LET’S TAKE A BREAK FROM THE BIG STORIES FOR SOME OLD-FASHIONED CHICAGO POLITICS

In the middle of all the big news stories (the apparently subsiding rioting and protesting, COVID and its seemingly rapidly subsiding economic and financial ramifications (We’ll see.), continuing troubles with China over, inter alia, trade and the coronavirus, etc., it might be refreshing to take a break and get back to some good old-fashioned Chicago politics.

A few weeks ago, Chuck Neubauer and Sandy Bergo of the Chicago Sun-Times reported that former Illinois Senate President John Cullerton is offering refunds of a sort from his Senate Democratic Victory Fund.   Two of the former senators requesting such refunds are under close federal scrutiny and hence are using the money to partially finance their efforts to avoid long stays in the federal hoosegow.   John Cullerton’s reaction that he didn’t have any idea that the aforementioned refund recipients would use the money for legal fees and the observations of a good government crusader on what donors wish the pols would do with their contributions prompted two letters from yours truly to the Sun-Times.   Given that the Sun-Times runs only a few letters per day and the ordinary machinations of our public servants have been drowned out by the demonstrations and the wholesale looting and destructing that has mysteriously accompanied them, neither letter was published.   However, I thought my readers would be interested in both:   

5/24/20

The adjective “disingenuous” is one of the most misunderstood in the English language, probably because its definition is so precise.   Hence, I generally fall back on examples when asked to define “disingenuous,” but good examples are themselves hard to find.   Former Senate President John Cullerton has lightened my burden, however, with his response to whether he knew what Tom Cullerton and Martin Sandoval, former or, at the time, soon to be former, senators facing federal criminal scrutiny would do with the money transferred to them from John Cullerton’s Senate Democratic Victory Fund, to wit:

“I did not know what they intended to do with (the money).   The didn’t discuss it with me.  They decided what to do with the funds.”

Thank you, John Cullerton, for making defining “disingenuous” easy.

Mark M. Quinn

5/24/20

In Chuck Neubauer’s and Sandy Bergo’s “The Watchdogs” report on May 24, Aaron McKean, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, is quoted  

“It is unseemly to see campaign funds be used for legal defense, especially when the situation is egregious.   Campaign donors can rightly look at this and say that’s not how they wanted their contributions to be used.”

Mr. McKean needs to ramp up the cynicism a notch or seven.   Most campaign contributors, certainly in Illinois, could not give a rat’s hindquarters what politicians do with their campaign contributions.   The only thing most donors care about is that the pol to whom the money went knows where it came from.

Mark M. Quinn

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work, or used to work, in Chicago and Illinois politics.