After a breathless 2024 general election season in which the Democrats sidelined their incumbent from running for reelection with just months before votes were cast and Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt, many voters have welcomed the break from elections.
That’s over, folks. Time to focus and think about what you soon must do in the polling station.
There’s lots of evidence that Americans, both nationally and in Illinois and Chicago, are no happier now than they were in the lead-up to Nov. 5, 2024. So, while midterms typically aren’t as dramatic as presidential cycles, there’s more at stake in this year’s campaigns than is usually the case two years after a president is elected.
Congressional races, of course, will serve as a referendum on Trump 2.0, which has been considerably more, ahem, intense than the early stages of Trump’s first presidency. Illinois, in particular, will witness a true changing of the guard in terms of its representation in the nation’s capital, with senior Sen. Dick Durbin retiring after this term and five veteran Chicago-area Democratic House members opting not to stand for reelection, either, for various reasons.
We look forward to new blood in D.C., whoever emerges from the primaries in March, where voters in these open seats will struggle to keep all the players straight. We’ll try and help there.
Broadly speaking, from our vantage point the challenges for Democrats and Republicans both involve Trump, who sucks up most of the political oxygen, but they diverge after making that basic point. For the many Democrats vying to succeed veteran House members Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis, Robin Kelly, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Jesus “Chuy” García, it won’t be sufficient to assert that they’ll oppose Trump. Of course they will. What we’ll seek are lawmakers who have practical ideas for overcoming the crippling partisan warfare on many crucial policy fronts long crying out for action. Think immigration reform, taxes, entitlement reforms, energy policy, health care. That’s for starters.
The same holds true in the race to succeed Durbin, where Krishnamoorthi and Kelly seek to move to the upper chamber along with Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton.
For Illinois Republicans hunting long-shot victories in the blue districts that are up for grabs, as well as in the race for Senate, the challenge will be convincing voters they’d be problem solvers and compromisers rather than rubber stamps for Trump. Independence from an unpopular administration — and the governmental chaos that comes with the Trump presidency — is paramount.
That doesn’t mean Republicans shouldn’t stand for traditional conservative policies. After all, the last major immigration law was signed nearly four decades ago by a certain rock-ribbed Republican named Ronald Reagan. In many respects, traditional conservatism is just as “anti-Trump” as the prescriptions coming from Democrats.
As we begin our endorsement process leading to the March 17 primary, we’ll be looking for problem solvers rather than fire-breathers.
Shifting to state and local races, our views mirror our feelings about what’s at stake in the nation’s capital.
Gov. JB Pritzker is running for a third term, but his evident ambitions for the White House (assuming he wins this third term as governor) looms large over the race. Illinois under Pritzker has made fiscal progress in terms of clearing the massive backlog of unpaid bills left from the 2010s and strengthening the state’s credit.
But Illinois’ economic performance remains underwhelming, and even reasonably popular governors often struggle in third terms as voters simply begin tuning them out. In what has become a Groundhog Day experience, Illinois faces a budget deficit topping $2 billion for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Along with Pritzker, the Democrats who dominate Springfield with supermajorities in both chambers, have plugged recent deficits mainly with a hodgepodge of taxes (sports gambling has proved a highly popular pot of cash for the Dems) that have enabled the ruling party (so far) to evade tapping more of ordinary Illinoisans’ incomes.
We believe Springfield Democrats need to think beyond the endless quest for new revenue sources about solutions to the state’s fiscal problems. The supermajorities — kept in place largely through gerrymandered districts that keep Republicans underrepresented in the Land of Lincoln — aren’t serving the state’s best interests. House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s informal rule that nothing significant will be brought to a vote in the chamber he oversees unless Democrats alone can pass it keeps cost-cutting options and pension reform from getting serious consideration.
The election of more Republicans and more centrist Democrats in Springfield could force Welch to scrap that absurd requirement. He might not say so out loud, but we suspect even Pritzker would welcome more pragmatists in the legislature.
Locally, a pair of Cook County races is generating far more heat than they normally do. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, seeking a fifth term, is getting a spirited challenge from Chicago Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, after cruising to reelection in her past campaigns. And Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, seeking a third term, faces Patrick Hynes, nephew of former Assessor Tom Hynes. Hynes has the backing of the Cook County Democratic Party, much of the real estate industry and some influential unions while the independently wealthy Kaegi can bankroll his own race.
Anger over property taxes — particularly in Chicago, where tax bills soared late last year in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods thanks to sagging downtown commercial property values — will be front and center in both those races.
Sure, Cook County government under Preckwinkle hasn’t raised its property tax levy. But an information-technology contract gone horribly awry on her watch resulted in late bills last year that required school districts throughout the county to borrow and pay substantial interest just to make payroll and cover basic expenses.
Chicago-area residents essentially have hit their limit on property taxes, which is the primary revenue source for most local governments.
State government bears a substantial share of the blame, as Springfield over the past several years has snatched portions of tax revenues it used to share with municipalities in order to balance its own budgets. We suspect these county races will begin to deliver that message of taxpayer anger well beyond the walls of the county building in downtown Chicago.
All of the other contests won’t lack for intensity either given how most Illinoisans feel. Just watch.
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