Capital Facts

Things candidates are doing to get signatures

Published by admin on Sat, 01/29/2022 - 10:53am

I've been fascinated by election petition-gathering season this year because of the adjusted primary schedule, the crazy omicron variant and the prevailing fear of crime, not to mention the awful weather.
Petition season was always during the fall. But because the primary was moved to June 28, petition circulators now have to get out there in the dead of winter, during the omicron and crime surges.

The candidate who has a shot at giving Pritzker a run

Published by admin on Sat, 01/22/2022 - 1:30pm

Richard Irvin is a Republican. Period.
Irvin might not be enough of a Republican for the purists. And Democrats might want to weaken Irvin in the Republican primary for governor by pointing to some of the nice things he's said about Democrats (including the governor) over the years. But Richard Irvin is still a Republican.
I've covered and watched the Aurora mayor for years and it's always been obvious to me that he's a Republican.

Illinois’ soft on crime bills may hurt Democrats

Published by admin on Sat, 01/15/2022 - 2:02pm

House Speaker Chris Welch marked his one-year anniversary as his chamber's top leader with a series of news media interviews last week. One of the questions I asked was what his legislative district's constituents were talking to him about the most.
"The number one issue in my district, and this is across the state, is crime," Speaker Welch said.

The gamesmanship behind getting more Democrats as judges

Published by admin on Sat, 01/08/2022 - 9:58am

The Illinois Senate's covid mitigation protocols (testing, masks and limited remote voting) didn't anticipate a partisan attempt to use a record-breaking virus surge to shut the chamber down, but that's what almost happened last week.

Texting between Lightfoot and Pritzker revealing

Published by admin on Sun, 12/19/2021 - 1:43pm

Matt Chapman, a self-described data nerd who runs a not-for-profit group called "Free Our Data," recently filed Freedom of Information Act requests with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's office. He wanted everything received by the Chicago Tribune this year via their FOIA requests.
Chapman's trove included text messages sent back and forth between Lightfoot and state leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker.
Most of the conversations were innocuous or polite. The governor thanked the mayor for sending him a bottle of tequila, for example.

Bill to deny insurance to unvaccinated illegal

Published by admin on Sun, 12/12/2021 - 1:37pm

Just a couple of months ago, more than 50,000 electronic witness slips were filed in opposition to a proposed legislative change to the state's Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
Whether you believe all of those filings were legitimate or not, that's still a gigantic uproar about a bill which stopped employees from trying to use state law to sue employers for requiring vaccines or regular COVID-19 tests as a condition of employment.

Judges rule NAACP too late for Illinois map changes

Published by admin on Sat, 12/04/2021 - 11:27am

One of the things that I most certainly did not have on my 2021 legislative Bingo card last January was that an Oak Park liberal Democratic Senate President and the state's first Black House Speaker would be fighting multiple legal claims that their new state legislative district maps deprive protected minorities of their constitutional rights.
And the ante was upped last month when both men went on record opposing an attempt by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., Chicago Westside Branch NAACP and NAACP Chicago Southside to intervene in the redistricting case.

Same legal arguments being used in Illinois remap

Published by admin on Sat, 11/20/2021 - 9:58am

Some Illinois House Democrats got a bit of a shock during a private caucus meeting held not long after the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed its proposed redistricting plan with a federal three-judge panel the other day.
MALDEF is claiming the legislature's district remap plan unconstitutionally discriminates against Latinos and has filed suit. The group distributed a copy of its counter-proposal and there was all sorts of bad news for incumbent Democrats.

Pritzker’s thoughts on whether to lift mask mandate

Published by admin on Sat, 11/13/2021 - 10:32am

Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters not long ago that he was worried about the plateauing COVID-19 hospitalization rate and said he wouldn't yet lift his statewide mask mandate.
But the governor told me something around the same time during an interview that he hasn't yet said publicly: He's most concerned about what may happen in January and February and upbeat about the spring and summer.

Will the PNA repeal bill sway state voters?

Published by admin on Fri, 11/05/2021 - 4:37pm

I interviewed Gov. JB Pritzker a few days before his Democratic Party was stunned by losses and near-losses in Virginia and New Jersey last week.
Now, I am not one of those folks who automatically believes that candidates should plan for the next election based on the most recent election results. I also don’t think that things which work well in one state will work in another.