(stoic music) (up-tempo contemplative music) - Welcome to "Capital View", our weekly look inside and outside the Illinois State Capital.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

With us this week are Hannah Meisel of NPR Illinois, and Amanda Vinicky of Chicago Tonight at WTTW.

Ladies, thanks for joining me.

- Sure thing.

- Thank you.

Let's start a little bit, as you can see behind me, I'm actually in the Illinois House this week.

We expected to see a special session of the Illinois legislature by now.

Governor Pritzker pledged to call one, and the legislative leaders said, "We're going to be available for this."

But yet we still haven't seen it.

This is the week of the Illinois State Fair, so a lot of people will be in town anyway.

Amanda, what are you hearing?

Will there be a special session before the fall veto session?

- Jen, I assume we'll be hearing at the State Fair, presumably the sound of goats, pigs, whatever else.

Cows mooing.

Not the sound of any debate going on in the legislature.

Hearing crickets really, when it comes to talk of a special session.

Except for, you did have the organization GPAC, which is a organization, a lobbying group, that tries to fight for gun control, saying, "Hey, where are you?"

This special session was initially going to be just about abortion, but in the wake of the mass shooting in Highland Park there's been additional calls for action as well on something like an assault weapons ban.

But no, we have not heard any talk.

It's one of those things that I think it is fair to continually question Democrats about.

They got from some key supporters, democratic legislators, when the announcement was made that the special session was gonna be put off, that, "Hey, it's okay.

"We need to be careful here "in the wake of the Dobbs decision "about what we're going to do with abortion.

"This careful negotiations, "we wanna make sure we do things right."

Then again, it's the same sort of pushback that President Joe Biden is getting from a lot of his progressive allies.

You knew this was coming.

The Dobbs decision was leaked in advance.

This wasn't, "Oh gosh, surprise.

"You need to hurry, negotiate, "and get legislation in order."

In fact, you had governor Pritzker and other Democrats pouncing the very day that the Dobbs decision came out and saying, "We're going to have this special session."

They were the ones that brought it up.

So I do think that this shows that even when you have super majorities of Democrats, the party doesn't always coalesce.

That it can be harder to get things done.

It is summertime and difficult to get people back in Springfield to have those super-majorities that you need in order for legislation to be passed and take effect right away.

People are taking their summer vacations after COVID when they weren't able to.

And yet again, it is a fair criticism to say, "Hey wait.

"One minute it was hurry hurry hurry, "we need to act as fast as possible.

"And then months have gone by and nothing."

- How much of this has anything to do with trying to get the parties to really come back together after a contentious primary on the Republican side of the ticket.

And then we saw this power battle for control in the Illinois Democratic Party.

You know Hannah, is this really still everyone trying to come back together on one message?

- Yeah I mean, I think that Democrats, not just in Illinois but nationally, they see an opening.

Especially, I feel like, for the last year these folks, these beltway folks, political scientists, those kind of in the professional area of predicting political predictions, you know, they've said for months and months that this is a GOP wave year in 2022.

But I think Democrats have seen lots of openings to try to combat that momentum by running on abortion.

And we saw a couple weeks ago Kansas voters voting down a change to their state's constitution that basically guarantees a right to an abortion.

And in Illinois that's something that's being discussed.

So yeah I mean, could the, you know, race in November be an opening for more party unity?

Sure.

But like, that's kind of the, that's kind of the story every cycle.

I don't know that there's ever been a time where Illinois Democrats, Illinois Republicans, or, you know, these parties in any state have been in lockstep.

There's always gonna be lots of personalities, especially in a state like Illinois where there is a lot of different types of regions, a lot of different types of people.

You're never gonna have perfect unity.

It was never a time when Mike Madigan and any, especially Mike Madigan and any Democratic governor, would be holding hands and skipping.

That just did not happen.

- (laughing) Ah!, can you imagine that though?

Let's take- (all laughing) - So you know Hannah, you mentioned that there are multiple regions, lots of different personalities, and lots of different perspectives out there.

We talked last week on "Capital View" about the accusations from the Pritzker campaign that Senator Darren Bailey, who is the GOP nominee for governor, had said some things and he's accused of being antisemitic.

Now I know you did some reporting this week because Senator Bailey kind of walked back those statements to say, you know, "I didn't mean to say "that the Holocaust was diminished in any way "through what I said."

But can you tell us a little bit about what he did say in the next several days?

- Sure.

So this goes back, for viewers who don't remember, early last week, the first week of August, basically some comment, a five year-old video on Senator Bailey's Facebook page, from when he was first running for a Statehouse seat.

Senator Bailey has a pension for doing Facebook Lives, he likes to connect with his base in that way.

And this was a video back when he was a very fresh, new candidate.

And you can tell from the video.

And this was right after then Republican Governor Bruce Rauner had signed HB-40.

Which was the bill that, or the law that, one, removed Illinois's abortion trigger law.

And then two, allowed for basically public funding of abortions through allowing Medicaids to pay for them.

And of course that outraged many conservatives, as we remember.

You know, folks like Jeanne Ives got so, was so incensed that she ran against Rauner in the 2018 primary and, you know, really gave him a run for his money.

And so in this video Bailey said, he quoted a scripture from Psalms and he said, "Really I think that abortion "is one of the great atrocities of our time."

He said, quote, "The attempted extermination "of the Jews of World War II doesn't even compare "on a shadow of the life that has been lost with abortion "since it's legalization."

I've looked into it.

Those who are in the anti-abortion movement, they frequently peg the number of abortions that have been performed in the US since Roe at something like 63 million.

And so, you know, Darren Bailey's not the first person who has ever made this comparison, and it is obviously in bad taste every single time.

But there is this messaging that's been out there.

And so he tried to course-correct last week, he's saying he wasn't trying to, quote, "Diminish the atrocities of the Holocaust."

But then of course this past weekend, he actually doubled down on his comments.

He told Kendall County-based radio station WSPY at the Kendall County Fair that he had met with Jewish leaders around the time that the comments were unearthed.

And then of course the Pritzker campaign very quickly went up on TV with an ad featuring those comments.

He said that he'd met with those Jewish theaters who approved of the comparison.

And so I'm gonna read you a transcript of the exchange with the reporter from that radio station.

The reporter said, "Do you think that the Jewish community "needs an apology?"

And Bailey, he actually kinda laughs, and he says, "The Jewish community themselves "have told me that I'm right."

Of course, the Bailey campaign has not clarified who those Jewish leaders were, who those rabbis were.

Pritzker himself is Jewish.

This is a very fraught area.

It is, you know, extremely offensive for a lot of people, not just Jewish people.

But the Bailey campaign has not said who it was that these rabbis who, apparently, approve of the comparison of the Holocaust to abortion.

This is something that we are going to see a lot of.

More Darren Bailey past statements, current statements come back.

Obviously the Pritzker campaign is very well funded.

And I have no doubt that they have kind of probably mapped out loosely the entire fall with, you know, "We're gonna leak this thing to this outlet, "and then we're gonna have a response ad ready to go, "have the TV time bought, "and have the ad buy go up immediately."

To kind of multiply the effects of whatever opposition research that they have.

There is, I don't know, like, Bailey's Facebook page and his wife's Facebook page too, kind of a treasure trove of things that, you know, especially liberals are, and a lot of, frankly, what would you say, regular moderate Republicans would be very uncomfortable with.

- Well let's get to that.

Amanda, the Governor has come out and really said to Republicans, "Why are you not standing up "and saying that this statement is wrong?

"Or that statement is wrong?

"Or that this is offensive or that's offensive."

And there has been some Republicans saying, "No, we don't believe this.

"No, this isn't what our platform stands for."

But why isn't there this full-throated condemnation of some of the things that have been said over the years.

- I think there isn't a full-throated condemnation because he is the GOP nominee, he won that fight fair and square.

So Republicans don't want to back away from the ostensible right now leader, the figurehead of their party.

Certainly, as you noted, some have.

You had one of Dailey's former colleagues, Representative Reick, and also House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, denouncing that statement in which he, the one in which the lives lost in the Holocaust were compared to the lives lost of aborted babies.

And so you have some.

But it is tricky.

This puts on display for all the divide within the Republican Party.

And I think there are plenty of Republicans who also are horrified at those remarks, but what are they to do if they likewise want to get reelected, not anger a base who sees those statements and either believes them or finds them distasteful but backs Bailey otherwise, and feels as if, as he has come to say, it's not just that he is sort of backtracking on his denouncing of his own words.

He likewise has taken a sort of Trumpesque tactic of blaming the media for twisting his words.

His words are right there.

You can watch them as Hannah noted.

He often bypasses the media and really has risen in Illinois politics through continual near daily Facebook videos in which he goes live, interacts with followers, and has gained a lot of traction that way.

And so this is the sort of thing that I think, Hannah's right, we are going to see a lot more leaking of these sort of videos.

The Pritzker campaign has the manpower to look through it.

It's difficult for a reporter to do, we're covering all sorts of stuff.

Not to say that it wouldn't be a useful exercise, and that it frankly should have been done during the primary.

Wouldn't it be great!

But there's so many newsrooms simply do not have the manpower to devote to that.

If you have a billionaire funding a campaign, you do.

You can pay a staffer to look out for that.

So this is something that I think is certainly going to, perhaps, drag the Bailey campaign down with any moderates who might be inclined to go for him.

But also, perhaps not.

Many of those were likely turned off by many of his statements and his stance on abortion already.

- With Governor Pritzker calling out, not just Senator Bailey for the things that he has said and done, but asking Republicans why they're not taking a stand, is he targeting, is his campaign targeting, other statewide races do you think?

Or even races further down the ballot?

- Yeah I mean, I think they're trying to make as big of a mess as possible for the Republicans as they possibly can.

Sure.

It's politics!

It's tough, it's dirty.

Let's point out also, by the way, that this is likely why, this is part of why anyway, Pritzker spent millions of dollars in the primary to ensure that Bailey would be the nominee.

He truly believes, and its partially because of videos like this, that he can easily beat Bailey.

You need to have some sort of statewide strategy.

It is clear that Bailey has a very enthusiastic base who's going to come out for him, even more so in the wake of the raid at Mar-a-Lago.

But he has a very difficult time with anybody in the middle.

- Hannah, both of these candidates are playing to their base.

They're very strong, very supportive bases.

But what is either campaign doing to attract those more moderate voters?

Those undecided and independent voters?

- You know Jen, I feel like, Yes, there used to be this long sought after moderate voter, the undecided voter.

I frankly don't think that that voting block, swath of voters, exists anymore.

And I don't think that in modern politics on either side, elections are no longer won necessarily by those things.

Elections are won by voter turnout.

And voter turnout is determined by making sure that your base, your people, are the ones who come out to vote.

Especially on these off-year midterm elections.

So I don't, I mean, yes.

We have seen a rise in, especially former Republican voters who now identify themselves as independent, because they have been turned off by the Trump wing of the party.

But I think that at core they're still, their voting patterns really are not changing that much unless they've been like totally radicalized.

And they feel like, you know, "The whole Republican party writ large, "I can't stand for that anymore."

Truly I think that those folks voting patterns have not changed all that much.

They're still conservative.

They still, you know, believe that there are Republicans out there that also stand for things like lower taxes and less government regulation.

And they're still gonna vote for them.

Now, they might, in the voting booth, decline to vote at all in the Republican, or in the gubernatorial race if they feel that conflicted.

Or on a presidential election year, you know, perhaps they also skipped voting for the president or maybe they voted for Joe Biden.

But in those down ballot races I feel like they're still gonna be Republican voters.

- We see that Governor Pritzker is continuing to have a presence on the national stage.

You mentioned earlier that he poured millions of dollars into the primary to make sure he had the candidate that he wanted to run against.

Now he's doing some similar things to make sure that Democratic candidates, incumbent Democratic Governors, are gonna have some support in terms of winning their elections this November.

There's still that question of, what is Pritzker's end goal?

Is it the governor's mansion?

Or is it perhaps higher, perhaps Pennsylvania Avenue?

So what is going on here?

What are you reading in those tea leaves?

- Yeah I mean, Pritzker has long been a donor to Democratic politics before he was Governor.

In fact, I think that helped him become Governor because he already had a lot of good will and connections, of course, with Democrats in Illinois.

So I think it can be both at once, Jen.

Yes, if there is an opportunity for him to move on to the White House, you better believe that he will take it.

Do I know, has he said these words to me?

Has anybody from his camp said so directly?

No.

Is that obvious by the plays that he is making in youth in general, you just look at his career trajectory, what he has spent his life's work doing.

Yes, that is something.

And it just sort of, the interviews that he gives, the travels that he has made, as there might be an opening should Biden not run again.

So this is part of that strategy, sure.

You wanna buy the good will.

And at the same time you know, and we know, and it is often frankly under-looked when you go to sort of the DC, big-network talk shows, the role of Statehouses in politics.

They are the ones that draw the maps.

There are more Republican controlled states, in terms of both the governorship and both houses of the legislatures, then there are Democrats.

And that helps give Republicans a boost nationally because you can then draw congressional districts that puts in more GOP members to the US house.

This is all part of a long game.

So I think it can be both things.

That number one, sure, it helps if he wants to be the Democratic nominee.

Although there might still be some questions, right now he's fairly accepted and in some corners beloved by progressives, there might be those that say, "Hey, wait a second.

"We're not too comfortable "with this whole money in politics thing.

"Just because you're a billionaire "doesn't mean that we believe "that you should have a leg up."

Still, he clearly sees that as worth it.

And then again, number two, helping his party to win races when there is a whole lot at stake across the nation.

- One of the people that was very influential in helping Democrats win races here in the state of Illinois, would be former Representative, former House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie.

And we learned this week that she has received the Simon-Edgar Statesmanship Award, awarded through the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in connection with former Governor Jim Edgar.

All three of us have spent time covering the legislature, which means all three of us have spent time covering former Representative Currie.

Hannah, your thoughts on whether or not someone like Barbara Flynn Currie could make a go of it again today.

- You know, this is hard.

We have seen so many highly tenured, highly respected folks retire from the legislature in the last especially five years.

The summer of 2017, after the two-year budget impasse was finally broken, we saw so many elected officials say that they were, you know, either this is gonna be their last, they weren't gonna run again.

Or they were gonna retire on the spot, basically.

It was very grueling.

And, frankly, politics has not become any better.

It's really become worse on so many levels; on the national level, on the state level.

The stakes just keep getting higher.

The job is all-consuming.

We have seen just this wild rate of attrition and it is difficult to imagine that we're gonna see people with long careers that match the longevity of people like Barbara Flynn Currie, or Mike Madigan, or, you know, any of their contemporaries.

Of course, we don't know what's gonna happen.

And it is, there's definitely something to be said, about younger people coming in and fresh blood, I guess, for lack of a better cliché.

You know, people with ideas, people who have not been in public service for so long.

There's good and bad to that.

But in terms of someone who is very well respected and someone who is a person who could talk to the other side of the aisle, we're definitely seeing less and less of that.

And that is something that, you know, I talk to people all over the Springfield atmosphere who are very worried about the tension in the Statehouse becoming kind of toxic.

And it's, Illinois is probably, I think, the most active state legislature in the country.

We're certainly one of the largest states in the nation and our state constitution, how the legislature works, it was set up to be this way.

It was set up to be a professional legislature where lawmakers meet more than five months out of the year.

And they get to know each other and they get to like each other.

And it's just, it's become so different.

God, especially in the last couple of years.

And I've seen attrition of not just election officials, but staffers, long time staffers, long time lobbyists, looking around seeing how things have changed and seeing the animosity everywhere and saying, "I'm not sure that this is worth it anymore."

And you have to really kind of worry about that because as Amanda said, Statehouses are key.

I think that we recognize that as people who cover the legislature, and I think that the general public is kind of, maybe, finally, waking up to this.

And it has a lot to do with the lack of journalists covering Statehouses versus the horde of journalists covering the White House and Congress in DC.

But in the wake of Dobbs, I think that a lot of regular people are waking up to the fact that state legislatures impact your life so much more.

And, I dunno, yeah.

This is something that people should be worried about.

But, you know, maybe we will see folks kinda step up to the plate in those leadership roles.

- Sure.

Amanda, just a minute or two remaining.

Your thoughts on Representative Currie and her impact on the legislature, and the future of governing in Illinois.

- So Representative Currie is wicked intelligent - Yes, yes!

- And that is obvious.

She's also very partisan, I will say.

She is not necessarily the one who was known for reaching across the aisle to work out a deal, unless it was a deal that Democrats wanted to make.

She was the henchwoman for Speaker Madigan.

And there are many of those who, I think particularly women, who say it's somewhat regrettable that there wasn't more changeover.

And that there could have been a historic leadership with a Speaker Currie, for example.

Not to say that she wanted that, she was very loyal, again, to Madigan.

But Jen I will say, she would be fascinating as a candidate on a statewide stage.

In a debate, it would be hard pressed to see somebody that she couldn't take down.

- Sure.

- She was very, very good in a debate, and it's particularly impressive.

So anybody that really is keen on that go back and watch some old Barbara Flynn Currie tape.

You you'll be amused at the very least and educated for sure.

- Amanda Vinicky joined with Hannah Meisel, thank you so much for joining us this week on "Capital View" and we'll catch you again next week.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

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