St. Louis Post-Dispatch endorses Dems Giannoulias for IL Senate & Quinn for Governor of IL

[WI_DEM]

(post-dispatch reaches quite a few people in downstate Illinois):

Illinois voters have two major offices to fill in the Nov. 2 election and two excellent candidates to fill them. Alas, they're running for the same office.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mark S. Kirk of Highland Park and Democratic state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias of Chicago are seeking to fill President Barack Obama's former seat in the U.S. Senate. Question marks exist, but both are intelligent, with solid temperaments and well-qualified to fill the seat now being kept warm by Democrat Roland Burris.

For reasons we'll discuss shortly, we recommend Mr. Giannoulias. But the state would have been better served had he or Mr. Kirk entered their party's primary for governor.

Things could be worse in the governor's race - Rod Blagojevich was planning a third term - but neither Democrat Pat Quinn, the incumbent, nor Republican state Sen. Bill Brady offers the kind of strong leadership so desperately needed in Springfield.

In the governor's race, one issue matters more than all the others combined: How to close a budget deficit of $13 billion without profound repercussions to essential state services.

Mr. Brady, 49, a Bloomington homebuilder, doesn't seem to understand that, despite having spent 17 years as a member of the state House and Senate. He has not offered anything resembling a specific, comprehensive plan to fix the state's budget problems.

Instead he has said he'll cut a "dime on a dollar," a 10 percent, mostly across-the-board cut in all programs, and conduct a "forensic audit" of the state's finances to find the rest of the savings. The numbers don't add up. Nor does the reasoning.

Former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar called it a "naive approach . . . there are some programs in state government that the difference between life and death. Those programs you can't cut."

Mr. Quinn, 61, inherited the mess after succeeding to the governor's office after Mr. Blagojevich's impeachment. He had the courage to say that a permanent budget fix means tax increases. He finally began to confront, albeit tepidly, the state's out-of-control pension costs.

But Mr. Quinn was an accidental governor who came to office without the political capital needed to stand up to House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, the two Chicago Democrats who actually run state government.

He wound up patching and borrowing, the same kick-the-can-down-the-road policies that brought Illinois to its parlous state.

Mr. Quinn is a man whose heart is the right place. But he'll need some steel in his spine to build a coalition that can solve the huge budget crisis. On his heart, and on the chance he'll find more spine, we recommend Pat Quinn for governor.

Alexi Giannoulias is the choice for Senate because he understands the existential threat caused by the reality that 20 percent of Americans control nearly half of the nation's earned income and 84 percent of all forms of wealth.

"Income inequality has been the cause of the downfall of every great nation," he said.

The Senate is a place where those inequalities can begin to be reversed, through tax policies, job creation and public spending on infrastructure and education.

Mr. Giannoulias' age - he is 34 - and inexperience - one term as state treasurer - give us pause. So do questions about his role at his family's now-closed Chicago bank. Is that role a disqualifier? No, no more than Mr. Kirk's embellishments of his military record.

Mr. Kirk, 51, with 10 years in the House representing a moderate-to-liberal North Shore district in Chicago, has a strong edge in experience. He was a pro-choice Republican with a "D" rating from the National Rifle Association who voted for the cap-and-trade bill now so despised by the GOP.

He's since recanted as he scurries to appease the party's base. Who is he, really? Voters don't know, and that's a problem.

Our recommendations in other statewide races in Illinois:

• Attorney General: Lisa Madigan (D) over Steve Kim (R).

• Treasurer: Dan Rutherford (R) over Robin Kelly (D)

• Comptroller: Judy Baar Topinka (R) over David Miller (D).

• Secretary of State: Jesse White (D) over Robert Enriquez (R).

We recommend a No vote on the recall amendment, which would allow for the recall of a governor. The process has safeguards, but not enough to prevent a well-financed organization from distorting the elective process.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/article_703c39be-d8b5-11df-882b-00127992bc8b.html

[jaxx]

1. Glad to see that.

We need Democrats.