IL gov

[ill ind]

  I believe Muon hit this right on the head.  Quinn anticipates running aginst Bruce Rauner in the general election and picked someone known as an education reformer to counter one of Rauner's main arguments.
  Quinn is a whole lot more adept at politics than most give him credit for.  Underestimate him at your own peril!!  (Not to mention the guy must have a horsehoe crammed up his aft end given all the lucky political breaks he's gotten)


  Ill-Ind

[ill ind]

  The answer why nobody challenges Quinn is simple: Michael J. Madigan.  As chairman of the State Democratic party he has stated publicly that he will support an incumbent governor for reelection.  Somewhere there is a quote where he stated that the last time he supported a challenger to the sitting governor in a primary (Michael J. Howlett knocking off incumbent Dan Walker in the 1976 Democratic primary) he got stuck with 30 years of uninterupted Republican governors, so he would never make that move again.
  Madigan controls some pretty powerful purse strings when it comes to legislative races, so very few sitting legislators are willing to publicly stand up to him.

  Quinn's favorability ratings are right about the same as they were when he got reelected in 2010.  Besides he hasn't gone to jail which is more than we've gotten out of the last 2 governors.


Ill_Ind

[ill ind]

  The polling so far only sees name recognition.  As the 2010 candidate Brady has the most name recognition of any of the 4.  Nobody outside of us political junkies have given this race a whole lot of thought.
  The Bears, the weather, holiday shopping and a myriad of other things are more important than the 2014 Il Gubernatorial GOP Primary at this point.

Ill_Ind

[ill ind]

  Interestingly Rauner has blown out the contribution caps by giving himself $500,000 and collecting 2 other $250,000 contributions.  This gets rid of the caps for everybody else too.  Will be interesting to see if any of the GOP candidates will find somebody to bankroll their campaign.  Regular Dem contributors such as unions are now also free to dump as much $$$$ as they want into Quinn too.
  This could be an interesting free for all.

Ill_Ind