Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn and Republican challenger Bruce Rauner raised nearly $100 million between them—and presumably spent about as much to warn us that if the other guy were elected governor, a calamity would befall Illinois more alarming than having to watch their campaign ads.
Since he no longer has to spend his time accusing his opponent of helping spread Ebola, we’d like some straight answers to a few questions about his plans. But since Rauner wasn’t available as of press time, we’ve taken the liberty of providing our own answers; we’re betting our guesses are more specific than what we would’ve gotten had we been able to reach him.
1 Exactly which taxes are you going to raise?
In the past you’ve said that you want to extend the sales tax to cover more of the ever-growing service economy—things like attorney’s fees, haircuts, and garbage collection, which are taxed in many other states. And you’ve also vowed to cut income taxes even further, to 3 percent for individuals and 4.8 percent for corporations. (Remember when you quoted the Bible all those times on the campaign trail, saying “To whom much has been given, much has been expected?” So what about a progressive income tax?)
2 Will you ask house speaker Michael Madigan to help deliver the promises you made about the minimum wage?
Madigan is as unpopular as he is powerful. You’ve tried your best to convince voters that you were actually running against him, which means the two of you probably aren’t about to get chummy. One of your favorite commercials lumped together our most recent governor, the speaker, and Cullerton—along with imprisoned former governor Rod Blagojevich. “Together they’ve been in Springfield for over 100 years,” the commercial declared. “One hundred years of failure is enough.”
3 How do you plan to deal with Madigan?
4 How will you bring businesses to distressed areas? And other areas, for that matter?
Here’s why: you’ve often surrounded yourself with black clergy, but you didn’t employ any African-Americans in executive positions in your business. You also spent more than $28 million of your own money to get elected but didn’t hire many minority-owned firms to do campaign work. “The black community is just as broke after the campaign as before,” says Mark Allen, chairman of National Black Wall Street Chicago, a nonprofit economic advocacy group.
5 People are moving out of Illinois, and many others daydream that they could be so lucky. How will you make the weather better?
Still, the state population has actually been growing, though at a very slow rate—about 0.4 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to the census. That’s an addition of about 50,000 residents.
6 Given the exploitation of poor people on your watch as manager of a private equity firm, how do you plan to start cleaning up state government?
7 You’ve made it clear that you see public-employee unions as the heart of the problem. How will you work with unions to fix the state budget without settling for a costly peace or igniting a costly war?
8 Are you going to let the state go to pot? That is: Isn’t it time for Illinois to start making some money from the legalized marijuana industry?
