What does Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin want from politics? To take over the Republican Party in Illinois? To be governor? A reporter called with these questions. As a retired politico and professor of politics, I get these inquiries from time to time. I don’t know Griffin personally. In 2020, I...
Sheltering in place during the pandemic offered old duffers like me, nearing 81, plenty of time, maybe too much, to reflect. I wonder if other mature readers have been reflecting: Old friends around me are dropping like flies, and others are hobbled by physical and cognitive problems that lack good...
The likely overthrow of Roe v. Wade this month by the U.S. Supreme Court puts abortion back in the crosshairs of American public focus. The polar opposite Pro-Life and Pro-Choice camps appear more interested in ideology than in the practical matter of reducing decisions to have an abortion. Enter Perry...
Cyber-terrorism came to the front of my mind with the advent of the war in the Ukraine. If cornered, a thug such as Vladimir Putin might lash back with cyberwar tools. The Russians appear quite advanced at it, based on the many, damaging hacks of American businesses that appear to...
Illinois is known across the land for political corruption. I always get a hearty, knowing, chuckle when I tell Rotary Club luncheons that I have worked for three unindicted Illinois governors. True: Ogilvie, Thompson, Edgar. The other four across that era were all measured for striped suits: Kerner, Walker, Ryan,...
This past month, a Cook County judge held the director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in contempt of court, an unprecedented action. In this latest instance, two DCFS youngsters languished in mental health facilities months after they were ready to be discharged. What’s new? DCFS...
Household incomes in the United States have become more unequal over recent decades, as measured by the Gini Index of Inequality. American society has become more sharply polarized, as measured by Donald Trump’s continuing, intense support in small town and rural America. I know why, or at least know some...
Candidates for one elective office can affect the outcomes for others on the same party ticket. For example, an unattractive, or goofy, candidate at the top of the ticket can depress turnout of the party faithful, thus depriving all candidates down the ballot of their votes. That is what scares...
What is Adam Kinzinger going to do? What should he do? Friends ask me. His options aren’t good, yet I have a path forward for Kinzinger. First, some background. Kinzinger is the typically conservative, four-term Republican congressman from the edge of the Chicago suburbs, who has been dissing Donald Trump...
Readers will be pleased to know that I have brought on a part-time research assistant (RA). So, I no longer will have to make things up for my writings, and can use real facts based on research, if I choose to do so. What an improvement! New RA Kyle Dennison...
The recent election of Republican Party’s Glenn Youngkin to be governor in Democratic Party stronghold Virginia displays emphatically that Donald Trump conservatism fares better, without Trump. The conundrum for Republican Party leaders, a weak lot, is how to both double down on this fact in 2022, and keep former president...
Whenever I go to a high school or college football game, I cringe at the sight of players on the field, standing as if witless, which they aren’t, looking to the sidelines for instructions from the coaches for the play to call and defense to mount. I fear that coaches...
By Allen Andersen and Jim Nowlan We live in Trump country. Seven of 10 voters in our respective central Illinois counties voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. We are not Trump fans, yet many of our friends are Trump fans. Trump will go away; his base likely...
Barack Obama recently purchased a $12 million Summer place on Martha’s Vineyard and planned to be host to 600 “swells” there for his 60th birthday, until the resurgent pandemic shrunk his party numbers. I thought to myself: Come on, Barack, do you really need an over-the-top mansion on an island...
Former Illinois governor Jim Edgar has created a program that might be the last great hope for struggling Illinois, yet his Edgar Fellows Program has yet to prove its potential. I propose that the nearly 400 Fellows take on the task, never before tried, of building a strong future for...
I had lunch the other day with two friends from way back. When we sat down at a public golf course in Prophetstown in northwest Illinois, I realized each of us has been president of a respected statewide organization over many decades. There might be a column here, I thought....
To borrow a popular sports metaphor, 2022 is likely a rebuilding year for an Illinois Republican Party that is on the ropes (can’t get away from sports lingo). To be honest, chances of the GOP winning statewide offices next year are slim, but not impossible. And unless overturned by the...
Not long after college, in the late-1960s, I was visiting friends on the gentrifying Near Northwest Side of Chicago. My host couple and I took a stroll prior to a night in nearby Old Town. As we came upon the Armitage Avenue Methodist Church, we saw perhaps a dozen young...
It’s 6 a.m. in Princeton, Ill.. I have a six-hour drive to Rochester, Minn., where the Mayo Brothers will take a look-see at my 80-year-old ticker. Some reason for stress. I stop at the drive-thru window at McDonald’s, a mile up the road at the Interstate. My car won’t function...
Democratic Party mapmakers in Springfield have crafted new legislative districts that are so laughably offensive to the Illinois Constitution that the State Supreme Court either would have to reject them outright, or confirm the Court’s unsavory reputation for partisan political corruptness. Illinois GOP leaders have challenged the remap in Federal...
