(upbeat music) (tense music) - Welcome to Capital View, our weekly look at the happenings inside and outside the Illinois state capital, I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Joining us this week are Dan Petrella of the Chicago Tribune and John O'Connor of the Associated Press.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

- Thanks Jen.

- Thanks.

- Let's get started with really what everyone's still talking about this summer.

This is Labor Day weekend, which would traditionally have been the kickoff for the November election.

Campaigns would've really been hitting their stride at this point, but that's gone away a long time ago.

Dan, what are people talking about when it comes to this year's elections?

How do you think campaigns might shift gears as they head into the final two months?

- Yeah, I think we really didn't see with the late primary at the end of June this year, much let up between the primary campaign and the general election campaign.

One kind of flowed right into the other.

I was down in southern Illinois at the end of last week, following Governor Pritzker around on his Working Families bus tour, Senator Darren Bailey, his Republican opponent, has been traveling all over the state already.

And it's really a continuous campaign cycle this year.

I think there are a lot of issues on the Republican side, trying to make crime a big issue, especially crime in Chicago.

And the pitch from Pritzker, so far, really has been about all of his accomplishments during his past three and a half years in office, being the steady hand, the person who's sort of helped right the fiscal ship a little bit.

And so those are the themes we've been seeing so far.

- John, we've spent a lot of time over the last several weeks talking about this undecided voter or the person who has not already made up their mind whether they'll vote, even vote at all in the November election.

How critical are the next two months for these candidates, not just in the governor's race, but all up and down the statewide ticket in terms of getting those voters to the polls and making sure that they're voting for a particular party or candidate?

- Well, it's very important insofar as we've seen elections where one vote really does count.

Richard Nixon lost to JFK in 1960 by one vote per precinct all over the country.

So to that extent, in the gubernatorial race, we just have such a stark contrast between a fairly progressive liberal and a Donald Trump conservative.

The money is way out of balance in terms of what will be spent this fall on that race.

But Darren Bailey, the Republican, can really be kind of a stick in the eye and whether he can sway that undecided voter, I'm not sure, but JB Pritzker is gonna spend a lot of time just kind of deflecting and trying to defend against these claims that Darren Bailey makes.

He's very outspoken, very energetic and kind of an attack dog.

So that's the kind of person who can and I mean, shoot, we saw that in 2016 with Donald Trump, a lot of people said he could never win, but he changed a lot of hearts and minds.

- That's one of the questions that I wanted to get to and get to this point in the campaign, people start taking a very close look at positives and negatives in the polling, voters who have committed to, yes, I will cast a ballot and I plan to vote this way or that way.

But in the last several years, there have been questions about polling and whether those polls are accurate and whether they can be trusted, whether they'll be a surprise come November.

Dan, when it comes to polling, what are the types of things that you watch to get a feel for how a race is going?

- Polling is really tricky too, because right now in Illinois, there's not as many good substantive polls as there once were.

We at the Tribune, used to do our Chicago Tribune WGN polls, which we no longer do.

And the Paul Simon Institute at Southern Illinois University, isn't polling quite as frequently as they used to.

So just the lack of really reliable polling out there is one thing that makes it kind of interesting.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that the Pritzker campaign is going to do everything they can every day to remind voters of Darren Bailey's endorsement from Donald Trump.

Donald Trump came here to the Quincy area right before the primary and endorsed Darren Bailey along with Congresswoman Mary Miller.

And the Pritzker campaign is not gonna let voters forget that in the state that Donald Trump lost twice by 17 points.

The money disparity between the two candidates is also a big, big issue.

I believe Pritzker ended the second quarter with $60 million in his campaign fund, Bailey had about $300,000.

He just got a million dollar contribution from Richard Uihlein this week, but that does very little to close that gap, so we can expect Pritzker to really be blanketing the airways over the next couple months.

- John, how important are those campaign commercials, the mailers, really covering every aspect in terms of getting the message out there?

Without the money, can you have a shot at winning the governor's mansion?

- If you're a praying person?

Sure.

Money trumps all, in my mind.

I think there are a lot of voters who make their decisions based on television ads and mailers.

And a lot of those undecided voters go until the last week before the election.

And in fact, many of them may just kind of ignore, try to ignore all the ads until that time.

So, I hate to say it, but the money really does make a difference.

- Speaking of money, Dan, you wrote this week about campaign contribution caps being lifted in the Attorney General's race because of a great big loan that Tom Devore, the Republican nominee for Attorney General, gave to his own campaign.

What's that going to mean for that race?

Is it going to be tight, do you think?

- Well, it's kind of a gamble for Devore.

He has not raised very much money at all aside from some previous loans to his campaign, he's had a few smaller dollar contributions and things like that, but this opens the door potentially for someone like Richard Uihlein, who has already given his campaign $6,000 to give an unlimited amount, there's no guarantee that that might happen.

But the gamble is that it also opens the door for Kwame Raoul, his Democratic opponent, to go out and raise unlimited contributions.

Governor Pritzker gave Raoul $3 million for his initial campaign in 2018 when they were both running for statewide office for the first time.

He has not given anything yet this cycle, but Pritzker has been very adamant that he's going to be all in, both sort of with the bully pulpit of the gubernatorial campaign and his vast personal wealth to elect Democrats up and down the ticket.

So it really sort is a double edged sword in that race for Devore.

- Sure.

The abortion debate has been making headlines since the Dobbs Decision earlier this summer from the US Supreme Court.

And while Illinois is still an outlier across the Midwest in terms of abortion regulations and what is allowed and what is not, that could be called into question.

There was reporting this week from Dave McKinney, who's been a guest on this show at WBEZ and Chicago Public Radio about the two seats that are up for grabs in the Illinois Supreme Court.

John, when it comes to the Illinois Supreme Court, how critical are these two races?

And could it turn the tide in terms of what Illinois allows in abortion care?

- Well, it depends a lot, in my mind, what gets to the court, particularly through the legislature.

And the legislature, as we know, is held with the super majority in both houses, by the Democrats, the Democrats have made no bones about their desire to protect abortion rights in their minds.

And they continue, despite, in the final week of the session, in April, House Democrats adopted a few additional bills and some resolutions stating unequivocally how Illinois is safe for abortion rights.

And I said, why bother?

Illinois is immune from any, this is before the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe versus Wade.

And this group of House Democrats, they were all women, kind of clucked at me and said, oh no, no, no, it could change in an instant.

But I don't see a big impact there if the court were to turn Republican.

- Certainly.

Abortion remains a national issue and a local issue, Dan, we've seen lots of races across the country in primaries and special elections.

This week, we saw it in Alaska, even.

Where voters really came out to the polls and they said that this is a big issue that they will continue to make their voice heard on.

Do you expect that abortion will be on the ballot, on the minds of voters, when they head to the polling places in November?

- Well, if Democrats have anything to say about it, it certainly will.

They've been very adamant about that fact.

I was at a news conference at the headquarters of Planned Parenthood of Illinois earlier this week and Jennifer Welch, the President of Illinois Planned Parenthood said, abortion is on the ballot this November.

Governor Pritzker is a staunch advocate for abortion access and abortion rights and they really do think it's a winning issue.

I think they look to the constitutional referendum in Kansas that happened over the summer, where, shocked a lot of people, a very conservative state, but overwhelmingly defeated an attempt to change their state constitution to allow the legislature to roll back protections for abortion rights.

I do think that this is an issue that particularly resonates with moderate female voters in the Chicago suburbs, which are really a core voting block and really can decide elections in Illinois.

Three quarters, pretty much, of the state's population lives in Chicago or the surrounding suburbs, so I think that's gonna be a factor in the Supreme Court races that we were just talking about, but the Democrats are going to definitely be banging that drum and I think they really think that that can help them overcome some of the headwinds that maybe they're facing on the crime issues that the Republicans have been talking about, the sort of drum beat of corruption charges that have been leveled at Democrats in Springfield over the last couple years.

- One of the things that was a big drum beat, particularly for Republicans over the last several election cycles, was Illinois's pension crisis, the underfunding of Illinois pensions.

And there's a report out this week in Crain's Chicago Business that talks about the pension funds and the fact that they're underfunded and that maybe it may be worse than people have even thought over the last several years.

John, when it comes to the pension systems, the underfunding of Illinois pensions, historically, is this something that we should have seen coming and what can be done going forward?

- Well, there are a couple of lines of thinking, one, that it is a crisis and in its strictest sense, it is a crisis.

It is woefully underfunded, all five pension systems.

There's another, that it's much ado about nothing.

And this isn't a new situation, as we're talking off air before the show, Dan and I recall a story a few years ago about a report from circa 1917, saying these pension programs are in trouble and we need to do something quickly.

The problem is that it's not sexy.

It's not politically popular to set aside money, take money away from education and healthcare and public safety to put into the pensions.

And if lawmakers had been doing the amount that they'd been required to do each year, that wouldn't be an issue, but they get so far behind that they need to make exorbitant amounts, in the neighborhood, the last few years of $9 billion, which is nearly a quarter of the entire operating budget.

And it got so bad a decade ago that they tried to change the pension system, lower the benefits.

But the problem in Illinois is that the state constitution will not allow the diminution of any promised pension benefit.

So the Supreme Court threw that law out.

So they realized we gotta bite the bullet and we gotta pay the pensions.

The other side of the story is that when we talk about the pensions being 150 billion, or depending on your accounting, 300 billion behind or in debt, we're talking about, this is what would be needed, if today, every person in Illinois retired and was eligible for his or her full pension and the system had to pay out everything it owed right now.

Well, that's not gonna happen.

So it's something that, and that's probably part of the reason that has contributed to the problem over the years that people say, well, it's not really a problem today.

And it's likely not to be a big problem tomorrow.

When is the day of reckoning?

I don't know.

But it's interesting the Crain's Report this week because the pensions have been providing good news in the last few years.

JB Pritzker is campaigning on the fact that he has seen, he has overseen a budget that has helped the state with its credit ratings with the bonding houses in New York.

And one of the things they've mentioned is that they've been putting, this budget year, he put an extra three, 200 million into the pension system, so there's that effort there.

So it's ironic that it's still kind of hanging on there.

- Yeah.

Dan, John puts it really well.

This is not a flashy issue, not one that you really want to spend a lot of time on the campaign trail talking about because it's so complicated and it's so long term and there is no easy fix to this, but should candidates be talking about things like this?

And do you expect that you'll hear anything based on either this reporting this week or in the weeks to come?

- Well, I think you'll hear Darren Bailey, in particular, talk a lot about pension problems and how we need to reform the system.

The problem is as John said, there's very little that can be done short of amending the state constitution or reducing benefits for incoming employees, which they already did about a decade ago.

And that's actually one of the things that over the long term is expected to improve funding of the system.

You will hear Governor Pritzker talk about the fact that the liabilities, the unfunded liabilities, are down this year from where they were the previous year.

You'll hear him talk about the extra money above and beyond the required contribution that they put in, as John said, is sort of part of his message of good fiscal stewardship.

It's a very difficult issue and there's very little that you can do other than, either A, amend the state constitution, which some people would love to see, but is politically impractical in the state, I think particularly with the Democrats in control or B, just pay what's owed.

So it's challenging.

I think one thing to watch out for is the way the stock market has been so volatile this year, some of the gains that have been made over the last couple years may be wiped out.

We may see that unfunded liability number shoot up, depending on whether the stock market sort of levels off at some point this year.

But that's something I'm kind of keeping an eye on.

- Certainly.

We've talked a little bit about Darren Bailey and his campaign for Illinois governor today.

And we've spent some time on that, quite a bit of time, actually in the last several weeks, one of the things that's come out recently is a proposal that he says would help Illinoisans and help one of its larger institutions, the University of Illinois, for example, he's saying that he'd like to have 90% of seats reserved for Illinois students.

And he's got a timeline that he wants to have all of this taken care of, presumably during a gubernatorial term.

Is this even practical, Dan?

I mean, can 90% of University of Illinois students come from Illinois?

- Well, I should start out by saying I'm a two-time graduate of the University.

And my wife is a PhD student and graduate employee right now at University of Illinois.

But I think there are several issues with this proposal.

Right off the top of my head, the first one being that it is international students and out-of-state students, generally, who pay the full sticker price tuition, more than in-state students pay, which helps fund the university and helps keep tuition low for students who are from Illinois.

So if you start lowering the number of students who are paying more to go to U of I, it's gonna cost potentially everybody more to go there.

I think there's also questions about, particularly with the flagship campus in Champaign/Urbana, the selectiveness of the University is part of its prestige, its reputation, its attractiveness to professors and researchers and things like that.

So do you lower the admission standards to meet those goals?

And then other questions about what it does to the regional universities, to Eastern Illinois University in Senator Bailey's district, if more students are getting into U of I in Urbana/Champaign, does that hurt Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern, attracting top tier students from Illinois?

- Does this get to, John, in your mind, the exodus of college age students to other states?

Is Senator Bailey trying to keep students in Illinois or is this a good governance, a responsibility of the state's flagship university to attract and keep young people in Illinois?

- Both ways, I would imagine.

It speaks to me as something to keep young people here.

The downside of that, I guess, is that being a premier institution of higher learning in the nation and perhaps world, a U of I education for a smart kid is a ticket to anywhere.

And I don't think that is the best way to keep kids down on the farm, if you will.

We need jobs.

You're gonna hear that from a lot of candidates, we need jobs, jobs, jobs, to keep young people from leaving the state and going elsewhere to find employment.

- Certainly.

When it comes to education and higher education, in particular, is this a mandate that should be coming from a state level that a certain percentage of Illinois students should be going to Illinois schools?

And what kind of consequences do you think could be there in higher education?

Dan mentioned the regionals, if they're not able to attract the right number of Illinois students, are there penalties that could be imposed?

- Yeah, I don't know what the details of Senator Bailey's program is.

Maybe Dan can speak to that, too, but it seems to me a lot of complications about what responsibility does the university have to get to that 90%?

What happens if it doesn't get to 90%?

What does 90% mean?

Is that something the University can use to promote itself?

Obviously, it would be promoting itself within the state, which, I just don't know enough about it.

- Sure.

As we get to the end of our time here, I did wanna touch on the call for a special session.

Right after the Dobbs Decision, Governor Pritzker came out and said he would be calling a special session of the Illinois legislature asking lawmakers to consider additional protections for people seeking abortion in the state of Illinois.

There was a lot of talk about it right after that in the next couple of weeks and then we've heard next to nothing since then.

And here we are, two months before the election, just a couple of months also before the November veto session.

Dan, will there be a special session this summer or early in the fall?

- It's looking less and less likely that there will be.

Nobody has said 100% for sure that there won't be, but at that Planned Parenthood news conference that I mentioned earlier with Governor Pritzker, I asked him about this.

I asked if it was a knee-jerk reaction to say within an hour of the decision coming down that you're gonna call a special session.

And he sort of pivoted and deflected and said, the legislature has work to do.

They're doing that work.

They're trying to come up with what needs to be addressed, working with advocates to make sure it is addressing the right issues and that it can be done and that they have the votes to pass it.

There's quirks in Illinois law, that you're passing something later in the year that you want to take effect immediately, you need a three fifths majority to pass it.

But if you wait till after January 1st, the threshold goes back down to a simple majority, which is fine and all makes sense, if you can wait to vote on something and make it actually go into effect sooner, that might make sense.

But the question is why there was this promise that has not been delivered on and whether people who want to see Illinois do something about abortion rights are frustrated by the fact that nothing has been done really so far.

- John, is there a fear of unintended consequences here?

The rules for special sessions are very strict.

You can't bring up a lot of outside topic issues while the legislature is in special session, but is there any concern that things could go in a way that maybe the Democratic Party wouldn't want?

- I don't think so.

I think it's more, as Dan said, I think Dan was on the right track, that it's maybe a knee jerk reaction to say, we're gonna take steps.

And now the Governor's able to say the Speaker of the House has put together these task forces, one of which is devoted to abortion issues.

And we wanna make sure we find exactly what needs to be done and do it right and that very well may be the case.

- Certainly.

In just a minute or so that we have remaining, Dan, what are you looking for in the next week or perhaps over the Labor Day weekend?

- Well, I think as you said at the top of the show, campaign season's really gonna be getting underway, even though it already sort of has been, gonna be watching where the money is flowing, what issues arise over the next couple months and for any of those fall surprises that have a tendency to happen in election years.

- John, anything that you're expecting over the next several days?

- Not much.

Thank you.

(all laughing) - With that, we'll let you go.

With a busy week already and as we've said, the holiday weekend is a busy time for campaigns and politics.

Dan Petrella, John O'Connor.

Thanks for joining us on Capital View.

- Thanks for having me.

- Good to be here.

- And you can catch Capital View online by going to our website, WSIU.org or find us on our YouTube channel.

That'll do it for this episode of Capital View, here on WSIU, I'm Jennifer Fuller, we'll catch you next time.

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