It’s a race to see who can lose the Governorship. Both candidates have arguments about why the other guy is unelectable and while Brady is up, he’s not far up. This is the election to see who can screw up the election the worse and the other one wins by default. Brady has kept his mouth shut lately leading one to assume his campaign manager has him hogtied in the trunk of his car. He’ll eventually get free so until then, we have a perfect Pat Quinn story from Rich:
This week, Quinn sat down for a meeting with a bunch of union leaders at the Chicago Federation of Labor’s headquarters. After being excoriated by the leaders of Service Employees International Union (which contributed almost $2 million to Quinn’s primary campaign), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the teachers union, Quinn finally had enough. If you can’t convince your members to vote for me over Brady, he reportedly said, then fine. He rose to make a grand exit, but accidentally walked into the kitchen instead. He was forced to make yet another grand exit through the proper door. It was like a bad movie.
No, it’s not like a bad movie Rich, it’s like a Pat Quinn campaign. Or a Bill Brady one. Other than views, they are largely interchangeable at this point.
Let’s face it: Quinn is a guy whose greatest political success was ending the careers of dozens of legislators. You can argue over the merits of this (I happen to think he was right), but that is just not going to get you much support among the political establishment, even decades later.
I really wish he would live up to his rep by cutting loose from said establishment and doing what he knows, or thinks he knows, the state needs, even if it makes him unpopular. I guess he’s doing that to some extent, but his efforts seem tentative and prone to reversal, which is where the Gov. Jell-O tag comes from.
As for Brady, if (when?) he wins, maybe he’ll stay hogtied, by the Democratic legislature this time. And he will hogtie it in turn with his veto pen. Not the best state of affairs, but arguably better than what we have now.