OFF THE RAILS
Local and state transportation officials criticized a “financially perilous” bill advancing through the U.S. House that would prohibit mass-transit projects from receiving gas tax revenue. The measure could cost the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace as much as $450 million a year, while the Illinois Department of Transportation said it could lose almost $900 million over the next few years. http://bit.ly/wsCmjz

QUINN’S ‘KILLER’ PLAN
Gov. Pat Quinn’s call to shift teacher pension funding from the state to local school districts has some school administrators worried about how they will cover the cost. “There is no magic pool of dollars waiting for us to swim in,” said Tony Sanders, the chief of staff for Elgin’s school district. http://bit.ly/x74Btr

- The Rochester school superintendent said “massive layoffs” would take place if his district has to begin paying teacher pension costs. http://bit.ly/yz4Kiu

GREEN LIGHT?
Today is the deadline for Quinn to make his decision on a bill backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that would allow the city to install speed-enforcement cameras covering much of Chicago. http://bit.ly/zM0RMu

- Citing anonymous sources, the Sun-Times’ Michael Sneed reported Quinn would sign a bill. http://bit.ly/z5bxB8

EASY OUT
The CNC’s James Warren writes that Quinn, in his State of the State speech last week, “avoided hard truths, exhibiting little passion for the painful process of cutting expenses. It seems as if he will continue to slice here and there and pile up more debt.”http://bit.ly/yqjQil

Roundup …

Suit, Countersuit: City pension funds and a politically connected money manager are in a legal battle.http://bit.ly/Al0b0c

Welcome Wagon?: Emanuel would not comment directly on racism allegations against the German company whose investment in Chicago he just had hailed. http://bit.ly/wDhWRD

Order in the Court: Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle are backing different candidates for Illinois Supreme Court justice. http://bit.ly/zmaG5b

Breaking a Logjam: The Emanuel administration said it is dealing more swiftly tree-trimming requests.http://cbsloc.al/wmYuSz

Gas Windfall: Large companies could save big bucks from Quinn’s proposed elimination of the state’s natural gas utility tax.http://bit.ly/zrEyXa

Family Guy: Quinn urged low-income families to sign up for a tax break. http://bit.ly/zWboHX

Acquired Taste: Quinn took the cinnamon challenge. http://bit.ly/zUCUct

Driver’s Seat: State Sen. Susan Garret (D-Lake Forest) proposed a bill overhauling driver’s education programs.http://trib.in/AhgYpE

Lost and Found: A lawsuit was filed against the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office for allegedly losing a body.http://bit.ly/xLTbwh

Help from Co-workers: Dick Durbin said he is helping advance Mark Kirk’s Senate bills. http://bit.ly/yV6kUg

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But Gray-Sewell, who runs a mentoring program for girls, and her husband, Barry Sewell, a disc jockey, have taken no chances. They do not allow their two children to play in front of the two-flat they bought and moved into in 2005. When the children want to ride their bicycles, they are confined to their tiny backyard.

Even on the sunniest afternoons, the family is on lockdown.

No place in the struggling South Side neighborhood feels safe to the family these days. In the last few weeks there have been at least two outbreaks of gunfire on their block of two-flats and bungalows.

The latest was a burst of gunshots just down the street from Gray-Sewell’s home on Jan. 16, Martin Luther King’s Birthday. It was 4 p.m. when the shooting started. Gray-Sewell and her children hit the floor and huddled in a back room, waiting for the police.

“There’s no escape,” she said. “Living in Englewood, I feel like I’m robbing my children of their childhood.”

Even as violent crime has declined across much of the city, Englewood remains a battlefield. The Seventh Police District, which patrols most of Englewood, led the city in homicides last year with 60. The Seventh and the 11th District, on the West Side, accounted for about 25 percent of the city’s homicides last year. This year, the two districts have had about a third of them.

Neighbors consider the most notorious killing in the Seventh District the one that happened just after Christmas, when a gunman shot two teenagers and wounded four other people who were standing in line for the dollar special at a Church’s Chicken in the 6600 block of South Halsted Street, not far from Gray-Sewell’s home.

The restaurant reopened almost as soon as the blood was mopped up. There are not a lot of places to eat in Englewood.

Yet, Gray-Sewell, 36, and more than a dozen other Englewood residents, neighborhood organizers and ministers said they were ambivalent about the recent announcement of a police crackdown by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Garry McCarthy, the police superintendent. McCarthy said he planed to deploy dozens of additional police officers to the Seventh and 11th Districts to go after gangs and drug marketers.

Winning the hearts and minds of Englewood will not be easy.

Gray-Sewell said she had frequently witnessed the police treating black teenagers and men in Englewood — including her husband — with rudeness, disrespect and worse. She said she was not sure if her overwhelmingly black neighborhood was about to be rescued by the cavalry or trampled in its charge.

“For the most part, I think we accept that urban living consists of gang violence and police brutality,” she said. “We’re caught in the middle. I think that’s the story of the majority of Englewood residents.”

Residents are not upset about the plans to increase the police presence, said the Rev. St. John Chisum, chairman of the Pastors of Englewood. Their concern is the history of aggressive police behavior. “I support the police who are doing their job in the right way,” Chisum said. “We’re going to talk with the police on how to make the deployment successful on both sides, because banging heads is not going to solve the problem.”

Alfonza Wysinger, the police department’s first deputy superintendent, said the 120 or so new officers heading to Englewood would be permanently assigned to the district, giving them time to learn “the community and know the good citizens from the bad.”

Struggling inner-city neighborhoods like Englewood — plagued by poverty, governmental neglect, high rates of mental illness, lead poisoning, drug abuse and joblessness — have long had a testy and sometimes volatile relationship with the police.

Bishop James Dukes, a prominent local pastor and a member of Emanuel’s public safety transition team, said Englewood was a neighborhood that had “basically been stripped of all types of resources in those key areas that can reduce crime.”

That includes trust, said Asiaha Butler, president of RAGE, the Resident Association of Greater Englewood. “The community doesn’t trust the police and the police don’t trust the community,” she said. “We have a whole lot of work to do.”

In announcing the deployment of extra police, Emanuel said Anthony Carothers, the commander of the Seventh District, was being replaced by Leo Schmitz, the commander of the gang unit. The leadership change came as a surprise to many in Englewood, including Dukes, who stood beside the mayor at the news conference announcing the changes.

“There’s been a revolving door of commanders in the Seventh,” Dukes said. “We’ve had something like six or seven in the last 10 years.”

Several neighborhood advocates and ministers said they felt slighted because community leaders were not informed sooner about the change of commanders.

Race was an issue for some. Hal Baskin, a longtime neighborhood advocate, former gang member and unsuccessful aldermanic candidate, said he found it disrespectful that McCarthy removed a black commander and replaced him with a white one in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly black.

“Out of 13,500 sworn officers in Chicago, they couldn’t find an African-American to be commander of the district?” Baskin said.

Wysinger, the deputy superintendent, defended the appointment. In assigning Commander Schmitz to the Seventh District, the department was only “trying to put the best person in the situation that will be good for the district and the community. He’s a proven commander with extensive gang experience,” Wysinger said.

Gray-Sewell and her family do almost everything outside the neighborhood, including shopping and dining. Every morning she drives her children, Marquis, 13, and Quimaya, 12, to their charter school in Bronzeville, six miles away.

One evening last spring, Gray-Sewell and her family were returning home from dinner when they were pulled over by an unmarked police car.

An officer ordered Sewell, 38, out of his vehicle, put him in the back of the police car and ran a check on his identification.

“The thing that really hurt me was the look on my daughter’s face, the fear in her eyes: What’s going to happen to her daddy?” he said.

The event made his son angry.

“While the officer had my daddy in the car, the other officer was looking in the window at me and my sister,” Marquis said. “He looked like he just didn’t care about what he was doing, that what he was doing was right.”

Nearly a year later, Marquis says he is still angry. And scared.

© DON TERRY for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Alfonza Wysinger, Anthony Carothers, Barry Sewell, Chicago Police, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Police Deployment, Crime, Englewood, Garry McCarthy, Hal Baskin, James Dukes, La’Keisha Gray-Sewell, Leo Schmitz, Rahm Emanuel, St. John Chisum, Violence

Could Adam Dunn, a $14 million-a-year Samson whose hair was apparently shorn last year, boost his feeble .159 batting average? Quinn seems an eternal optimist. As for the state’s mess, the governor, a devout Catholic, needs divine intervention.

His foray into feel-good, progressive oratory was both characteristically heartfelt and revealingly off-key, given our need for leadership, toughness and a fiscal sledgehammer. We should stick his address in a time capsule and see what our grandchildren think.

Of course, part of the national problem is that our grandchildren most likely wouldn’t read it unless it were condensed into a 140-character tweet. Even then, they still might not understand, given that they’re products of a culture that doesn’t link the facts of past and present to our collective futures.

We would rather gaze aimlessly at the horizon and tell ourselves the winds will shift and all will be well. Our own lack of focus was reflected in an address both substantive and scattershot, with no unifying theme or call to action.

The governor’s call for big investment in early education is admirable, and so might be his urging more help for low-income college students. Ditto tax breaks for parents with children 18 and under and for veterans, on whom he again lavished unrestrained praise.

But then there was the call to abolish the state’s natural gas utility tax. Leave it to Quinn to herald elimination of something most didn’t know existed and blow another Grand Canyon-like hole in the budget.

But he stuck to his generally populist guns, and to President Obama’s rhetorical flights of not-always-persuasive optimism.

“The state of our union is getting stronger,” we were told by Obama a week before. Quinn assured: “We’re back on course. Illinois is moving forward.”

Quinn, especially, avoided hard truths, exhibiting little passion for the painful process of cutting expenses. It seems as if he will continue to slice here and there and pile up more debt.

We could use a chief executive to help us understand the need to manage crisis, not just cheerlead and spend even more.

The speech exhibited how Democrats can fail to construct a sound and easily understood narrative about real austerity, tax reform, revenue enhancements and investments to make us more competitive, including in infrastructure.

It was revealing of a bona fide nationwide policy debate, even if you often hear self-righteous, dogmatic nonsense. As Quinn goes down the spend-to-grow path, most Republicans rightfully cringe over yawning deficits and gratuitously deride government.

Who will prove smarter?

An early line suggested that Quinn’s neighboring counterparts — Indiana’s shrewd Mitch Daniels and Wisconsin’s combative Scott Walker — would be more successful draws for business.

The reality so far is ambiguous, noted George Ranney, the president of Metropolis Strategies, a nonprofit regional planning group affiliated with the Chicago Community Trust.

According to Dun & Bradstreet data, 269 businesses and nearly 9,000 jobs left Illinois last year. But the net loss was negligible since 244 businesses and nearly 7,000 jobs moved in, while the state created 57,100 jobs for the 12 months after November 2010, according to the Labor Department.

As Ranney wrote to The Wall Street Journal last week, the Illinois increase constituted a 1.01 percent growth rate — “nothing inspiring, but much better than Wisconsin’s 0.16 percent increase or, better yet, Indiana’s drop of 0.25 percent over the same period.”

He conceded that a credit-rating upgrade for Wisconsin is far better than anything Illinois “has heard (or deserved to hear), but it isn’t likely to send companies stampeding across the state border.”

Quinn’s failure to confront financial elephants in the room remains unfortunate even if “there isn’t much of a constituency for taking the actions that are really going to address the budget and pensions,” said John Mark Hansen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

So, as we’re reminded on Super Bowl Sunday, thank God for sports.

When the governor sits high in U.S. Cellular Field this summer, at least he can’t avoid the dubious private sector spending on Adam Dunn.

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Post tags: George Ranney, Illinois Budget, Illinois Budget Deficit, Pat Quinn, Pat Quinn State of the State

His personality was. And Emery didn’t exactly leave ’em laughing.

In a similar session 11 days earlier, emoting a few bars of a soulfully mellow Al Green tune was like a miracle cure for President Obama’s stiff image. But for Emery, levity wasn’t the best approach — running the Bears is more serious than running the free world. Besides, “soulful” and “mellow” probably don’t come up much in personality sketches of the team’s new boss of all things football.

Not that it matters around the Bears’ grim Lake Forest headquarters, and it shouldn’t. But it’s worth noting that since Mount Ditka finally went dormant as the ever-combustible face of the franchise in 1992, the Bears have employed Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron and Lovie Smith as their coaches and Rod Graves, Mark Hatley and Jerry Angelo as their talent wranglers.

Notice anything? All sane, measured, moderate men, not an exposed hot button among them. Also among them in that 20-year span was one Super Bowl appearance, offset by a lot of mediocrity.

Oh, Angelo could get riled when his methods were questioned or his moves second-guessed, but what followed was most often a Casey Stengel-style malapropism: the deposed general manager defended the “mythology” of the Bears’ due diligence in the Sam Hurd matter. He meant to say “methodology”; regardless, tortured syntax is a poor substitute for a roiling stream of angry invective.

The waters grew calm with Ditka’s departure. With Emery, the Bears were hiring to a type: a calm, careful consensus-builder with whom they felt comfortable, not a fiery agitator who would keep things edgy.

Some observers see an increasingly powerful hand of Lovie Smith in all this; the coach had a say in hiring the man who will function as his boss, and even before the search began, the Bears made it clear that Smith was being retained.

The declaration was interpreted — and criticized — as a harmful restriction of Emery’s power, but it was purely business: Smith is owed roughly $13 million for the two years remaining on his contract. The Bears are the McCaskey family business, and eating Smith’s contract is an expense they would rather not absorb, especially when they remain quite fond of him.

What matters is whether Emery is up to a job that involves more than finding players — he is setting the course for the entire franchise. It’s only fair to withhold judgment until he has spent some time doing that job, and just as fair to say he is in a tough situation.

He was not a “buzz hire,” like Theo Epstein, whose World Series résumé will buy another round of patience among the longest-suffering Cub fans. He doesn’t have the three-title credibility John Paxson brought to the Bulls’ front office, or the royal bloodlines of the Blackhawks’ Stan Bowman, whose father has more championship rings than fingers.

What Emery has is a reputation as a meticulous, industrious grinder who worked his way into this opportunity by hitting more often than he missed in an unpredictable business. But with a long-sought franchise quarterback on hand and coming into his own at age 28, restless Bears fans don’t want to hear about starting over. Put the right guy in charge and it’s 1985 all over again.

Angelo was ousted a year after a fourth division title and a trip to the N.F.C. championship game, the second-best showing of his 11-year tenure. And if the Bears had stolen the two or three wins they needed to secure a playoff berth after Jay Cutler broke his thumb, chances are Angelo would still be around.

But Caleb Hanie’s shortcomings as an N.F.L. quarterback exposed an alarming talent disparity between the Bears and their divisional rivals in Green Bay and Detroit. They masked it for a time with defense, special teams and Cutler’s inspired play last year, but delete the franchise quarterback from the picture and the Bears became the Buffalo Bills West.

Add aging, too. The Packers and Lions were not just better, but younger. Something had to be done.

Sam Hurd’s hiring no doubt hastened Angelo’s departure. The Bears are George Halas’s legacy, and Virginia McCaskey is George Halas’s daughter. She might not be running the team, but she is fiercely protective of Bears history and their rightful place in Chicago. Hurd’s arrest and the scope of his alleged involvement in the drug trade was an embarrassment, compounded by the revelation that he was under investigation in Texas when the Bears signed him.

Hurd was as complicit in Angelo’s dismissal as Hanie. Memo to Phil Emery: character matters as much as 40-yard-dash times in roster decisions.

Then again, Emery didn’t have to be reminded of that. His résumé includes a stop at the Naval Academy, where it matters more.

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Post tags: Bears, Bears Front Office, Bears GM, Chicago Bears, Jerry Angelo, Lovie Smith, Phil Emery

BLOC VOTING
Some aldermen said the City Council’s Black Caucus was not hurt as badly in the remap as their population decline would suggest because blacks remain the largest voting bloc at election time. Although Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not get personally involved, aldermen said they thought his council proxies nudged the outcome in favor of the Black Caucus. http://bit.ly/zWbb6C

HEALTHY PAYOUTS
Chicago Public Schools paid $265 million since 2006 to employees for unused sick and vacation days. Beneficiaries included Arne Duncan, who received $50,297 when he resigned as CPS CEO to become U.S. secretary of education. http://bit.ly/wQGBej

NEW BURGE FALLOUT
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that an inmate who claimed officers working for former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge tortured him into a false confession could get a new hearing. Defense attorneys said the ruling could potentially lead to the freedom of more than a dozen other inmates with similar claims. http://apne.ws/xQJ0yF

‘NIMBLE’ MENDOZA
An Illinois Issues cover story traces Susana Mendoza’s climb from working at a downtown hotel to becoming Chicago’s first female city clerk. Mendoza told how she showed up to a pre-inaugural meeting with gag gifts in hand. http://bit.ly/yIgmsY

Roundup …

Tempest in a Tea Party: U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh talks with the CNC’s James Warren. http://bit.ly/xZrKX1

Man of the People: Emanuel said Mitt Romney was “too far removed from the day-to-day concerns of people who live paycheck-to-paycheck.” http://trib.in/xn24Yx

Charter School Crush: Fox News political analyst Juan Williams continued to tout Emanuel’s support of charter schools. http://fxn.ws/zYIi9S

Guten Tag: German manufacturer announced it would open its North American regional headquarters in Chicago. http://bit.ly/zWgDBh

Due Diligence: Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez created a team to investigate wrongful conviction claims. http://bit.ly/wSFjpV

Jet lagged: Recent layoffs by a vendor at O’Hare International Airport renewed calls for a living wage ordinance. http://bit.ly/xQyozV

Shuffle Board: The board overseeing the Chicago City Colleges will get a new chairman for the third time in two years. http://bit.ly/yzYH4p

Class Experiment: Class tinges the debate over the Chicago Public Schools’ longer day. http://bit.ly/zQekmE

Papa Bear: The family that owns the Chicago Bears criticized CPS’s plans to overhaul George Halas’ alma mater. http://bit.ly/z0B2ro

Spring Cleaning: U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) will run unopposed in the March primary. http://trib.in/yW5UyM

Settlement Watch: The city will pay a $700,000 settlement to a family that alleged police officers broke into their home and tried extorting money from them. http://bit.ly/zHcJYd

Extra Innings: The Chicago Cubs received permission from a city commission to install an electronic sign at Wrigley Field, but another hurdle may loom. http://bit.ly/wY8jkQ

Everlasting Flavor: The Wrigley Building is one step closer to receiving landmark status. http://bit.ly/y1TvVW

Party Central: David Axelrod said he would like Chicago to host President Barack Obama’s election night party. http://bit.ly/AjZpSI

Second Opinion: Two Republican lawmakers criticized Quinn’s push to expand Medicaid coverage in Cook County. http://apne.ws/y6L0Zq

We’ll Take That: Federal prosecutors seized some of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s assets. http://bit.ly/A4nMP1

Green with Envy: The South Side Irish Parade conflicts with Tinley Park’s own Irish parade. http://trib.in/xu8z0U

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The notion of black political decline gained further credence in last year’s mayoral election, when efforts to unify community leaders behind a consensus choice fizzled and the most prominent black candidate failed to win a single ward.

But the recent redrawing of ward boundaries showed that blacks could still wield considerable influence in city politics and be a significant factor in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall.

Although Chicago’s black population dropped by more than 11 percent between 2000 and 2010, the ward map ratified last month did not reflect the full extent of the blacks’ exodus from the city. With the quiet backing of Emanuel, the City Council approved the Black Caucus’s redistricting proposal to preserve black majorities in 18 of the 19 wards currently represented by black aldermen.

The city’s Hispanics, whose numbers have been growing for decades, will now have 13 wards where they are a clear majority, an increase from 10. Still, even as all but one Hispanic incumbent voted for the new map, some activists said they were considering a legal challenge to the boundaries because Hispanics would remain at a disadvantage.

According to 2010 United States Census data, Chicago is almost evenly divided between blacks (32.9 percent), white non-Hispanics (31.7 percent) and Hispanics (28.9 percent), with a relatively small Asian population (5.5 percent). The council that was elected last year (22 white aldermen, 19 blacks, 8 Hispanics and one Asian) does not mirror those proportions.

Black aldermen said the remap could have turned out much worse for them. The community’s strength in elections factored into the more favorable outcome, they said, and helped the Black Caucus get crucial support from Emanuel for their plan, which prevailed over a rival map from the Latino Caucus.

Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward), a former chairman of the Black Caucus, said he did not know definitely why Emanuel had ended up siding with black aldermen, but he believed the voting strength of the community weighed heavily.

“The African-American community is the strongest bloc, voting-wise, in the city,” Burnett said. “I’m sure that was in the psyche of everyone. No one really wanted to be on the bad side of the African-American aldermen.”

The importance of the black vote was obvious from the turnout for the 2010 Democratic primary. Voters in predominantly black wards cast 42 percent of the ballots, according to election data. Wards that include a large Hispanic population represented just 11 percent of the total votes.

“They were the power base,” William Beavers, Cook County commissioner and a black Democrat, said of the black voters, “When these wards turn out, they have more votes than all those Latino boys.”

The makeup of the city’s electorate is tilted more heavily in favor of blacks than the population data would suggest because the Hispanic community is younger, it includes many who are not citizens, and its turnout at elections tends to be relatively weak.

Emanuel racked up a strong showing in the black community in his successful mayoral run. He did not do nearly as well in Hispanic wards.

One veteran alderman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of angering the mayor, said Emanuel backed black aldermen because he would need their 19 votes as important city union contracts expired this year.

On other legislative issues, Emanuel has often contacted aldermen directly to try to win their support. They said Emanuel’s preference for the black proposal was made plain to them through his loyalists in the council, especially Alderman Patrick O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s floor leader.

Alderman Proco Joe Moreno (1st) said O’Connor’s support for the Black Caucus’ map was a clear indication that Emanuel backed that proposal.

“I think it would be naive to say he didn’t have any conversations with O’Connor,” Moreno said.

Declining to name names, Elisa Alfonso, a redistricting coordinator with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said aldermen had told her the mayor’s allies on the council lobbied them aggressively for the Black Caucus plan.

“There was tremendous pressure to get people to support that map,” she said. Her organization is considering whether to sue for ward borders that would be more favorable to Hispanics.

Of his remap role, O’Connor said, “I certainly wasn’t in there being the mayor. I just tried to keep the process moving.”

In an e-mail on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Emanuel said the mayor was not personally involved at any point and felt the final map was fair.

“The mayor is pleased the Council has agreed on a map of our political boundaries for the next 10 years since it allows all city leaders to focus full time on our most urgent work: making our schools stronger, our streets safer and stabilizing our finances,” said Sarah Hamilton, the spokeswoman.

Shortly after the vote, a handful of black and Hispanic aldermen traveled together to Mexico to donate four city ambulances. The topic of the remap did not come up in their conversations, they said.

“Obviously, the map wasn’t to everybody’s liking, but at the end of the day we have to recognize that African-Americans still are a political power in the city,” said Alderman George Cardenas (12th), who was born in Mexico and organized the recent trip. “The mayor wanted a cohesive council.”

Dan Mihalopoulos contributed reporting.

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Post tags: City Council, City Council Black Caucus, City Council Redistricting, George Cardenas, Joe Moreno, Politics, Race, Rahm Emanuel, Walter Burnett, ward remap, William Beavers

Piszczor (pronounced PIZE-er) is running for office in Illinois’ March 20 primary, hoping to unseat one of the state’s most influential politicians, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago).

The dent in her 2005 Honda Accord – and four slashed tires since November that cost her about $100 each – amounted to political payback for challenging Madigan for his 22nd District seat, she said.

“This is what happens,” she said. “This is Chicago politics. But at the same time, to me, Madigan is the root of all evil here in our state. He is the weed in our garden.”

Piszczor, 25, is a legal assistant at a suburban law firm. She said she decided to run for office after buying a house in the city’s Scottsdale neighborhood and witnessing the struggle of middle-class, Hispanic families.

Her block includes several foreclosed homes, an issue that’s personal to her. Raised by a single mother, Piszczor and her family moved to an apartment when she was 15 after losing their home. She had to give away her dog because the new place wouldn’t allow pets.

She said Madigan, the chairman of the state Democratic Party who has served in the Illinois House since 1971 and as speaker for 27 of the last 29 years, is out of touch with people in his district and their problems. She said she grew disgusted with the perceived lack of leadership and decided to run.

(Listen to an audio version of this story)

“I could sit here and watch TV and complain or I can actually get out here and do something about it, and that’s essentially what drove me to do what I’m doing,” she said.

The primary ballot includes two other Democrats, Mike Rodriguez and Olivia Trejo, who live a few doors down from one another about two miles from Piszczor’s home.

Piszczor believes they are plants – candidates running with Madigan’s blessing to split the Hispanic vote and make it easier for him to win re-election. His district, according to the most recent U.S. Census data, is about 52 percent Hispanic.

It is a tactic Madigan has employed before. To protect a favored House candidate in the 35th District two years ago, Madigan’s foot soldiers collected signatures for two women with Irish-sounding names in order to weaken Kelly Burke, who won anyway.

Madigan’s spokesman, Steve Brown, said the speaker has not paid much attention to Piszczor or the other candidates. Piszczor isn’t “registering a blip on the radar screen” and wouldn’t be a serious threat to Madigan’s re-election, he said.

“You’re talking about a candidate whose campaign is not really registering a pulse,” he said. “It’s not a real contest.”

He suggested Piszczor damaged her own car to bring attention to her campaign.“Our experience over time is [that]…these things are usually self-inflicted,” he said. “Those cases have been pretty well documented.”

Piszczor called that “ridiculous” and said she wouldn’t intentionally damage her car for publicity.

Neither of her other opponents on the ballot, Rodriguez or Trejo, seems to be waging a serious campaign. They have not filed paperwork with the State Board of Elections to raise money, and they don’t appear to have campaign offices or Websites. They did not respond to requests for comment on their candidacies.

They both circulated some of their petitions to get on the ballot, but they also had help. One volunteer who collected signatures for Rodriguez, Terrence Goggin, ran against Madigan about 10 years ago, allegedly as a plant. He also did not mount a serious effort and avoided the media.

More than 30 campaign workers helped Madigan get on the ballot with 87 pages of signatures. Madigan did not circulate petitions himself — which is customary practice for incumbents — but Piszczor views it as an indication he is removed from his constituents.

“How can you be a state representative and not go door to door gathering your own petitions? You represent these people. If you’re not out there talking to these individuals, how are you representing your district?” she said.

Brown said Madigan is in the district every day he isn’t in Springfield attending neighborhood meetings, meeting with constituents and working on issues that help his Southwest Side community.

Piszczor said Jim Edwards is managing her campaign. He’s a political consultant who mostly works for Republicans. Piszczor said while he is a family friend, she is not running as an operative of the Republican Party.

“Why would I put myself through this if I wasn’t sincere? Despite my tires getting slashed, despite what I’m going through in this race, I’m not going to give up,” she said.

Kristen McQueary covers state government for the Chicago News Cooperative and WBEZ.

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Post tags: Madigan Opponent, Michael Madigan, Michele Piszczor, Mike Rodriguez, Olivia Trejo, Politics, Springfield

Walsh, a freshman Republican who represents the suburban 8th congressional district, is testament to the potential political toxicity of ideological consistency when it blends with the prosaic realities of redistricting.

In 2010 Walsh upset establishment Republican primary opponents and then Melissa Bean, a moderate Democratic incumbent, despite no real financial help from the Republican Party. In Washington, he has stuck to his guns and voted against the party line when he deemed it insufficiently conservative. He backed defense cuts and became a cable television regular, which helps explain his current reality:

“I am a target,” he said.

He had a tough re-election decision because of legally outrageous redistricting controlled by Democrats in Springfield: either run in a primary in the new 14th District against Randy Hultgren, a fellow Republican freshman, or avoid a primary but face either of two Democrats in a new 8th, redrawn to favor a Democrat.

“I believe I could have beat Hultgren, but it would have been ugly for both of us,” Walsh said. “This is one time that the Tea Party person did what I thought was best for everyone.”

Some G.O.P. observers found less altruism than realpolitik. Walsh might have been an underdog versus Hultgren, they contend, and he could have been beaten up over a child-support dispute he is having with his former wife. He gives himself a bit more breathing room running in the 8th with no primary opponent.

He will face Tammy Duckworth, a former state and federal Veterans Affairs official , or Raja Krishnamoorthi, a lawyer turned businessman and former state deputy treasurer, in a district that personifies the Kabuki theater of American politics these days. There is a lot of consultant-driven, stylized positioning that is often more important than substance.

Duckworth is best known as a disabled Iraq war veteran and represents a party playing to yesterday’s audience.

She ran for Congress in 2006, a function of Democratic triangulation that sought to turn weaknesses into strengths. With her, the party would not be seen as antimilitary or antiveteran since she was a wartime helicopter pilot and pro-veteran but against President Bush’s Iraq invasion.

She typified the moderate Democrats recruited nationwide that year by Rahm Emanuel, then the successful head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But, as was true with Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race, this amalgam of antiwar principles and decorated past met failure. Her campaign was uninspired and she lost to Peter Roskam, who is now part of the leadership team in the Republican House.

So in an arena without many Sondheims or Gershwins, we see a revival of a losing show. But her odds are better this time.

Inspect the towns within the new district created by House Speaker Michael Madigan, and you find that both Kerry and President Obama won them in the 2004 and 2008 elections. In 2004, President George W. Bush handily won in the “old” 8th. And while Obama won the old one in 2008, he did so with 56 percent, compared with 61 percent within the new district.

Walsh has kept just over one-fourth of his existing constituents. His own McHenry home is now in the new 14th District, and he will probably move, though it’s not mandatory.

He may lead Congress in both town meetings, having held 110, and enemies. He said Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, who has been hospitalized with a stroke, was a vivid exception “and has been wonderful to me.”

“There’s a difference between passion and vitriol,” said Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democratic congressman. “Walsh would be better served channeling his passion into constructive discourse.”

Walsh said he believed that the Tea Party would coalesce behind the Republican presidential nominee, even if it is Mitt Romney. Their anger is directed at Obama. As for the president, Walsh credits him for continuing tough Bush-era “war on terror” measures, including the hunting down of Osama bin Laden, but not much else.

He suspects Duckworth will win the primary “and position herself as a quintessential Obama-Pelosi liberal Democrat” against him. If she runs strongly, it will be fascinating to see how much support he gets from the national Republican Party.

The betting here is that it will be ample this time. He may make them uncomfortable, but they do want to stay in power.

© JAMES WARREN for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Congress, Joe Walsh, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Tammy Duckworth, Tea Party

Yet in his speech Wednesday at the Economic Club of Chicago, he also quoted Alexander Pope, Mark Twain and Huey Long. He made a biting remark about Jon Corzine and told a good Enron story.

In both respects, he was quintessentially John W. Rowe.

Utility executives can be dull as beige paint, and Rowe can wonk with the beigest of them. But the outgoing chairman of Commonwealth Edison’s parent company, Exelon Corp., also can paint in broad, colorful strokes. He conjures literature or history to make his points, and he has an earthy humor perhaps born of his upbringing on a central Wisconsin farm.

Explaining why Exelon has not invested more aggressively in new-energy novelties like windmills and solar cells, Rowe deadpanned: “A dinosaur cannot save itself from extinction by mating with a rodent.”

Given the scale of Exelon’s coal and nuclear infrastructure, some of it decades old, Rowe said, it would be unrealistic to expect wind or solar power will be material for Exelon’s business any time soon.

Rowe is one of a dying breed of Chicago chief executives. At a time when companies and executives are transients, often unwilling to delve into the details of civic life, he has stayed put, led his company through crises, and invested not just Exelon’s treasures but also his personal wealth and time back into the community.

With his wife Jean, Rowe has founded two charter schools and spent enough time at them so that the challenges of urban education, he said, “get into your skin.”

Not long ago, such types were commonplace in Chicago’s boardrooms. Sara Lee was run by John Bryan, Standard Oil by George Morrow, and Commonwealth Edison by James O’Connor. Lester Crown is one of the few such civic-minded throwbacks who remain active.

He has never been a pushover. Rowe fixed the problems of Exelon’s broken-down fleet of nuclear power reactors and pushed through a de-regulation agenda that has left his company better off at the cost of giving the public less say in what customers pay. In his last full year of work, he steamrolled Smart-Grid legislation through Springfield and put together the $8 billion purchase of Constellation Energy.

At his valedictory at the Economic Club, Rowe spoke with the ease of an executive at the end of a 14-year tenure who won’t shade what he says just to be politic.

Rowe extolled his company’s environmental record in one breath. But in the next, he rhapsodized about the unlimited promise of hydraulic fracking—the environmentally destructive process of extracting oil and gas from bedrock.

And while many of his industry peers choose to deny that climate change is a threat, Rowe acknowledges the science, then correctly points out that politics will prevent any action in the foreseeable future.

Another example: Rowe is politically conservative, yet he parts company with fellow conservatives on immigration policy. When he mentors young immigrants, he said, he finds it difficult to explain why they should still go to college in a country where they won’t legally be able to work, even with a college degree.

“When the hell did it become conservative to say people can’t work and can’t pay taxes?” he asked the audience. “I don’t get it.”

Rowe acknowledged that few things are certain in the CEO’s corner office. And he did so, typically, with an extended metaphor drawn from literature. He quoted Mark Twain’s description of the riverboat captain negotiating the bends and sandbars of a river.

Bright light and dark shadows each create their own problems and risks, the author explained. But the most treacherous times come when the world is cast in shades of gray.

“You take a night when there’s one of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn’t any particular shape to a shore,” Twain wrote. “A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man who ever lived.”

Rowe’s is one gray head whose thinking–and leadership–are rarely tangled.

© DAVID GREISING for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Chicago Executives, ComEd, ComEd Rate Hike, Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Leadership, Exelon, John Rowe, Smart Grid

-Republicans expect Quinn to explain his plans for funding these programs in his budget address on Feb. 22. http://trib.in/xiOyaP

-Quinn’s camp cited his speech in a fundraising email sent shortly after it ended. http://bit.ly/A5dNoO

SPRINGFIELD SKIP DAY
Despite Quinn’s call for pension and Medicaid reform and bipartisan support for the cause, lawmakers will have little time in Springfield to get either done. The General Assembly adjourned early following the State of the State speech, canceled a work day scheduled for Thursday and decided to meet only two days next week instead of three. Lawmakers are on course to spend 53 work days in Springfield, the least amount of time since 2006. http://bit.ly/yPZQSp

TOO POOR FOR PRESERVATION?
Illinois is in such dire financial shape that even historic sites connected to storied son Abraham Lincoln could face significant cuts in the upcoming state budget. State preservation officials warn that expected deep cuts, coming after reductions of 15 percent and 16 percent in the past two years, will risk shuttering some of the 60 historic locations operated by the state’s preservation agency. http://bit.ly/yVGIt3

CULTURAL CROWDSOURCING
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is drafting a new cultural plan for the city, the first one in 26 years. The administration is seeking public input on the plan, which is expected to include Emanuel’s ideas for an Uptown Music district and “cultural hubs” around the city. Chicagoans can voice their ideas at public meetings scheduled for this month and through the new website chicagoculturalplan2012.com. http://bit.ly/AzynTI

Roundup …

Remap Timing: Chicago’s new ward boundaries won’t take electoral effect until the 2015 elections. http://bit.ly/xa7mrJ

Oversight Restored: The Cook County Board of Commissioners will now have the final say on whether big events like Lollapalooza get exemptions from the county’s amusement tax. http://bit.ly/x4kXZs

Power Prep: Illinois nuclear plants will be reassessed for earthquake safety. http://bit.ly/xgxOAZ

Hometown Help: Chicago bundlers netted at least $4.7 million for President Obama’s re-election in the last quarter. http://bit.ly/zXYAcA

Campaign Cash: U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and former Rep. Debbie Halvorson have similar-sized campaign war chests heading into their Democratic primary showdown. http://bit.ly/Aemtdx

Rust Belt Rebel: Indiana became the first state in more than a decade to implement a right to work law. http://nyti.ms/yGCurh

Seattle Soundoff: Seattle’s police chief during the 1999 WTO clashes there said Emanuel’s new protest restrictions “could well backfire.” http://bit.ly/xwGEUo

Morgue Motion: The Cook County Board tabled a motion by Commissioner John Fritchey to allow the firing of the medical examiner following allegations of malfeasance at the morgue. http://bit.ly/yuLxDp

Digital Divide: Chicago Public Schools lifted its ban on YouTube. http://trib.in/xQEwST

Field Day: The Illinois Sports Facilities Board tabled a $2.6 million payment to the Chicago Park District for Soldier Field repairs. http://trib.in/AAQYor

Recent Relic: The Chicago Department of Transportation discovered a Cold War fallout shelter during Wacker Drive construction. http://bit.ly/wIY10n

Beer Run: Cicero fired the nephew of its town president after he was charged with stealing beer using a Cicero car. http://bit.ly/zsPBg0

Parking Pushback: Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White opposes eliminating free meter parking for disabled motorists. http://cbsloc.al/xqVbuB

Breast Cancer Battle: The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s move to stop funding Planned Parenthood will not affect breast cancer screenings in Illinois. http://trib.in/wdm2bG

Hang Up Your Coat?: Unlike Punxsutawney Phil, Woodstock’s groundhog didn’t see his shadow, meaning spring is around the corner. http://bit.ly/yof5uH

© BEN GOLDBERGER for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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