Illinois

Political dysfunction as far as the eye can see.

Three examples of what not to do.

On Tuesday, Illinois’ incumbent Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, barely won renomination for his 2018 re-election bid. He defeated Jeanne Ives, a state legislator who was challenging him from the right, by only three points in the state’s primary. That’s not a great showing for Rauner – incumbent…

Congressman Dan Lipinski beat back a primary challenge Tuesday night from liberal activists who targeted the Illinois Democrat mainly because of his anti-abortion views and votes.

Arthur Jones, an outspoken white supremacist and Holocaust denier, has unsuccessfully run for public office in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas since the 1970s. But he is now set to win the the Republican primary on March 20 in the race for Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, his eighth attempt…

Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka vehemently denied charges from a Democratic congressman that he endorsed a Hungarian neo-Nazi political party during a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Here's a joke. It's from the late Mitch Hedberg: "I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny." Mitch's jokes tended to…

The Illinois legislature responded to the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis by—what else?—voting to hike the state income tax by a third, from over 3-and-a-half percent to nearly 5 percent. Republican governor Bruce Rauner fought against the budget, denouncing what he accurately described as a 32…

A question no one’s asked out loud with regard to the ongoing Illinois state budget negotiations is what happens if—or when—the state becomes unable or unwilling to pay its bills a few years down the road.

Last week the Washington Free Beacon reported that roughly half of Congressman Luis Gutiérrez's campaign expenditures were paid to his wife, who serves as his campaign manager. What is most noteworthy about this is that Gutiérrez does not really need to worry about campaigning.

Cheri Bustos, a Democratic congresswoman from Central Illinois, was touted last week by Politico as the politician who has cracked the code for getting Trump voters to elect a Democrat.

Northfield, Il.

While half of American voters have stomped through the Garden of Progressive Delights, Illinois is ever more shackled by insider deal-making, special interests of the liberal kind, and an autocratic Democratic machine. Case in point: As if organized labor hasn't wrung enough out of the nearly broke…

I was an ardent critic of the "PROMESA" legislation Congress passed this summer to help restructure Puerto Rico's debt for one primary reason: It was clear hat it would serve as a blueprint for the states that have overburdened pension funds to escape their own debts by shortchanging the…

John Bills was a Chicago city hall flunky who took some $2 million in bribes to expand the Second City's infamous red-light traffic camera system. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in 2012, and the paper has the denouement on Monday, reporting on Bills's fate: A federal judge is sending him to…

Cleveland

Distant newsrooms have sent word to Chicago that Republican moderate Mark Kirk is dead meat in his bid to win a second term as Illinois’s junior senator. He reliably tops newspaper lists of "Most Endangered GOP Senators in 2016."

Following the results of Tuesday's Indiana primary, THE WEEKLY STANDARD received a letter from two readers, addressed to the Republican National Committee. With the writers' permission, that letter is reproduced below:

The central Illinois music scene (the ostensible subject of my magazine piece this week) was amazingly fecund in the 1970s, and worthy of a self-indulgent blog post all its own. The alpha and omega of this time and place was REO Speedwagon, and Gary Richrath enjoyed an intensely loyal following…

A leading Democratic senator said Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is continuing to push for an up-or-down vote on approving the Iran nuclear deal to score points with "some groups."

Illinois will happily take your money and sell you a lottery ticket but, as the AP reports,

The Obama administration is funding a provision of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutionally and against the decision of Congress, a Republican House member says. Peter Roskam of Illinois joined Fox News's Greta van Susteren Thursday to talk about the details of his findings in an oversight…

In his first TV of his reelection campaign, Senator Mark Kirk is highlighting his long-fight after having a stroke a couple years ago:

Republican Bruce Rauner has defeated sitting Democratic governor Pat Quinn in Illinois, NBC News projects.

Two Illinois voters say their attempts to vote early for Republicans on an electronic voting machine were registered as votes for Democrats—and they say have the video evidence to prove it. 

Speaking earlier today in Illinois, Vice President Joe Biden praised Governor Quinn -- and, more importantly, his mother. "I like guys because of their moms," said Biden.

According to one U.S. senator, the Obama administration is pushing a "fairly anti-Israeli" line as they advocate for a deal with Iran. 

Adam Kinzinger, a sophomore Republican House member from Illinois, told constituents at a meeting earlier this week that trying to defund Obamacare could hurt the GOP and lose enough House seats to return the majority to the Democrats. The effort, supported by some conservatives in both houses of…

The most interesting House primary of the 2014 cycle began in June in the 13th District of Illinois. It pits freshman Republican congressman Rodney Davis against an insurgent candidate named Erika Harold. Davis is a political operative who won his seat last year nearly by accident. Erika Harold is…

In remarks delivered this evening in Washington, D.C. to a group from Organizing For Action (the president's former campaign group), Barack Obama said that his speech later this week Galesburg, Illinois "will be a pretty good speech." Via the pool report:

New York City

After a decade of the Democratic party dominating all levers in government the state of Illinois is a mess. Its government pension debt is far and away the largest of the 50 states and its dismal credit rating reflects it. Unlike neighboring states Illinois is hemorrhaging jobs and dancing around…

Illinois Republican senator Mark Kirk will return to the Senate, after suffering a stroke almost a year ago. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Former White House chief of staff William Daley is considering a run for Illinois governor. The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Illinois Republican party claims early and absentee voting has precipitously fallen since the 2008 presidential election.

In the final days of the campaign, the Illinois Republican party and allied conservative groups are hitting Democratic congressional candidate Bill Foster over allegations he abused his former wife. According to court documents from Foster's divorce proceedings in March 1996, the Democrat's…

President Barack Obama's closest political adviser, David Axelrod, is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser later today for a Democratic candidate for Congress who linked the Tea Party with the shooting in Tucson that injured former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The Democrat that will be joined…

Illinois Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr., who had mysteriously taken a leave of absence from Congress a month ago, is reported to be at a rehabilitation clinic in Arizona. The Free Beacon has the story:

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. " has been on medical leave from Congress for the past two weeks and is being treated for exhaustion," the Chicago Tribune reports. Jackson has been on medical leave for the last 16 days, since June 10. His last House vote was on June 8.

Mike Bost, a Republican member of the Illinois general assembly from Murphysboro, unleashed an explosive tirade on the Democratic-led legislative body for repeatedly bringing pension reform bills to a vote before giving lawmakers a chance to read them.

Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN this morning that Boston will "reset" its campaign for the general election. Via Greg Sargent:

Fox News projects that Mitt Romney is the winner of the Illinois Republican presidential primary. The call is made with 6.3 percent of precincts reporting, Romney currently has 53.9 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum has 27.7 percent, Ron Paul has 10.7 percent, and Newt Gingrich trails with 6.7…

Rasmussen’s polling shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum by 9 percentage points (41 to 32 percent) in Illinois, yet likely primary voters in the Prairie State hold almost identically favorable views of each candidate.  Romney’s net favorability rating is +38 points (68 percent “favorable” to 30…

According to the Associated Press, Governor Mitch Daniels just signed legislation making Indiana a right-to-work state:

Disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a U.S. district court judge. Reuters reports:

University of Illinois at Chicago professors Barbara Risman, William Bridges, and Anthony M. Orum write this letter to the editor in response to “Fat City: Thank you, Illinois taxpayers, for my cushy life,” which appeared in a recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than…

Wither Ryan/Rubio 2012? Is Daniels/Christie the new hotness?

Now that we've got a budget deal, who's up for a debt ceiling fight?

On Sunday, Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Educational Association Council, instructed the teachers in her union to return to the classroom after many of them skipped school for three days last week. The unexpected move energized Republicans in Wisconsin, who took it as a sign that negative…

Minnesota, like a lot of states, is facing a major budget shortfall. In order to close the state's $6.2 billion gap, the Wall Street Journal reports that the state's new Democratic governor is considering jacking up the state's taxes on high income earners to unprecedented levels:

Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in Illinois today to try to convince businesses to leave that state for his. Christie’s argument is simple: Come to New Jersey for lower tax rates; stay in Illinois for higher taxes. 

The New York Times reports:

Anyone who proposed even a decade ago that a state should be permitted to file for bankruptcy would have been dismissed as crazy. But times have changed. As Arnold Schwarze-negger’s plea for $7 billion of federal assistance for California earlier this year made clear, the states are the next…

Media outlets are now predicting that Congressman Mark Kirk will be the next senator from Illinois. As it stands, the New York Times reports that Kirk has 48.4 percent of the vote, while Democrat Alexi Giannoulias has 46 percent, with 97 percent of precincts reporting. This might be the greatest…

Iraq veteran and Republican Adam Kinzinger has defeated Democratic congresswoman Debbie Halvorson in Illinois's Eleventh District, and Republican Bobby Schilling, the owner of a pizza place in Moline, has defeated Democratic Rep. Phil Hare in Illinois's Seventeenth District. Our own Matthew…

With recent polling consistently showing the GOP nominee, Mark Kirk, leading mob banker Alexi Giannoulias in the Illinois Senate race, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to try and steal any Republican advantage. 

In September, Big Government first reported that Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias may have dodged the Greek military service requirement when he lived and worked in Greece in the late 1990s:

This past spring, a conservative blogger asked Democratic congressman Phil Hare at a townhall meeting in Quincy, Illinois about the constitutionality of the controversial health care legislation. “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest,” Hare said.

On Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD first reported that an activist in Illinois tied to Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias was working to recruit veterans to film a television ad attacking Senate candidate and 21-year Navy Reserve veteran Mark Kirk.

Just in case you didn’t think the Illinois Senate race could sink any lower, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is planning to launch a final ad campaign featuring a “veteran” to attack Mark Kirk’s service record.

Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams talk about the Kentucky, Illinois, Colorado and Nevada Senate races on Fox News's Special Report:

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias doesn’t have many accomplishments he can run on. His family bank, where he worked as a vice president and a senior loan officer, was taken over by the FDIC in April, costing the government $394.3 million. The Bright Start College Savings…

When it comes to federal lobbyists, Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias says that “he won’t take their money and he won’t vote their way.”

Why would a Democrat in Illinois running for the Senate seat that Rod Blagojevich tried to sell want a top Blago adviser speaking for his campaign?

As the Giannoulias family’s Broadway Bank was seized by federal regulators, and as Broadway Bank’s associations with mobsters and criminals was placed under further scrutiny, Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias had a tiring refrain: I haven’t been at the bank in over four years. 

Joel Pollak has two degrees from Harvard, worked as both a freelance journalist and a political speechwriter in his native South Africa, had a brief career as an actor in European movies and TV advertisements, and published two books while still at Harvard Law. This immigrant and Orthodox Jew…

Today, Wesley Clark is campaigning for Alexi Giannoulias. Interestingly, though, it is Giannoulias’s opponent in the Illinois Senate race, Republican congressman Mark Kirk, who goes back a long way with the former Army general, Clark. 

In 2000, there was Kailey. Today, there’s Debbie. 

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias made waves earlier this week when he announced his support for the Ground Zero Mosque. Giannoulias’s support for the mosque isn’t particularly surprising; he’s far behind his Republican opponent, Mark Kirk, in the money race and can’t afford to…

The Ground Zero mosque controversy has reawakened concerns about some Islamic Centers in the United States and their funding sources. As Claudia Rosett recently noted, we really don’t know where Feisal Abdul Rauf found $100 million to fund his mega-project in lower Manhattan.  Congressman Peter…

A few weeks ago, Alexi Giannoulias’s Illinois Senate campaign claimed, “Every proposal outlined by Alexi includes a counter-part offset to ensure that it is deficit neutral.”  But a closer examination of Giannoulias’s economic plan reveals it would increase America’s debt by more than $200 billion. 

The president is holding a fundraiser for Democratic Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias today in Chicago. A reader passes along this photograph of the protesters, welcoming Barack Obama and "mob banker" Giannoulias: