Pritzker's Political Winter Coming After Voters Reject 'Fair Tax'

Mark Konkol
Updated ·4 min read
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CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker could be facing his very own Michael Bilandic moment.

Maybe you remember the late Chicago mayor.

In 1977, Bilandic climbed over Democratic Party stalwarts before topping a Republican to serve out the remaining term of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, who died in office the year before.

By most accounts, Bilandic was extremely popular until an unexpected disaster changed everything — the Blizzard of '79.

Almost 19 inches of snow fell over two days in January that year, crippling the city thanks to a beleaguered response and bogus political spin spilling from Bilandic's City Hall.

The worst of it might have been Bilandic's public assurances to Chicagoans that CTA trains were running effectively despite the devastating snowstorm.

That was a lie. CTA trains deliberately bypassed stops in Black Chicago. In letters and commentary published the Tribune, City Hall's response was hailed an act of “blatant and institutional racism” that would have political ramifications come election time.

Months later, the predictions came true. The Rev. Jesse Jackson endorsed a former City Hall bureaucrat, Jane Byrne, over Bilandic, sending Black voters her way. Chicago Republicans pulled Democratic Party ballots in the 1979 mayoral primary. Bilandic's short stint at City Hall came to an abrupt end.

Tuesday's election results seemed to highlight parallels between late-Mayor Bilandic's blundering 1979 blizzard response and Pritzker's mishandling of his own perfect storm — the convergence of the coronavirus pandemic and Illinois' shaky financial standing.

Let's face it, Pritzker's public health department — led by an internist and a bureaucrat with an engineering degree and which didn't have a lead epidemiologist when COVID-19 landed in Illinois — was underprepared for a pandemic.

There's no evidence of Pritzker's administration spending money in 2019 to boost the state's stockpile of personal protective equipment, ventilators and testing equipment needed in case of a viral outbreak.

And, like Bilandic during the blizzard, Pritzker relied on political spin to coo the masses amid the coronavirus crisis.

He blamed President Donald Trump for the state's equipment shortfalls that curiously didn't exist in Chicago, where the public health department kept vigilant in the event of a pandemic.

When it became clear Black residents were being disproportionately affected by COVID-19, Pritzker publicly promised a quick increase of coronavirus testing that emails show scientists warned against, and his administration knew the state couldn't deliver.

Black and Hispanic residents — who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus — had to be turned away from testing sites the governor promised.

Black state lawmakers publicly criticized Pritzker until the governor admitted his promise of widespread testing was an overstatement based on his "optimism" and finally — weeks after the virus ravaged minority ZIP codes — opened testing centers in poor, Black neighborhoods.

Even as the coronavirus's spread seemed to slow in summer, Pritzker didn't deliver on promises to roll out the "Massachusetts' Model" of contact tracing programs that helped East Coast governors more effectively monitor COVID-19 transmissions.

MORE ON PATCH: Emails, Secret Report Show Politics Of Science Guiding Pritzker

Now, as a second wave of coronavirus sweeps Illinois, Pritzker faces a crisis of credibility over the pandemic metrics guiding his latest round of social distance lockdowns, and widespread revolt against their crushing economic consequences.

And it has all happened amid a rising tide of pandemic-spurred unemployment and business shutdowns that leaves our already-economically struggling state teetering even further on the edge of a fiscal cliff.

Our billionaire governor wagered $56 million of his own money to urge Illinoisans to support a political maneuver billed as the state's financial savior — a radical move to eliminate the state's flat income tax that was cooked up by House Speaker Michael Madigan to bring in more $3 billion in additional revenue — only to see the measure miserably fail on Election Day.

Also, a state Supreme Court justice backed by Madigan-controlled Democratic Party campaign war chests — that have been stuffed with more than $10 million of Pritzker's wealth — failed to win retention.

In addition, Republicans had expected to lose at least five Statehouse seats Tuesday but wound up beating long odds — and heavy Democratic Party campaign spending — to add two state representatives to their minority voting bloc.

In the deep-blue state of Illinois, where voters overwhelmingly supported Democrat Joe Biden over Trump, Tuesday's voting results forecast Pritzker's political winter is coming.

Better get a shovel, governor.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch