THE ILLINOIZE: Guest hosted by Bill Enyart...Majority Leader Harris to retire...Davis to announce run for Congress, not Governor...Greg Harris to retire...Redistricting suit headed for court showdown
November 30, 2021
Good morning. First a note from our Patrick Pfingsten:
Thanks to all of you for your kind words, texts, calls, and e-mails over the last few days. My wife, Katie, and I were pleased to welcome our first child into the world the night before Thanksgiving, November 24. His name is William Lawrence Pfingsten, named after Katie’s Grandpa Bill and my Grandpa Lawrence. We’ll call him Will. And we think he’s quite a looker.
As you saw yesterday, our friend Ben Garbarek will be filling in with the Free for All e-mails over the next few weeks. Ben is a fine and competent journalist, and maybe we’ll convince him to tell you the stories of his sit-down interviews with Donald Trump in 2016.
Our newsletter will appear twice a week between now and Christmas, and we’re pleased to present you guest hosts to share thoughts from around the state and around the ideological spectrum.
This morning, we feature former Illinois Army National Guard and Air National Guard Adjutant General Bill Enyart, who served in that position from 2007-2012. He was elected to Congress in 2012, representing the 12th district from 2013-2015.
You can also check out his “Reflections from the River” podcast here.
Thanks to General Enyart and all of those who will lend their thoughts and ideas over the next few weeks.
Let’s get to it.
With Thanksgiving dinner over and the dishes done and Christmas dinner not yet planned, let’s have a conversation that guarantees a family food fight in Southern Illinois. Or, at least, it would in my family.
I’m the product of a mixed marriage. Both my mother’s family and my father’s family have deep roots in Southern Illinois, that’s their commonality. But politically my mother’s family are largely rock-ribbed Republican tenant farmers. My dad’s family, labor, Roosevelt Democrats.
I remember well riding, as a boy, in my Grandpa Dallas’ old green International pickup on a one-lane tarred country road on the way to work in the soybean fields he sharecropped. As we passed a fallow field growing naught but weeds, because it was in a USDA program which paid farmers not to grow crops, in order to support crop prices, he’d growl, “Look at them Kennedy oats.” Kennedy referred to then Democratic president John F. Kennedy. Oats a derogatory term for the unkempt weeds.
Even though the program was designed to aid farmers by keeping crop prices higher, he disdained them, thinking them “socialism,” a crime next only to drinking alcohol or breaking the Sabbath.
I have just as clear a memory of my paternal grandfather telling the black and white television set perched in the corner of their tiny shotgun house during the 1956 Republican convention, that nominated incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term, that “only the Democrats are for the working man”.
Now, of course, both my grandfathers were “working men” and on the lowest economic rungs of our country, yet they held diametrically opposed political views. Surveys today show it would be unlikely for children from families with different political views to marry, yet my parents did. Maybe it was different back in the 1940’s.
My dad was a Kennedy Democrat, my mother, a Nixon Republican. She long claimed after the 1960 presidential election, that the Democrats stole the election in Chicago, delivering Illinois, with its rich slate of electoral votes, to Kennedy, thus insuring his victory in a very close election.
Any of this starting to sound familiar?
Perhaps because of this upbringing I could understand, or at least listen to both sides. Agreeing with policy points on each side and disagreeing with positions of each party. One of my prouder memories of my very short political career is when KMOX radio, which because of its coverage of the beloved St. Louis Cardinals, dominated the AM radio waves in Southern Illinois, labelled me the “most bi-partisan” of the eight congressmen who represented its bi-state listening area.
Tall praise for a Democratic congressman from a radio station also nicknamed KGOP for its editorial stances and Rush Limbaugh programming.
Now I’ve started another dinner table fight. Calling the Cardinals “beloved”. Down here in Belleville and most of the rest of Southern Illinois they are beloved. The Cubs are hated as their arch-rivals. The only time we cheer the Cubs is if they’re playing cross league New York Yankees, an even more hated big city team.
As much as he loved Democrats, my paternal grandfather hated the Cubs. Disabled from a stroke in his fifties, he’d have one baseball game playing on the living room television set and another on the kitchen radio, paying close attention to both games. He’d be cursing the Cubs while cheering the Cardinals. Just as he cursed the Cubs, he didn’t care much for Chicago either. I don’t know that he ever visited the city, but that didn’t stop him from disliking it.
Dislike of Chicago, because of its domination of state politics, may have been the only thing he and my maternal grandfather agreed on. Like many downstaters, they reflexively disliked the big city’s dominant influence. Likely much like upstate New Yorkers dislike New York City.
Southern Illinoisans all too frequently feel abandoned by state government because of Chicago’s dominance. (Let’s start a really big fight here.) Maybe it’s time Southern Illinois go back to electing Democrats who can align with, and influence, those big city Democrats to help Southern Illinois. With a veto proof majority in the state legislature Democrats can, and do, effectively ignore Republicans.
Remember those giants of Southern Illinois politics past, like Clyde Choate and Paul Powell and Kenny Gray? They got things done for Southern Illinois. Okay, maybe mentioning Paul Powell with his shoeboxes full of money isn’t such a great idea, but then Illinois has a long, bi-partisan history of less than honest political figures. My point is that we need to elect public officials who can work to get things done for their constituents rather than political posturing and screaming at the other side. Let’s reserve our screaming for the ballpark.
By the way, my barber is a Cubs fan, but I still like the way he cuts my hair. For years he’s threatened during baseball season to cut the Cubs logo into my haircut. It’d have to be in the back now as thin as it’s getting on top.
To reach General Enyart, send us an e-mail at news@theillinoize.com.
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We’ll be slow to respond to e-mails for a few weeks, but you can still reach Patrick at patrick@theillinoize.com.
DAVIS ANNOUNCEMENT EXPECTED TODAY
As we reported this month, Congressman Rodney Davis (R-Taylorville) is expected to announce a run for the new 15th district in Congress and pass on a a run for Governor.
The formal announcement is expected today.
Davis had been involved in public sniping with Governor JB Pritzker and had made indications he was serious about challenging the billionaire governor in 2022. Instead, Davis will look to win a new congressional district, after being drawn out of his current swingy 13th district.
MAJORITY LEADER GREG HARRIS WON’T SEEK RE-ELECTION
House Majority Leader Greg Harris (D-Chicago) won’t seek re-election next year.
Harris, 66, has served in the House since 2007 and has been Majority Leader, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, since 2019.
“When I stepped into this office 15 years ago, I was committed to making change. I wanted to improve the lives of LGBTQ folks, support our immigrant community, increase the diversity of our caucus and fight for those who for so long have been ignored. As I look back at my time in Springfield, I can confidently say that I was fortunate to do that and more. Therefore, while I will finish the rest of my term and continue leading our caucus through the annual budget process, I will not be seeking re-election,” said Leader Harris.
COURT SHOWDOWN LIKELY ON REDISTRICTING SUIT
In a federal court filing right before Thanksgiving, attorneys defending the legislative maps drawn and approved by Democratic legislators argued new legislative maps “inevitably disappoint” some constituencies.
But Republicans, as well as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and NAACP have argued the maps distinctly diminish the influence of those minority groups, which are protected under federal law.
It looks like it all comes to a head in front of federal judges next week in Chicago.
COVID HOSPITALIZATIONS CLIMB
Via the Daily Herald:
Public health officials in Illinois and throughout the country are bracing for the newest highly transmissible COVID-19 variant, dubbed Omicron, to be diagnosed here.
After first being detected in southern African countries last week, President Biden restricted travel from several countries in an attempt to slow the Omicron variant's arrival to the U.S.
However, many public health officials suspect it's "pretty likely" the variant is already here.
"We know it's in Canada and there's been travel going on back and forth," said Dr. Rachel Rubin, co-lead attending physician at the Cook County Department of Public Health. "It's probably at very low levels."
Vaccination rates from Shaw Media:
In northern Illinois, here is the percentage of the population fully vaccinated by county:
Chicago: 59.95%
Suburban Cook: 63.62%
Lake: 60.53%
McHenry: 58.68%
DuPage: 67.22%
Kane: 58.41%
Will: 58.65%
Kendall: 60.13%
La Salle: 52.18%
Grundy: 51.22%
DeKalb: 50.72%
Ogle: 50.78%
Lee: 53.44%
Whiteside: 47.48%
Bureau: 50.22%
This isn’t getting any easier.
BEFORE WE GO…
Didn't subscribe to read Enyart's plea to elect Democrats in Illinois. What has the Chicago mob done for downstate Dems? Look at the Metro East redistricting map. They are only interested in keeping those in office who go along with their agenda, which is terrible for Illinois economically and socially.
Sorry to see Leader Harris leave. He is a thoughtful and courteous person who brings a calm disposition to the political discussion. We obviously have our differences but share concerns about issues like prescription drug prices.