The Spin: Final countdown to Trump vs. Biden begins tomorrow | Biden’s big Chicago fundraisers | Pritzker has Illinois National Guard ‘in state of readiness’ in case of election unrest
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
On this election eve, a little ’80s Swedish glam rock is in order to mark the final countdown.
Republican President Donald Trump is in Kenosha tonight, one of five rallies in four states in a closing pitch to voters in key battleground states. Trump has made double the number of stops in the final campaign’s final stretch compared with former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, the Tribune’s Bill Ruthhart reports. Their travel during the closing weeks illustrates the candidates’ different styles — Trump has downplayed COVID-19 with big rallies, briefly pausing his campaign after catching it, while Biden has had smaller and fewer events.
Biden is en route to being the first presidential candidate to raise $1 billion, according to the Federal Election Commission and fundraising watchdog organization Center for Responsive Politics, and now we know the wealthy and well-connected Chicagoans who helped make that happen. Over the weekend, Biden released his list of campaign bundlers who helped him raise at least $100,000 during the cycle.
Trump, who trails Biden in fundraising so far this cycle, has not released such a list, but he’s notched a healthy $600 million and counting this election cycle, according to the FEC.
A reminder that Nov. 3 is Part 1 of a series of upcoming events and deadlines to pick the next president as set forth by the U.S. Constitution and federal law. In December, the Electoral College makes a final decision and in January, Congress certifies the results. But by now we know Trump and Biden have threatened to take legal action over the vote count, and the complicated Electoral College process could get even messier.
And my Tribune colleague Jamie Munks writes: “Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday urged patience in the coming days as election authorities grapple with historic levels of mail-in ballots, and said the Illinois National Guard is in a ‘state of readiness,’ amid the possibility of election-related unrest.” Read the rest of her story here.
Welcome to The Spin.
From the Tribune’s Rick Pearson: To some degree, every election is a referendum, and perhaps never more so than in a presidential year.
But peeling back the Nov. 3 ballot beyond the decision on whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden should sit in the White House, there are a number of issues and candidacies that present their own referendums.
There’s a proposed constitutional amendment that would change Illinois from a flat-rate income tax to a graduated-rate levy. That top-of-the ballot item also could present a referendum on voter trust in state government or how they view the state’s financial future.
In Cook County, the race between reelection-seeking Democratic State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Republican Pat O’Brien could be considered a referendum on her first term amid controversy as well as what’s left of the power of the county’s machine to deliver. Read the full story here.
Related: Graduated-rate tax amendment rally gets sidetracked by Toni Preckwinkle pitch for Kim Foxx’s reelection — Pearson has that story here.
Everything you need to know if you still need to vote — the Tribune has the details here.
In Illinois, 3.45 million voters have cast their ballots so far — and what it means: It’s nearly evenly divided between those who voted by mail and those who cast a ballot at early voting sites, according to the U.S. Elections project. The conventional wisdom is that early voters are backing Biden, but experts count on Republicans to make up the difference tomorrow, and polling shows the race is neck and neck.
Final FiveThirtyEight polling averages: Track the race for president in the key battleground states —The Tribune’s Bill Ruthhart, Chad Yoder and Jonathon Berlin take a look, here.
Related: Chicago labor unions say a general strike is an option if there are threats to a free and fair election Tuesday, the Tribune’s Hannah Leone reports.
Judge Diane Gordon Cannon, longtime Cook County jurist, dies after long medical leave: She had quietly declined to seek retention on this year’s ballot, the Tribune’s Megan Crepeau reports.
The Next News Network is a YouTube channel produced in Chicago’s western suburbs that pumps out a dozen or so aggressively partisan videos each day, the Tribune’s John Keilman reports. While they tend to stick to praising Trump and attacking his critics, in just the last few months, the channel’s owner and host, Gary Franchi, has showcased several baseless allegations, including a suggestion that antifa might be behind the Western wildfires, an osteopath’s insistence that the COVID-19 pandemic was “a false flag operation” and a claim that Democratic politicians had members of Seal Team 6 killed to cover up a dirty deal with Iran.
The channel’s growth has continued even as YouTube has pledged to crack down on conspiracy theorists and misinformation. Read the story here.
Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.
From the Tribune’s Rick Pearson: In deeply blue Illinois, expectations are for a quick result in the presidential race — the Democratic candidates have taken the state by 17 percentage points in the previous two elections. Illinois also processes its mail-in and early voting ballots as they are received through Nov. 1, stopping short only of hitting the total button, which is done when the ari close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Barring an overwhelming result one way or the other, Illinois voters are unlikely to know the outcome of the most expensive state contest on this year’s ballot — a proposed state constitutional amendment asking voters to end the state’s mandated flat-rate income tax system and replace it with a graduated-rate structure that increases the tax levy along with income.
Election Day also figures to feature some close local races. Two years ago in central Illinois’ 13th Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Taylorville won reelection by 2,058 votes out of nearly 271,000 ballots cast over Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigran of Springfield. Read the full story here.
Chicago’s Election Day should be ‘no different’ from past years and most of the city’s results should be in by 10 p.m., election official says — The Tribune’s Kelli Smith has the details here.
In Chicago’s collar counties, some clerks said they expect election night to proceed as usual and some winners will be quickly identified, Sarah Freishtat with the Aurora Beacon-News reports. Full story here.
The Electoral College is the true body that decides the winner and loser in the presidential race, delivering the winning 270 or more votes to the victor. But there is a scenario where that process could get gummed up in partisan politics and even result in a tie (that would be broken by the U.S. House of Representatives). Either way, it could draw out the process. Reuters breaks it down here.
Boarded-up windows, limited hours as Chicago businesses brace for possible Election Day unrest
From the Tribune’s Lauren Zumbach and Ryan Ori: Between the civil unrest this summer, the coronavirus pandemic and a divisive election whose outcome may not be known Tuesday, business owners are weighing the prospect of further unrest in a way they haven’t during past elections, said Eric White, executive vice president at security firm Brosnan Risk Consultants.
Shoppers may see more stores boarding up or closing early Monday and Tuesday as businesses take extra safety precautions, and make sure employees have time to vote.
On and around Clybourn Avenue, the retail corridor on the city’s North Side that has been hit hard by property damage and theft during previous unrest this year, many stores were boarded up as of Monday morning. A few crews were in the area covering up windows. Read the full story, which details stepped up police patrols and other security measures across the city, here.
Biden’s big city, state fundraisers
Over the weekend, the Biden campaign released its list of bundlers — the deep-pocketed and well-connected who’ve raised $100,000 or more for Biden’s campaign or affiliated joint fundraising committees.
Of the 800-plus donors, 30-plus hail from Illinois — largely Chicago and the suburbs.
The bold-faced names in politics include Democratic U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth, of Hoffman Estates and Dick Durbin, of Springfield, along with U.S. Reps. Bill Foster of Naperville and Brad Schneider of Deerfield.
Going back to the Obama-Biden days: Penny Pritzker, former Commerce secretary in the Obama-Biden White House; Desiree Rogers, former Johnson Publishing executive and former White House social secretary in the Obama administration; Dania Leemputte, a local donor to the former president’s campaign; and Michael O’Neil, one-time Obama White House aide; Vicki Heyman and her husband, former Canadian Ambassador Bruce Heyman, a key fundraiser for former President Barack Obama.
Also in the political world: Valerie Alexander, Sen. Durbin’s one-time chief of staff; Jake Braun, Biden’s political director in Iowa and executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy; a William Brodsky, former longtime CEO of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange; Linda Rae Sher, founder of the Highland Park-based Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs, along with Marcia Balonick, who is the organization’s executive director.
Some of the city’s most high-profile people in business also pitched in, including: John W. Rogers, chairman and CEO of Ariel Investments; Michael Sacks, GCM Grosvenor chairman and CEO; venture capitalist Glen Tullman; Lee Rosenberg, CEO of Rosenberg Advisory; Roger Hochschild, Discover Financial Services CEO; and Ryan VanGrack, deputy general counsel at Chicago-based Citadel hedge fund and investment firm run by billionaire Ken Griffin, who tends to back Republican candidates and causes.
Legal and business world: Billionaire Rivers Casino co-owner Neil Bluhm, and his daughter Leslie Bluhm, a philanthropist; Catherine and Brent Gledhill, an investment banker; Richard Chelsey, comanaging partner of law firm DLA Piper U.S.; and attorney Mike Clifford.
A line of local attorneys also helped with big-ticket fundraising, including Joseph Power, William Singer and Todd A. Smith.
Celebrity Star Jones, who married Chicago attorney Ricardo Lugo, also was among the high-profile.
COVID-19 — State hits early goal of 3,800 contact tracers — is it enough?
As Illinois finally nears its goal of employing 3,800 people to track down and warn the contacts of people infected with COVID-19, experts say that number may no longer be sufficient to help control the virus.
He notes that number was an initial recommendation set by the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which called for having 30 tracers for every 100,000 residents. The Johns Hopkins center initially concurred with that goal, with the hope that the case count curve would be flattened by the time they were all in place.
Since then, however, the center has revised those numbers upward for each state, based on case counts. Illinois would now need 8,300 or more contact tracers to handle the caseload, the center estimated in its recent report.
Today: 6,222 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 20 deaths reported in Illinois — More here.
Pandemic recession becomes ‘shecession’ as more working moms are forced to quit jobs, the Tribune’s Katie Surma writes in a new piece here.
Thanks for reading The Spin, the Tribune’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons. Have a tip? Email host Lisa Donovan at ldonovan@chicagotribune.com.
Twitter @byldonovan
———
©2020 the Chicago Tribune
Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
