I was going to do this in the Capitol Fax today, but decided this would be the better place.
I went over the transcript of last night’s debate and pulled out a few Jim Oberweis items in need of fact-checking. Oberweis’ comments are italicized.
I’m not a politician…
Yeah, right, except for all those other failed statewide runs.
…and have no ties with any prior administration here in Illinois.
His deputy campaign manager is Brad Roseberry.
Also testifying today was Brad Roseberry, a former Ryan political operative and supervisor in the Secretary of State’s office.
Testifying under immunity from prosecution, Roseberry told jurors that he routinely did political work on state time.
Oberweis also met twice with George Ryan and on at least one occasion is reported to have asked the ex-governor for campaign help.
I have taken a pledge as governor of Illinois that I will not accept campaign contributions from companies doing business with the state of Illinois. By doing that, we can break that flow of cash and we can end the corruption tax we’re all being asked to pay today. And I believe with that, we can save in excess of $1 billion, that’s 2 to 3 percent in our state budget.
He then spent that billion dollars several times.
I believe we can roll back many of the 280 Blagojevich tax and fee increases that have been put into place over the last three years. We can do that, again, being helped by ending the corruption tax we’re paying and eliminating some of the waste and fraud that are going on in the government. […]
I am absolutely pledged to go back on the schedule that will refund the pension plan, to make that billion dollar contribution that we omitted. And I believe we can do that, we can fund that, by ending the corruption tax that we’re all paying without seeing it […]
[On finding funding for more transportation projects, including mass transit] And the answer is, as I talked about a little bit earlier, we need to end the culture of corruption in this state.
The construction trade unions won’t like this next one.
In addition to that, I think it’s critical that we end the governor’s executive order which has put into place significant costs that don’t need to be there by providing a contractual agreement that bars many competitive bidders from construction projects in the states – both for building schools, for building roads, and for other types of capital projects.
What he talked about there are project labor agreements, which ensure that only union contractors can bid on major projects.
We have only 39 ice cream stores today. We would like to have had 100 by now, but we have been held back by the Blagojevich policies in the state
I can hardly believe that the reason there aren’t 61 more Oberweis stores is because of the governor’s economic policies.
He also got in the best zinger of the night.
Here in this state, we’ve had four former governors during my lifetime who have either been indicted or served time. Two Republicans and two Democrats, and I think Mr. Blagojevich is out to break the tie, by the way.
Add your own fact-checking of other candidates below (for instance, a good one would be Topinka’s routine dodging of the questions).
Oh, and in case some non-subscribers think I am picking on Oberweis, here is a little of what I wrote about him in today’s Capitol Fax.
On style points, I think Jim Oberweis won big. His performance was positively Reaganesque… Like Reagan in the early campaign days, Oberweis’ main goal was to show that he is an empathetic leader and not that wacko media caricature. He succeeded.