PAT QUINN SUSPENDS LEGISLATORS’ SALARIES: FOUR MORE YEARS?

7/10/13 

Governor Pat Quinn (no relation, but my happiness at not sharing a bloodline with the man seems to decrease on a daily basis) announced today that he will use his line-item veto power on the budget to suspend lawmakers’ salaries until something is done on the pension crisis that is fast driving the Land of Lincoln to bankruptcy.  (A re-read of my 6/15/13 post, WAS PAT QUINN “PUT ON THIS EARTH” TO SOLVE ILLINOIS’PENSION PROBLEMS? May be helpful in assessing Mr. Quinn’s motivations here.)

This is an absolutely brilliant move on Cousin (again, not really) Pat’s part.  

Yes, this is little more than a bit of Mr. Quinn’s customary demagoguery.  The suspension is highly unlikely to survive; either the courts will overrule Mr. Quinn, citing the Illinois Constitution’s prohibition on changing lawmakers’ salaries mid-term, or the legislature will override Mr. Quinn’s line-item veto.   And even if the suspension does survive, the impact on the budget will, of course, be virtually undetectable, and even it may not get our esteemed public servants off the dime.

However…

The symbolism is brilliant here, and symbolism is, usually sadly, very important in politics. 

As I said over a month ago, in my 6/3/13 post, THE PENSION DEBACLE IN ILLINOIS:  MR. MADGIAN AS MACHIAVELLI, MR. EMANUEL LOSESA ROUND, OR MR. QUINN GOES TO SPRINGFIELD?,

Mr. Quinn is a pretty decent politician and a smart guy.   He can, and probably will, conduct a sort of Mr. Quinn Goes to Springfield type of campaign in 2014, in which Mr. Quinn, a lifelong politician who has played “get along, go along” for the last 40 years, will be cast as a sort of St. George who battles the dragons of Mike Madigan and his minions.   The voters of Illinois might go for it; they have certainly gone for much more preposterous notions; see, as only the most salient example, the governorship of the man whom Mr. Quinn served as Lieutenant Governor, Rod Blagojevich.

In my 6/5/13 post,  PAT QUINN, PENSIONS, ANDTHE UPCOMING ILLINOIS GUBERNATORIAL PRIMARY: WHAT WOULD JIMMY STEWART DO?, I followed up with

Mr. Quinn’s efforts to blame the legislature for the failure to enact pension reform and to set up the fast approaching 2014 primary as a Jimmy Stewartesque battle between the forces of sweetness and light vs. the dark side may be working.  

Governor Quinn may not be very popular, but the legislature is far less popular.  Mr. Quinn is no fool and realizes that the way to win this race is to run against the legislature and its Democratic leadership.   This latest move ramps up that campaign theme.

As I also said on 6/5,

Whether Mr. Quinn attacks subtlety or engages in a full frontal assault, he will be going after the legislature and “politics as usual” in his upcoming campaign for re-election.  It’s his only chance, and it’s a better chance than most people think.  (Emphasis mine.)

As I said then and even way before then (and, of course, even before Michael Sneed of the Sun-Times reported today (7/10/13, page 2) on the Governor’s first quarter fundraising advantage over Bill Daley and Lisa Madigan), don’t be so quick to count Mr. Quinn out of this race.   And don’t misunderstand me; I am not predicting a Quinn victory in either the primary or the general election.  But I am cautioning against dismissing the re-election chances of a politically clever incumbent, especially if this turns out to be a three way primary race.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.