THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All...Pritzker declares disaster areas following deadly tornadoes...ComEd trial gets snippy...GOP leadership trying to get rank and file on board with mail in voting
April 3, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
Happy election week (again).
The Chicago mayoral race has sucked all of the air out of the room, but there are other big races around the state. Our third (Naperville), fourth (Joliet), sixth (Elgin), seventh (Springfield), and ninth (Champaign) largest cities all have mayor races on the ballot.
We’re be recording a podcast on some of those races today. You can get the podcast on YouTube or subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, or Amazon.
Weekend thoughts:
The legislature is on spring break. The governor has nothing on his public schedule.
Some changes coming to our subscriber levels soon. Get in now.
SOME TOP LINKS FROM LAST WEEK
YOUR MONDAY FREE FOR ALL
(note: we’re not responsible for paywalls and restrictions from other news outlets)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker visits Belvidere and Robinson following emergency disaster proclamation: ‘a devastating day for the families of the deceased’ (Chicago Tribune)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker visited the Apollo Theatre in Belvidere Sunday morning to survey damage caused by the Friday tornado that killed one man and injured more than 40 adults during a metal concert.
Later in the day, he held a news conference in Robinson, a city of roughly 7,200 people about 290 miles southeast of Belvidere. Three people were killed and eight others injured in the Robinson area, located in Crawford County.
Twelve tornadoes tore through Illinois Friday, the National Weather Service confirmed.
“This is a devastating day for the families of the deceased,” Pritzker said at the afternoon news conference, flanked by various state and Crawford County officials. “There are no words that can alleviate the pain of such a tragic and sudden loss.”
Pritzker declared a state disaster proclamation for Boone County, which includes Belvidere, Crawford County, DuPage County, Sangamon County, and Marion County in southern Illinois.
“The people of Illinois know when others are hurting,” he said. “Neighbors show up for each other to help alleviate the suffering, and as your governor, I really couldn’t be more proud of everyone.”
Related: 28 hurt, one dead in Belvidere theater roof collapse during severe storm (Rockford Register Star)
Weather service says deadly Crawford County tornado tracked 42 miles (Illinois Public Media)
Pritzker issues disaster proclamation after tornadoes hit Illinois, killing 4 (Chicago Sun-Times)
‘You had a choice to make’: Defense paints cooperating witness in ComEd trial as opportunistic (Capitol News Illinois)
About an hour before sunrise on a mid-January morning in 2019, two FBI agents arrived at the home of Fidel Marquez’s mother, where the longtime executive of Commonwealth Edison had been staying.
The agents played a series of recordings of wiretapped phone calls for Marquez, featuring Marquez himself. Agents took him to a nearby strip mall parking lot to continue talking.
Agents laid out the government’s theory that Marquez and colleagues at ComEd committed bribery by giving jobs and contracts to allies of House Speaker Michael Madigan in exchange for the speaker’s help with the utility’s legislative priorities.
As the sun rose on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2019, Marquez grew “scared,” according to both his own testimony in front of a federal jury this week and one of the agents, who took the stand earlier this month. And by the end of those two hours, Marquez agreed to become a cooperating witness in the government’s case. He would spend the next several months with his cell phone consensually wiretapped, arranging a series of meetings with his colleagues while wearing a hidden camera.
“You had a choice to make,” Patrick Cotter, an attorney for Mike McClain, told Marquez as he neared his 20th hour on the witness stand Thursday afternoon. “You could either plead guilty …or you could have a seat over here."
As he made his point, Cotter pointed to McClain and his codefendants, ex-ComEd lobbyists John Hooker and Jay Doherty, and the utility’s former CEO Anne Pramaggiore.
“You decided to become their worker,” Cotter said of the feds. “Take meetings when they wanted you to take meetings…Tell lies when they wanted you to tell lies. And you’ve done that for the last four years.”
Related: ‘ComEd Four’ recording shows defendants vying to stay in Madigan’s good graces just months before bribery case broke wide open (Chicago Tribune)
ComEd defense attorneys grill former VP on decision to become federal witness (Chicago Sun-Times)
Opinion: ComEd’s goal was to make Madigan “happy” (Champaign News-Gazette)
Illinois Republicans do an about-face on mail-in voting: ‘We have to play to win under the existing rules’ (Chicago Tribune)
As another election approaches, the Illinois Republican Party and its allies are facing a conundrum — urging followers to cast ballots by mail while trying not to alienate followers of former President Donald Trump, who continues to insist that mail-in votes are “automatically corrupt.”
Though most elections on Tuesday are officially nonpartisan, Republicans and allied groups are actively backing candidates in municipal, school and library board and other races.
The state GOP is pushing the use of mail-in ballots at the same time it is promoting “election integrity” training featuring a 2020 election denier. But the party’s chairman has acknowledged the GOP faces an “uphill battle” if it doesn’t jump in on voting by mail, even as the party hedges its language to appease the GOP core where Trump continues to hold strong sway.
For decades, Democrats have made absentee voting, and more recently, no-excuse voting by mail, a large part of their get-out-the-vote repertoire with great success. Republicans, even before Trump became a powerful force in GOP politics, preferred in-person voting, usually on the traditional election day.
Three years ago, the Cook County Republican Party, represented by a legal group founded by and associated with the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, went to federal court in an unsuccessful attempt to block expanded early-voting measures enacted by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic lawmakers during the pandemic.
That law, which automatically sent vote-by-mail applications for the 2020 general election to residents who voted in previous elections, was “a partisan voting scheme that will open the door to voter fraud” and “designed to directly disenfranchise voters disfavored by Pritzker, to dilute the votes of those disfavored by Pritzker, and to violate the secrecy of voting in Illinois,” the Cook County GOP and its lawyers alleged in the lawsuit.
Now, vote-by-mail is backed by the state GOP as a necessary addition to boost Republican turnout and the Illinois Policy Institute has engaged in a campaign to encourage its use.
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
Bill ending juvenile court fines, fees passes Senate vote (State Journal-Register)
Chicago State University faculty to go on strike Monday (WBEZ)
Johnson and Vallas campaign down to the wire in ‘most important election in a generation’ (Chicago Tribune)
Johnson, Vallas rally to turn out voters on the runoff's final weekend (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Vallas on the campaign trail: ‘Wonkish’ spiels, boundless anecdotes — and a laser focus on crime (Chicago Tribune)
Johnson on the campaign trail: Banter, invocations of Black forebears — and promises of a Chicago brimming in ‘vibrancy’ (Chicago Tribune)
Chicago mayoral candidate Johnson pays off more than $3,000 in water bill debts to the city (Chicago Tribune)
Rank-and-file CTU file an unfair labor practice charge against leadership over political spending (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Opinion: Will next mayor be beholden to the union that supported him? (Chicago Tribune)
Tight race between Naperville mayoral front-runners Wehrli and White (Naperville Sun)
Joliet prepares for Election Day amid city hall turmoil (Chicago Tribune)
Langfelder, Buscher in tight race for Springfield Mayor (State Journal-Register)
Big mayoral races on the ballot in Elgin, Naperville (Daily Herald)
Editorial: Pritzker's school board ploy demeans election process (Champaign News-Gazette)
Opinion: "When I die…I want to be returned to the earth.” (Illinois Times)
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