State Week

After years of effort, a bipartisan coalition passed criminal justice reform legislation in Congress this week. Turns out the relationship between Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and presidential adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner played a role in keeping the legislation on track.

Gov. Bruce Rauner says he tried to get out of his doomed re-election bid. In an interview with Craig Wall of WLS-TV, Chicago's ABC station, he says he tried and failed to recruit other people to take his place on the ballot.

Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker announced his ninth and tenth transition committees this week, including one on business issues and economic development. He also reiterated his committment to raising Illinois' hourly minimum wage to $15.

Gov. Bruce Rauner held his first news conference since losing re-election. He would not say why he thinks he and his fellow Republicans lost, but he did tell reporters he's “scared” for the people of Illinois.

Gov. Bruce Rauner's budget office issued its final five-year forecast and the trends are not good. Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker is likely going to face an uphill climb toward meeting his campaign promises while coming anywhere close to balancing the state budget.

The Illinois General Assembly rolled over Gov. Bruce Rauner in the first week of veto session, voting to override his vetos of more than three-dozen bills. But that's only half the game.

When lawmakers return for week two of veto session, the House and Senate will swap bills to complete the override process — will the governor fare any better then?

J.B. Pritzker and his fellow Democrats ran the table on statewide offices at this week's general election. The party also picked up two seats in Congress, increased its supermajority in the state Senate, and gained a supermajority in the Illinois House.

Many of the Democratic gains were rooted in former Republican strongholds outside Chicago. Do the election results suggest a permanent realignment? Or is it unique to the circumstances of 2018?

In the final days of the 2018 elections, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker are making their closing arguments.

National politicians like President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden were also in Illinois in the last week, mostly to stump for Congressional candidates as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of the U.S. House.

Gov. Bruce Rauner gained attention — and generated outrage in some quarters — for an ad that used both profanity and a mock same-sex marriage to attack his Democratic opponent, J.B. Pritzker. Plus an update on the state of the race heading into the final week of campaigning.

The Democratic candidate for Illinois governor is facing a racial discrimination lawsuit against his campaign — from 10 of his own campaign workers.

With early voting underway and less than three weeks until Election Day, he denies the allegations and is pushing back hard.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and his Democratic challenger, J.B. Pritzker, met in Quincy Thursday for the third and final debate of the 2018 elections. Did voters learn anything about either man’s policy preferences?

Plus, Illinois Democrats are trying to pick up as many as four Republican-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. And a new report says Chicago’s racial divides are holding back the city’s economy.

This week, major-party candidates Governor Bruce Rauner and his Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker engaged in their second televised debate, which excluded the other two candidates on the ballot.

WBEZ Public Radio's Dave McKinney joins the panel.

The race for Illinois Governor is heading into the home stretch, and the #MeToo movement continues to impact politics nationwide and in Illinois.

Dave Dahl of WTAX joins the panel.

All four candidates for governor shared a stage this week for the first of three televised debates. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and his Democratic challenger, J.B. Pritzker, picked up right where their mudslinging TV ads left off.

Gov. Bruce Rauner attempts to reset his campaign with a speech to a small group of supporters. Will it be enough to overcome the 14 percentage points that separate the Republican incumbent from his Democratic opponent, J.B. Pritzker?

A big surprise this week - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he's dropping out of the upcoming election.  Amanda Vinicky of Chicago's WTTW and A.D. Quig of The Daily Line join the panel.

Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed several bills in the past week. One would have raised the cap on how much money people wronged by state government can recover — Illinois’ relatively low cap of $100,000 came to light after the deaths of more than a dozen residents of the Illinois Veterans’ Home in Quincy.

Other vetoed bills would have raised the age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21, sought to improve relations between immigrant communities and the police, and set a minimum salary of $40,000 per year for new teachers.

A new poll shows J.B. Pritzker leading Bruce Rauner in the Illinois gubernatorial race.  Also, there is uncertainty over the future of the Southern Illinois University system.  WSIU Public Radio's Jennifer Fuller joins the panel.

This week, political rhetoric at the Illinois State Fair.

Gov. Bruce Rauner pledged to contribute $1 million to Republican attorney general nominee Erika Harold so she “will prosecute (House Speaker Michael) Madigan.” But when pressed by reporters, Rauner would not identify a crime with which he thinks Madigan should be charged. Did the governor cross a line?

Freshman Rep. Nick Sauer, a Republican from Lake Barrington, resigned after being accused of posting a former girlfriend's nude photos online without her consent.

Meanwhile, Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers endorsed two candidates for Illinois governor: Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker and Conservative Party candidate Sam McCann, a state senator from Plainview who until recently was a member of the Republican Party.

President Trump makes his first presidential visit to Illinois, delivering a speech at U.S. Steel's Granite City Works, near St. Louis.

Illinois politicians react to President Trump's varied statements on Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Gov. Rauner signs a pair of gun-control bills while promising to veto another. And the latest campaign finance numbers show the candidates for governor continuing to burn cash at an unprecedented rate. 

Illinois politicians react to President Trump's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gov. Bruce Rauner and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel get into a Twitter fight over the anti-violence protest that brought the inbound Dan Ryan to a halt.

And J.B. Pritzker's campaign runs an ad with claims widely described as false.

Gov. Bruce Rauner boards a city bus for an apology tour of Illinois’ flagship college towns. Illinois Nazis are back in the news. And it’s official — there will be at least four party-affiliated candidates on the ballot for governor this fall.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to Governor Bruce Rauner in its ruling on the Janus v. AFSCME case.  Also, the Gubernatorial race gained more candidates with this week's filings by independent parties.  The State Journal-Register's Bernie Schoenburg joins the panel.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week means shoppers will more often be paying sales taxes for online purchases. It might also have meant a windfall for state government, but Illinois lawmakers anticipated the decision and already spent the money.

AFSCME, Illinois biggest laobr union representing state government employees, was in the Fourth District Appellate Court this week. It's fighting a move by the Rauner administration to declare an impasse in contract negotiations, which are three years overdue.

Allegations of bullying and inappropriate comments prompted the resignation of the top aide to House Speaker Michael Madigan. Tim Mapes had been the speaker's chief of staff since the late 1990s, and was also executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois.

Meanwhile, Gov. Bruce Rauner signing a full-year budget into law, a first for the incumbent Republican, who's in his fourth year as governor.

A busy week in Springfield as the Illinois General Assembly approves a budget, the House ratifies the ERA, and a leading Democrat is accused of inappropriate behavior.