Illinois has compiled $14.6 billion in unpaid bills. It’s running a deficit of $6 billion and its pension liability has soared to $130 billion.
That’s not the worst of it. The state’s nearly two-year failure to pass a budget has sent its bond ratings careening toward junk level, downgraded a staggering eight notches below most other states.
With university enrollments plummeting, large-scale social service agencies shuttering and the Chicago Public Schools forced to borrow just to stay open through the end of this school year, Illinois is beginning to devolve into something like a banana republic — and it’s about to have the most expensive election the state has ever seen.
See the guy at the top of that story? That’s failed Republican governor Bruce Rauner who came in swearing that he’d lead the effort to fix the state’s finances and instead entrenched himself in blocking any budget that didn’t contain pet conservative goals unrelated to the budget itself. A while back, Crain’s Chicago Business wrote an editorial stating that they were wrong when they endorsed him for governor as he has completely failed to lead or produce.
Yes, yes “But Madigan…”. Madigan is on the ballot in one district (which will almost certainly vote for him). Rauner is on the ballot across the state and much, much more vulnerable. It’s hard to suggest that the state will go red while we’re floundering under failed Republican leadership.
Why would it turn “red”? In the governor’s mansion, it is already “red” and Bruce Rauner is one of the most unpopular governors in the country and likely to lose the gubernatorial race next year.
At this point (correctly or incorrectly being somewhat immaterial to the question of the op) Illinois voters are largely holding their GOP governor as responsible for the prolonged deadlock and lack of any movement to fixing the mess. His popularity is Trumpian: only 36% approval with 58% disapprove. He’s not quite at Sam Brownback depths but pretty close.
Illinois is a horrible fiscal mess and not only will it not “go red” in 2018; it will like flip from a GOP governor to a Democratic one. Neither of its two Democratic Senators are up for election in 2018, and the 13 to 7 Democratic tilt in its U.S. House of representatives contingent is not only pretty safe but in no way being held as responsible for the state’s fiscal problems. At the State House level who knows but I suspect that the 66 to 51 Dem lean is not at much risk, nor its 37 to 22 State senate lead.
Note that things also sucked fiscally for the state last cycle and Rauner’s team and the state GOP failed to capitalize on them, gaining only four seats in a legislature dominated by Democrats. In 2018, the deeply unpopular Rauner will be on the ballot – likely dragging down his state assembly colleagues.
At a wild benefit-of-the-doubt guess, the OP might have meant the accounting sense of in the red. He doesn’t make any political comments and the idea that financial troubles=Republican win seems a little non-obvious.
Rauner promised to use his business acumen to fix the state’s fiscal problems. Instead, he’s driven it off a cliff. He campaigned as a straight-shooting outsider, but in interviews he bobs and weaves and equivocates in a way that would embarrass Richard Nixon. Before he was governor, he complained loudly about the state’s credit downgrades, but now he claims that the imminent downgrade to junk is totally not his fault and besides, bond ratings don’t really matter!
Evidently his reelection campaign will consist of him standing in the wreckage of the Illinois state government and saying “It’s all Mike Madigan’s fault!” Really? You’re the fucking governor, and you’re completely powerless because of one guy from one district? And this is what is supposed to turn Illinois red?
Oh, I’m sure he’s convinced low-information voters in Illinois’s innumerable dot-on-the-map towns that Madigan is to blame for everything. But those people would have voted for Rauner anyway. Ginning up outrage among people who are already in your camp is pointless.
Unless he gets his act together quickly—like in the next three weeks—he’s doomed. Hell, even Rod fucking Blagojevich knew that states are supposed to pay their bills.
Not at all. No one likes Rauner these days and his wife isn’t likely to convince the voters in the Chicago suburbs in 2018. There is a huge field in the Democratic race for governor, which means that the Dems smell blood in the water.
Clinton won Illinois easily in the Democratic primary as well as in the general election.
As much as I think that whole red/blue state thing is an oversimplification, you’re point is absolutely correct. It becomes even more tenuous when you try to apply it to non-presidential elections.
For what it’s worth, Illinois has had Republican governors in the past and it wasn’t any seismic moment when Quinn (who was also ineffectual) lost and a Republican, Rauner, won the spot. It’s just that Rauner has also been terrible at the job, has nothing to show for his time in office and yet will certainly be the GOP candidate. If we had a Democratic governor right now who was in this exact same situation, I’d have no problem admitting that Republicans could likely take the governor’s mansion. As is, I don’t see how they hold it.
I think they should follow Kansas’ (Kansas’s?) example and immediately cut taxes. That will definitely get them out of the red. It worked for Kansas, right?