Meet and Greet Jeanne Ives - The Next Governor of Illinois

Jeanne Ives is on the down-state hustings. There is wonderful video of her talk to the Decatur Club of that fine town linked below at Herald and Review.   This is a pretty good, but skewed, report on the event.

To an outside observer, several factors may be working against Ives.
She had $23,488 on hand in her election fund as of Tuesday, according to the Illinois Sunshine Database. By comparison, Rauner had more than $65 million  in his re-election fund.
Name recognition will be a hurdle as well. A Capital Fax/We Ask America poll conducted Oct. 25 to 29 found that 83 percent of likely Republican voters have not heard of Ives.
In the same poll, 61 percent of 1,064 likely Republican voters had a favorable impression of Rauner. Just 24 percent had an unfavorable opinion.
But speaking at the forum, Ives said Rauner’s record has made him vulnerable to Republican voters who see him as a failed governor who sided with Chicago Democrats over his conservative base on abortion and education.
“He’s going to have to spend a lot of money to convince people he’s something he’s not,” Ives said. “We only have to spend enough money to get our message out and let people know who we are.” Decatur Herald & Review

 Actually the Ives Campaign has this, according to Illinois Sunshine Database

Ives For Illinois
Committee Funds Amount
Funds Available on Dec 31, 2016 Quarterly Report $0.00
Funds Raised Nov 9, 2017 to Dec 31, 2017 $438,579.87
Funds Raised Since Dec 31, 2017 $2,642,000.00
Total Funds Raised $3,081,713.52

That is much more than the $23,488 reported by the Herald & Review.

Name recognition problem for Jeanne Ives?  Could be. Depends upon what, or whom you read.

We Ask America has a C rating from 538 Poll Rating service.  That is a Participant Ribbon compared to Rasmussen, St. Norbert University and Marist College pollings A and A+ ratings.

Capitol Fax Blog is a pay-to-play news aggregator skewed to affirm what Cook County Democratic and Progressive Democrats already hold as true.

The polling in question was conducted in October of 2017, three months before Jeanne Ives destroyed Governor Rauner in the Chicago Tribune debate.

Jeanne Ives is not as well-know, or notorious, as Bruce Rauner; nor, is her vice heard coaxing jailed former governor Rod Blagojevich about squeezing into President Obama's abandoned U.S. Senate seat. Rather, the plain speaking West Point graduate and mother of five speaks directly to the people of Illinois.

As she stated at the Decautur Club on January 13th, “Whenever we come into town – and we have been all over the state – we always have an open Meet and Greet so people in town can feel comfortable coming in and talking directly to me and asking their questions directly to me. We don’t do any stages events that way and we don’t do canned questions.”

Watch the video linked with the Herald & Review story.

In the light of a sex scandal, Jeanne Ives called for Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan to resign.

Capitol Fax conducted its own polling save Mike Madigan's job and preserve things as they *are in Illinois!

For those who want change in Illinois :

Meet Jeanne Ives at a fundraising event at Reilly's Daughter Pub  on Monday, March 5th from 5-7 PM.
Reilly’s Daughter is located at 4010 West 111th Street in Oak Lawn with plenty of free parking.

*
This opinion was artfully conducted and no polling harmed any At&T customers at dinner time. 

Of Two Minds Illinois Thanks to California

 

Rahm Rauner; Rauner Rahm: "Take hold of this, Peniculus: I wish to dedicate the spoil that I've vowed.'"ENAECHMUS of Epidamnus.

Any Holiday leads necessarily to conversation over food and sports channel surfing.  Mother's Day was a cornucopia of Chicago losses.The Bulls lost to to Cavs after a magnificent bulling of the Chicago squad by King James of Cleveland in final 0.8 seconds, or was it 1.15 seconds and outside shot at the buzzer. Sox lost to Cincinnati 4-3 and Re-Branded Cubs lost to the Brew Crew for a Midwest Urban Rival Sweep of Rahm's Chicagoland Sports.

The chicken and steal kabobs came off the grill, the salad was mixed and dressed, the pilaf was worthy of Edith her own bad self and whole Fam-Damly scrambled for chairs. Dinner was served and table talk exploded into sound bytes, between bites.  It was a segue melange with political side-servings. Politics on the holidays.   Mother's Day was no exception.  When chat turns political, I generally get a preemptive roll of the eyes indicating, 'We know what you think already. Save it.'  Be silent, be happy and have another tasty Kabob.

I was all ears, because I have forum for my big flapping yap - right here.

What I sampled from the verbal candied pecans was this. My family detests Bruce Rauner (so do I); yet, backed Rahm Emanuel over Chuy Garcia.  I find this fascinatingly schizophrenic. Rahm Rauner is in the same as Bruce Emanuel.  They detest Rahm (as do I) but cast votes for his 'sophisticated economics.'  Chuy Garcia was not taken any where near seriously by anyone eating Mother's Day dinner where I was, but by me and Chuy lost thereby proving the case that one can detest Bruce Rauner, vote for Rahm and shrug and wait for Rauner to pee in our collective bowl of Wheaties.

One can not, or should not, detest one, unless one detest the other.

Illinois is a hick State and Chicago is a hick burg, where the working man will disappear in under a generation.  Rauner will get the universal blame, which will not bother him a jot. Rahm will allow his twin Menaechmus in Springfield bear the whips and scorn of political fortune and both will reap fortunes unimaginable for friends and themselves, increase the debt and unemployment rolls, watch trades unions close shop revel in a job very well done.

Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Rauner were born of a rib taken from California Jerry Brown decades ago.

Illinois is California with liposuction, chin tucks and Botox.

The Casandra of American Fortunes is Joel Kotkin.  I have been a fan for decades.  He warned of dager public sector unions had on Federal, State, County and Municipal budgets as far back as GHW Bush and Bubba.

Casandra was always right and never followed.

Our Priams continue the March of Folly.   Illinois aped California and will continue to do so.  Here is Joel Kotkin on how California is the blueprint for Blue Progressive States;

 How a writer looks at California can be increasingly predicted by the writer’s political orientation. For liberals, the nasty California that produced both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan has been supplanted by a cooler, greener and more socially progressive state. If you are on the Right, California is beloved for reasons of nostalgia; for the Left, California is where the future once again is being shaped. Those of us more in the middle are simply unsure of what to think.

In many ways, Brown presaged many of the current trends in progressive thinking. For one thing, Brown – like much of the Democratic elite – does not much identify with middle- and working-class concerns, notably old social democratic ideals of upward mobility. Instead of tackling poverty and stagnation by creating good middle-class jobs, Brown blames the state’s high poverty rate on our “incredible attractiveness,” not on some fundamental economic flaw. This viewpoint seems not to offend some of the very people who, in other cases, rail against rising inequality and poverty.

Brown’s almost single-minded focus on climate change also fits well with a Democratic Party whose ideology – and funding base – is increasingly dominated by this issue. He also, at least for now, can claim that he has tried to save the planet while improving the economy.

Jerry Brown is a hippie grown wealthy and old.  Many hippies grew old and wealthy. Jerry Brown is elder statesman of the Progressive oligarchy dependant upon bloated government, corrupt mortgage banking tied to social engineering programs, monster bloc voting via public sector unions and a non-existent Fourth Estate.  Hippies are aped by hipsters. Hispsters are educated, affluent Gen X and younger folks who flock to urban settings. Hipsters are the new Rubes.  They'll buy and swallow anything manages to get public limelight, whether it happens to be kale, kindergartens or caring without any genuine effort.  Hipsters flock to public outcry and Occupy, or Ferguson Up, or Moveon.organize all done with the latest Steve Jobs gizmo.

They are the voice of America, because everyone else has been told to 'just shut up and evolve.'

Fair enough. Illinois replaced a doughy, soft-ball as governor with flinty hard-ball plutocrat as governor. He is the bad twin.  Chicago reelected a flinty hard-ball plutocrat as its mayor.  They are the twin Menaechmi of this pathetic politic-economic farce called Illinois government.

More Kabobs!