Rod Blagojevich is gone but it’s still the same old Springfield with the same old cast of characters. Can our gadfly cut it? Or as I heard state senator Rickey Hendon bluntly put it Thursday night on Channel Two, “The biggest challenge that I see for Pat Quinn is to overcome the do-gooder, reformer image. Pat has to know that you have to grease the wheels — that’s the way it works — to get things done around here.”
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Quinn decided Frances Boelkow, a 68-year-old community activist who lived with her retired husband in a second-story flat reached by outside stairs, would make a good independent candidate. She needed to be talked into it. “We never lose,” Quinn told her. He didn’t tell her there was already another independent in the race, Mike Holewinski, an assistant secretary of the Illinois Racing Board who was going to law school at night. Holewinski was young and dynamic, and had better connections in the district than Boelkow did. But Walker didn’t like him and wanted to force him out of the race.
