The Spin: In interview, Duckworth says she’d consider a Biden Cabinet spot if offered | Lightfoot on COVID-19 orders and mixed messages | Illinois at ‘crisis level’ with virus, Pritzker says
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In a CNN interview this afternoon, Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said she’d "take a long, hard look” at a spot in presumptive President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet if offered a job there.
And, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has drawn some criticism over joining a triumphant crowd on the streets of Chicago last weekend to mark Democrat Biden’s projected victory over Republican President Donald Trump.
Partisan snark and practical questions followed: Why is she doing this amid a pandemic where we’ve called out Trump for doing the same at the White House and on the campaign trail? There is a difference, she said, when asked about it this morning on MSNBC: Everyone had on a mask, something a video her team posted on social media shows. And, the Democratic mayor who has been in a verbal war of words with Trump said people wanted to come together and let off some steam.
Fresh from a Nov. 3 victory, incoming Chicago-area U.S. Rep.-elect Marie Newman told the gun-control group Moms Demand Action this week she thinks the National Rifle Association “is nervous” as the organization gains political muscle. A onetime spokeswoman for the group, Newman, a Democrat, vowed to focus on gun safety and equity legislation during her first term in office.
And former President Barack Obama, who cut his political teeth in Chicago, is now doing the media rounds for his new memoir. In an excerpt from his “60 Minutes” interview scheduled to air Sunday, he blasted Trump for making unsubstantiated claims about election fraud, but says he’s “more troubled” by Republican allies who seem to be “humoring” him. Obama says the effort to delegitimize a Biden presidency has the domino effect of eroding democracy.
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Sen. Tammy Duckworth tells CNN she’d ‘take a long hard look’ if Biden offers her a Cabinet job
Asked on CNN this afternoon whether she’d join presumptive President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet — that is, if he asked — Illinois' junior U.S. senator, Tammy Duckworth, stopped short of saying “yes.”
Duckworth, at one point a contender to be Biden’s running mate, was asked, “will you say yes” if asked to join Team Biden-Harris? Duckworth said: “I would take a long, hard look,” adding it would be a hard choice “because I love being in the Senate. I really love being in the Senate.”
Making a glancing reference to serving as an assistant secretary of veterans affairs in President Barack Obama’s administration, Duckworth, a Hoffman Estates Democrat, said: I’ve served at the pleasure of a president before and that’s a great honor. So, of course I would be honored to serve in the Biden administration."
She then pulled back again, saying: “But really I’m very happy in the Senate. I’ve got a great job there representing my home state, and I think I can be an ally for him in the Senate just as well as I can in the Cabinet.” Asked to clarify whether that was a yes, Duckworth said vaguely, “depends on the job, but I certainly would take a long, hard look at it, and you know it’s really about where can I best serve 100%, and if Joe Biden, you know, calls me up and says, ‘Hey, you know, I think you should be driving convoys delivering supplies for our troops and I, you know, would take a long, hard look at doing that.’” Watch the interview here.
In the wake of that interview, Gov. Pritzker was asked at an afternoon news in conference in Chicago about who he might pick to replace her. He chuckled and said “boy that is highly speculative,” before adding “I have no idea.”
But he did praise Duckworth, an Army veteran who was wounded in the Iraq War in 2004, as “a terrific person, a real American hero and somebody who’s been highly effective in her job as a U.S. senator. I would hate to lose her as a U.S. but gaining her on the national the national level would be a benefit to the entire country.”
Lightfoot on mixed messages amid the pandemic
During a Friday morning interview on MSNBC, Lightfoot was asked about joining revelers Saturday on the streets of Chicago celebrating the Biden-Harris win amid a spike in COVID-19 cases here and nationwide — a surge so bad that yesterday she announced a non-mandatory stay-at-home “advisory” in the city while Gov. J.B. Pritzer warned of a mandatory shut-down order statewide if the wave continues.
“I will tell you in that big crowd a week ago, everybody was wearing masks,” the mayor told anchor Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC. Read my full story here.
As the pandemic wears on and fatigue over restrictions turn to anger, critics are quick to single out mixed messages from political leaders.
Ace transportation writer John Greenfield, questioned Lightfoot’s impending “stay home advisory” save for essential trips to the doctor or grocery store, but allowing folks to gather at restaurant’s outdoor dining venues (read: tents — it’s November in Chicago). But in the opening lines of his latest Streetsblog Chicago piece, he offers a message of empathy we should take to heart: “Running a city or state in the thick of a terrifying airborne respiratory is a difficult balancing act. How do you help keep your constituents safe from transmission without killing off vulnerable small businesses and contributing to economic devastation?”
Illinois sees another record day of new cases: "We are at a crisis level,” Gov. Pritzker said a short time ago. The number of new confirmed and probable cases of the coronavirus in Illinois topped 15,000 for the first time today, setting a record for the fourth straight day, the Tribune’s Dan Petrella and Hal Dardick report.
More math: Over the past week, the state is averaging 12,345 cases of COVID-19 per day.
Perspective: The staggering number comes after Gov. Pritzker, Mayor Lightfoot and Cook County public health officials all have urged residents to stay home except for essential trips, such as grocery shopping or going to the pharmacy. The governor has said that if case numbers continue to spike, a statewide stay-home order — enacted and lifted earlier this year — could be in our near future.
Trump trumpets progress in the race for a coronavirus vaccine in his first public remarks since since the election: The president “offered a rosy update on the race for a vaccine for the resurgent coronavirus as he delivered his first public remarks since his defeat by Joe Biden," Associated Press reporters Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller write. “He still did not concede the election.” Read the full story here.
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From the Tribune’s Jason Meisner: A Chinatown developer who wore a wire on former Chicago Ald. Daniel Solis and helped the FBI break open a sweeping political corruption probe pleaded guilty Friday to wire fraud related to a South Side condominium project.
See Y. Wong began cooperating with the FBI in May 2014 after he was caught up in the fraud scheme and agreed to secretly record Solis in hopes of receiving a reduced sentence once he was charged, according to a federal search warrant affidavit unsealed in 2019.
Wong’s cooperation helped lead Solis in turn to wear a wire for the FBI for two years, recording numerous conversations with then-powerful Ald. Edward Burke, the Tribune has previously reported. Burke is facing public corruption charges for allegedly trying to shake down business owners seeking help at City Hall.
A search warrant affidavit filed in 2016 revealed that Wong also secretly recorded a meeting in August 2014 with Solis, House Speaker Michael Madigan and representatives of a Chinatown hotel project at Madigan’s law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, which specializes in real estate tax appeals. Read the full story here.
Marie Newman’s priorities: Gun control as a means of fighting violence
With a more liberal platform, Marie Newman ended a political dynasty in Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, a collection of southwest suburbs and Chicago’s Southwest Side, in the Democratic primary. She beat U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, a social conservative from Western Springs who inherited the seat from his father.
After besting a Republican candidate in last week’s election, Newman, of La Grange, joined leaders from Moms Demand Action, whose formation was inspired by the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, to talk about how the organization has become a political “force” both in helping candidates for public office and in helping write legislation.
Newman, who was once a spokeswoman for the organization, said, "I think that’s why not just the NRA is very nervous about Moms Demand Action, but many organizations see us as a policy force around addressing the roots of violence in our nation, because that’s really one of the critical reasons why we have gun issues in our nation right now.”
More than a year ago, the U.S. House passed the bipartisan HR 8, which would expand background checks to cover all private firearm sales, including those at gun shows, conducted online or through classified ads. But the Republican-controlled Senate has mothballed he measure. While Newman said she’ll make an effort to push senators in the other chamber to pass the measure, she said there are other gun control avenues to pursue and reminded listeners that it is a key part of fighting gun violence.
“Let me also say that I view my role is to not just fight for HR 8 in the next Congress, but to fight for every gun safety law ... on the books. I believe that we can get to a point where we’re addressing both sides of the equation — that we’re addressing gun violence from two points — from the root cause of violence, which are racial inequity, economic inequity and health care inequity, and all of those pieces. Once we can get those addressed, alongside of some of these measurements like HR 8, I think we’re going to be in a much better position in this country, and my tenure in Congress will be dedicated to making sure that inequity is addressed, as well as gun violence in this nation.”
Obama discusses Trump’s election fraud claims on ’60 Minutes'
The CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” released a snippet of Scott Pelley’s interview with former President Obama scheduled to air Sunday night. Pelley asks him what “these false claims of widespread election fraud (are) doing to our country right now?”
Obama says: “They appear to be motivated in part because the president doesn’t like to lose and never admits loss. I’m more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally. And that’s a dangerous path.”
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