeling powerless and ignored by a state government that only seems to notice them when it's time to cut something from the budget. He spent significant time courting downstate Democrats in his first race for governor. He showed areas desperate for attention that he was willing to learn about local issues and be a truly statewide governor.
It paid off. He won the Democratic primary in '02 despite
finishing third in Cook county. Let me repeat that since people still find it hard to believe.
A candidate can finish third in Chicago and still win a statewide Democratic primary.
When Blagojevich ran for re-election in '06 he
lost ground in much of central Illinois after his attacks on state employees and universities. But he continued to do well farther south, where he spent more time handing out pork projects and other favors. Quinn is alienating central Illinois just as well as Blagojevich did, but unlike Blago, he isn't spending time building relationships and handing out favors in the south (unless you count the fracking industry).
Daley's video suggests that his campaign team either doesn't understand state politics outside the Chicago area or they plan on ceding downstate to
Lisa Madigan without a fight. If Madigan runs, it's an easy bet that she'll be the next Governor.
