* Carol Marin points to a good reason why state parties and legislative caucus committees ought to be kept out of primaries as much as possible…
[At the building housing the Chicago and Cook County election boards], an ant army of Madigan’s foot soldiers, between 35 and 40 of them, swarmed the place, furiously combing through the candidate petitions of their fellow Democrat and perpetual thorn in the side, state Sen. Rickey Hendon.
Hendon, an 18-year legislative veteran and African American, had his own handful of troops on site returning the favor by combing through the petitions of Madigan’s assistant majority leader, state Rep. Arthur Turner.
Rep. Art Turner and Sen. Rickey Hendon are old enemies, but Hendon may have precipitated this latest fight by combing through the petitions of Turner’s son, who is running for Turner’s House seat. Turner’s son, also named Art, had to refile new petitions Monday because the initial batch may have been insufficient to stay on the ballot. The elder Turner and Hendon are both running for lieutenant governor, and that’s what Madigan’s people were looking at.
More from Marin…
Hendon, not a reformer, certainly sounded like one last night when it came to the power that the real reformers tried but failed to take away from Madigan last week in the form of campaign finance reform.
“Madigan is using Democratic state money against me,” he protested, referring to that part of the ethics bill that failed. “What’s an ethics bill if you don’t change the power of the leader?”
Actually, the reformers did take some of that power away from Madigan by capping leader and party contributions in primaries. But I assume that Marin and Hendon were referring to the original language in the bill Gov. Quinn vetoed…
A State central committee organized under Alternative B of this Section shall not make any contributions, expenditures, or electioneering communications on behalf of a candidate for nomination for any office in that party’s primary election. The State central committee also shall not endorse candidates for nomination in its party’s primary election.
Speaker Madigan more than implied last week that the governor was OK with getting rid of that language once Lisa Madigan dropped out of the governor’s race. Quinn should’ve stuck to his guns.
…ADDING… A point I should have made is that the Democratic Party of Illinois’ central committee - an elected body - “chose” not to slate candidates. Actually, they never voted not to slate. Chairman Mike Madigan made that decision on his own. But, since the party didn’t slate, the chairman shouldn’t be using party resources to kick off a candidate unless it’s some sort of emergency situation. Even then, the central committee could always meet via teleconference to take that up. This is one guy making the decisions for questionable purposes. Not good.
* Meanwhile, the Rockford Register Star says Gov. Quinn should sign the campaign finance reform bill…
The campaign finance reform bill passed last month is far from perfect, but it’s better than what lawmakers came up with during the spring session and better than what was suggested as the fall veto session started.
Illinois deserves better. But considering we’ve gone from no limits to reasonable limits on everyone but party leaders during the general election, we think Gov. Pat Quinn should sign the legislation.