June 10, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest
Columnist

Based on a couple of days nosing around the state capitol at the end of the regular session of the legislature, which adjourned with a whimper May 31, I sense that Illinois is in for several years of rancorous political conflict. There is a new sheriff in town (Gov. Bruce Rauner), but the old one hasn’t left (House Speaker Mike Madigan).
Maybe a more apt simile is that of the dueling popes of Avignon and Rome, battling for years for papal supremacy around the end of the 14th Century.
After all, there won’t be a single gunfight to the death between Republican Rauner and Madigan, but instead a protracted “Battle for the future of Illinois,” as Rauner terms it, which appears likely to go on for years.
The combatants come from different worlds. Rauner is a businessman from the rarefied high-finance atmosphere of buying and selling companies; he is used to being king of the hill.
Madigan and his protégé, state senate president John Cullerton, are professional politicians, for whom politics is also a business. They have pretty much run the state legislature since the 1980s.
Rauner wants to take them down.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.