After months of publicly jabbing the General Assembly for its hidebound ways, Governor Rod Blagojevich is now aiming at his fellow constitutional officers, including his most likely re-election rival.
Four weeks after the final state budget passed–and just one day before the new fiscal year was set to begin–the governor summoned all statewide elected officials–the lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller, and treasurer–and dropped a bomb. He wanted them to cut 7.5 percent from their operating budgets, and he wanted it done in two days.
Their public reaction was mostly predictable. Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn quickly announced he was on board. He’d already cut his budget more than 7.5 percent, so he was exempt.
Comptroller Dan Hynes enthusiastically agreed. Hynes is a candidate for the U.S. Senate and has spent the past few months doing everything possible to stay on Blagojevich’s good side. A Hynes-Blagojevich spat might nudge the governor toward his reliable campaign contributor, U.S. Senate candidate Blair Hull, who has spread his cash around so thick that not many pols with statewide ambition are willing to draw his ire, including the governor. For Hynes, victory next spring may depend on complete and absolute gubernatorial neutrality, which necessitates his occasional groveling.
Secretary of State Jesse White publicly objected to the governor’s demand. White has never apologized for increasing his budget. His number one campaign issue in 1998 was the abysmally long lines at drivers’ license facilities. More money to enhance customer service is no sin in White’s eyes.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan showed she learned some lessons from her father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The speaker likes to quietly figure the angles before he makes a play, and the attorney general did the same.
Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka also laid low. An immediate public fight over budget cuts with the person she hopes to defeat in ’04 wouldn’t be a good idea for the celebrated penny-pincher. Plus, she’s the only Republican in the bunch. She needs allies to avoid appearing politically obstructive.
Topinka mostly needed Lisa Madigan. Madigan’s dad could backstop the constitutionals in the House and maybe even in the Senate, with Topinka supplying enough Republican votes to override any reductions Blagojevich might make. Lisa Madigan has already had a few run-ins with the governor this year, believing Blagojevich is out to undercut her authority.
Topinka, White, and Madigan confronted Governor Rod and said they’d accept only a 3 percent cut. After some tense negotiation, the governor reportedly appeared compliant. All three believed they had a deal when the meeting ended. But a few minutes later, a call came from the governor’s office. No deal. They’d have to cut 5 percent.
Statewides are accustomed to deference from governors. They have clear, constitutionally mandated duties. They are all elected independently, so they’re accountable to the voters alone.
But Blagojevich was treating them like they were the Chicago City Clerk–politically dependent on and bureaucratically insignificant to the mayor. This was too much.
Blagojevich decreed that Madigan alone could stay at the three percent level, all but dashing Topinka’s override hopes. What we had here was another one of those politically popular hardball plays at which Blago has excelled since taking office. Who doesn’t want politicians to cut their budgets?
Topinka, the best hope the Republicans have of defeating Blago in 2006, is now in the awkward position of complaining about budget cuts. And she can’t even claim the governor’s motives were political because Democrat White’s budget will be slashed as much as hers.
Giving the statewides time to cut their budgets also provided the governor with a convenient excuse for why he hadn’t yet bothered to sign most of the budget, even though the new fiscal year began last week.
The battle was also engaged while the media was focused on Blagojevich’s massive new tax and fee hikes. So it might even subtly deflect some of the public’s ire away from the governor and onto those bad old statewide officers who refuse to trim their fat.
In other words, as the governor repeats endlessly, he’s the new way, they’re the old way.
The Republican divide
House Republican Leader Tom Cross and Senate Republican Leader Frank Watson weren’t exactly on the same page during the spring legislative session. As a result, there is serious tension between the two Republican caucuses.
Cross was repeatedly criticized this year by Republicans close to Watson for toadying up to Blagojevich. Watson was slammed by Republicans close to Cross for abdicating all the burdens of actual governance and forcing Cross to do all the heavy lifting so Republican legislators could actually bring something home to their districts.
Which man had the better strategy depends on where you sit. If you’re a red meat Republican who wanted to see someone stand up to the Democratic governor, then you thought Frank Watson did the right thing. But if you’re a Republican House member who chafed under the iron fist of deposed House GOP Leader Lee Daniels, and wanted to get something done, then you cheered Tom Cross.
Both men essentially “won.” Watson got the high-profile battles he wanted, and Cross brought home the bacon. Both men also united their caucuses, but in vastly different ways.
Watson maneuvered his members into voting against most of the governor’s budget proposals. Acting like “last real Republicans” united the Senate GOPs. When a handful broke ranks, they were subjected to a mean cold shoulder. Interestingly enough, ostracizing the small handful of “traitors” brought the rest of the caucus even closer together.
Over in the House, rank-and-file Republicans were free to vote anyway they wanted on just about every piece of legislation. Cross asked that his members keep their powder dry on a few things, like the O’Hare Airport expansion bill, until he could negotiate a better outcome. But overall the Republicans were united by the freedom to choose their own way–something they had been denied since Lee Daniels became the Leader in 1983.
A few House Republicans continued to grumble, mostly the handful of members who are still close to Daniels. But other than firing up the occasional conservative freshman, who had no idea what it was like when Daniels ran the show, the Daniels faction had little if any impact this year.
Senator Watson played the game like the Senate was closely divided and vulnerable to a Republican takeover next year, or, at least, with the possibility that the Republicans could close the gap enough to seize control by 2006 or 2008. By holding his members off important bills, he forced some Democrats to cast a few bad votes in order to pass their party’s legislation. Those votes will definitely come back in 2004 campaign ads.
Representative Cross was in a much different spot. He has only 52 seats out of 118. House Speaker Michael Madigan could probably have passed anything he wanted without Cross’s help. Cross also went into the session hoping to use his close personal friendship with Blagojevich as insurance against Madigan completely shutting him out of the process. Cross was appalled when the governor’s original budget proposal short-changed schools in Chicago’s suburbs, but his cooperation with the governor and Madigan on the tax and fee hikes restored the school funding and extracted a few more goodies for his members.
There are potential dangers for both strategies. If Watson continues to strong-arm his members into voting against Democratic proposals that help their districts (as he did on the governor’s pension bond bill and several of the budget votes), he could eventually reach the point that enough Republican Senators are so alienated they rebel. This is what eventually happened to Lee Daniels– but it probably won’t take that long to boil over in the more independent-minded Senate.
Cross, on the other hand, may have a tough time raising campaign cash from big-money Republicans, many of whom are of the red meat variety and demand a robust opposition voice. All politics requires an enemy, so Cross’s perceived embracing of the other side’s ideas won’t help. And his cooperation on things like the governor’s revenue generators won’t please the money boys, either.
But the biggest problem is that the House and Senate Republican leadership teams are pretty bitter about the way the other side handled themselves during the spring session. If not checked soon, this unhealthy rivalry and outright back-stabbing could seriously damage both caucuses when the election rolls around next year. The only people who really win with this sort of intra-party bickering is the other party.
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2003.
