If Bruce Rauner manages to successfully back away from his recently unearthed statement from December that he favored reducing the state’s minimum wage by a dollar an hour he will have dodged a very serious political bullet. According to a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll, the idea is absolutely hated in Illinois. Asked if […]
Election day
Posted inOpinion
This year’s election circus
Election days can be dizzying – like trying to absorb a three-ring circus with all three acts going at once. In last week’s elections, the national media focused tightly on the center ring, where two gubernatorial contests and one mayoral race were spotlighted. The most interesting of these to me was the dazzling, out-of-nowhere, high-wire […]
Posted inOpinion
Latino voting soars in Illinois
Back in 1992, Latinos made up about 8 percent of Illinois’ population, yet only 1 percent of that year’s total Election Day voter pool was Latino. The trend continued for years. Latinos just didn’t vote. Twenty years later, things have changed in a big way. According to exit polling, 12 percent of Illinois voters last […]
Posted inOpinion
Bothering to vote, and bothering voters
Two heroes emerged at the polls this year, and neither was named Barack or Mitt. Their names are Galicia and Ken – ordinary Americans with extraordinary depths of civic spirit. While nearly 40 percent of eligible voters didn’t bother to cast their ballots this year, these two demonstrated that our democratic right to vote is […]
