Mediaboss Marketing

As he traveled the state last week, Gov. Bruce Rauner said the purpose of his two-day, campaign-funded tour was "about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

Behind that message was the reminder that he's up for re-election next year, he's attempting to account for why his agenda is stalled and he thinks the goals he was first elected on in 2014 remain important to achieve.

Also on display was a trait that's frustrated Democrats and Republicans alike: Rauner portrays himself as flexible on his demands for striking a broad budget deal, but the specifics of what he'll settle for to end the historic impasse remain a moving target. At the Capitol, the details are what matter in getting a compromise done.

The idea behind the 10-city trip was to fill the political vacuum created when the General Assembly embarked on a two-week break. It allowed the Republican governor largely unfettered ability to speak without readily available Democratic critics in Springfield. The tour also unfolded during a massive statewide TV ad buy from an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association aimed at pushing Rauner's agenda out to voters.

Throughout, Rauner steadfastly maintained that his trip was not a re-election announcement. At times, he vacillated between whether the tour was political or not, although his talks consistently revisited themes he previously has discussed on the taxpayer dime.

"It was primarily a political trip. It was not paid for by taxpayers. We were specifically inviting Republican grass-roots activists and other leaders," Rauner said in summing up the tour Friday on WBEZ 91.5-FM. "This one was particularly political, although it's really fundamentally about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

In state government circles, however, the trip was viewed as a soft rollout of the re-election campaign. Echoing the theme of the TV ad, in which he accuses career politicians of supporting "duct tape" solutions, Rauner aimed at affixing blame on Madigan and Democrats for blocking his budget prerequisites. During a stop in the small southwestern Illinois community of Bethalto, the governor harked back to the days when he wore a Carhartt hunting jacket in the 2014 campaign.

"You guys know it's a brutal battle," Rauner said, according to the Alton Telegraph. "The majority Democrats don't want to change anything. They're just hunkered in like ticks on a dog. You can't get them out. You can't get them off. But by the people coming together this isn't about Democrats versus Republicans it is about people coming together and standing up to a corrupt machine that's running the government for their own benefit."

Veteran Democratic Rep. Lou Lang countered that the "southern twang (Rauner) uses doesn't travel very far anymore. I think people are seeing through that."

Lang, a top deputy to Rauner nemesis House Speaker Michael Madigan, suggested Rauner felt pressure because the 2018 race for governor already has started. On Friday, for example, billionaire Chicago businessman J.B. Pritzker put $7 million of his own money into his Democratic bid.

"I think it's fair to say this is the beginning of the governor's campaign, that he sees Democratic candidates for governor traveling the state and wants to make sure that they don't get ahead of him in the public eye," said Lang, of Skokie. "And so (Rauner has) the opportunity to spend a little time doing a little traveling. He wants to insist this is a tour about how to improve Illinois, not about his re-election, but I think we all know better," Lang said.

Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said Rauner's message last week was to frame the re-election.

"They're trying to as they will establish their message that, as he says, 'Everything I can do by myself I'm getting it done, but the legislature's in the way,'" Mooney said. "So in some sense, he's setting up an excuse to countervail a 'do-nothing' governor attack from the others."

Rauner got positive coverage outside the glare of Chicago and Springfield, where reporters' questions about his actions and motives usually are more pointed and intense.

Even so, newspapers in Peoria and Quincy used terms such as "reiterated" and "repeated" to describe a Rauner message that largely has been unchanged for more than a year as he describes his conditions for resolving the impasse. The Rockford Register Star did not cover his visit there, saying the paper did not consider it "newsworthy."

The thrust of Rauner's tour was to push what he used to call his turnaround agenda, which he now refers to as "structural reforms." The governor is seeking term limits and a property tax freeze as well as changes in government pension benefits, workers' compensation and redistricting as a precondition to support a tax hike to help balance the state's out-of-whack budget.

Which of those items are on or off the table often varies, however. At various stops on the tour, Rauner declared that term limits and a property tax freeze didn't necessarily need to be part of a deal. It's a way for him to come across as flexible, but also makes it hard for him to be pinned down.

"There is no one or two structural changes that we need to have as a requirement. I've never said any one thing has to be there," Rauner said Friday during the radio interview. "But we need a package of changes, structural changes that materially move the needle."

Yet to move the needle to satisfy Rauner, the governor said "term limits definitely helps big with that."

"So far the Senate Democrats have proposed a term limit on Senate leaders through a rule change, just for the Senate leader would be term limited. Well what we need is term limits on everybody, on me, on everybody in the General Assembly. That's not on the table as of now," he said.

Such elusiveness has frustrated some lawmakers at the Capitol who are looking for clarity on what it will take to reach agreement. Democrats like Lang suggested Rauner isn't being up front when he's preaching flexibility.

"As you've seen the last few days, he's commented, 'Well, I don't really need this. I don't really need that. I just need everyone to come together.' But the truth is that's not what he wants," Lang said.

Mooney, the political scientist, questioned the continued effectiveness of Rauner's blame-Madigan excuses as the campaign for governor fully begins to take shape.

"Generally speaking, the governor is held responsible, the chief executive of a unit is held responsible, by the public. That's what we know about public opinion. It's a pretty simplistic view of the world. And as time goes on, he's got to take responsibility for that. Maybe he can effectively blame somebody else like Madigan or whoever, but that's not normally what works," Mooney said.

Pointing to Rauner's previous background as a private equity investor and deal cutter, Mooney said of the governor: "If he's a salesman, this is going to be the hardest sales job he's ever had to make."

rap30@aol.com

Twitter @rap30

View original post here:
On state tour, Rauner reiterates his agenda as Democrats line up to ... - Chicago Tribune