•May 17, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I fear that the 2018 election contests for governor and legislature, already underway, will be ugly, brutal affairs. Unprecedented millions of dollars will be focused laser-like on convincing voters that the opposition bears all the blame for the incredible mess the state is in, with nary a sou spent on discussion of constructive, though painful, options for getting us out of our mess.

If I am right about this, we will all come out of the process feeling a little grimy and less positive about our state. All this during our bicentennial celebration.

My fears are based on three factors that will combine for a toxic brew.

First, voters are at present blaming Gov. Rauner, House Speaker Madigan and state lawmakers in roughly equal doses, from what I gather. I recently finished teaching a short-course on Illinois politics at Bradley University to 65 “mature” citizens in a lifelong learning program.

After discussing our budget problems, I asked these generally well-educated, successful folks whom they blamed for the mess. With a tad more of the blame pinned on long-serving Democratic House speaker Mike Madigan, the class members otherwise spread the blame across all the elected officials in rather equal dollops, saying in effect, “a pox on all of their houses.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.