Barely 15 weeks from Election Day, gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady has one bleepin’ platinum advantage: He isn’t Gov. Pat Quinn. Brady, a Republican state senator, hasn’t called for “shared sacrifice” and then given his employees fat raises. Brady hasn’t had a prisoner-release program explode in his face. And Brady hasn’t demanded more billions in taxes, plus still more billions in taxpayer borrowing, while inexplicably refusing to reform how Illinois spends the billions it already has.
Brady, though, also has a platinum disadvantage. Many citizens alert to the sorry state of the state don’t know who he is or what he would do about an overobligated pension system, a Medicaid program that crowds out spending on education and other priorities, and a budget shortfall of $13 billion. Nor do they know how he wants to stop this costly dysfunction from driving employers — and jobs — out of Illinois.
We understand the Brady campaign’s reluctance to detail proposed remedies too early. A challenger advocating plans sure to anger public employees unions and others who rely on the disastrous status quo puts a bull’s-eye on his chest. Plus, many voters haven’t dialed in; they’re at the beach, or plotting to get there. Conventional wisdom says Labor Day is soon enough for issues papers — especially for someone facing a politician as booby-trapped as Quinn.
But this isn’t a conventional year. Many voters, including Democrats who’ve had enough of the Democratic stranglehold on Springfield, are up for grabs. Brady ought to look past his cautious handlers toward another urbanized, indebted and usually true-blue state, New Jersey. There, rookie Republican Gov. Chris Christie has chosen frank talk and iconoclastic action over patience and caution. He did it as a candidate and got elected in a blue state. Now he’s doing it as governor. Polling results suggest that Jersey voters appreciate his blunt emphasis on solutions. That’s why he was able to get a budget rife with deep cuts through his state’s Democratic legislature. Christie’s latest victory is a 2 percent per year cap on the growth of property taxes, again with Democrats bending to voter fury over spending run amok. Christie also persuaded voters to reject hundreds of unrestrained local school budgets. And he has confronted legislators and union leaders with the need to reform unsustainable public pensions.
Would Illinoisans rally to the same message of public austerity? We aren’t sure. But the dead-end nature of today’s financial policies here, and the illogic of expecting a big economic rebound to rescue the pols who currently run this state, gives Brady an opening to lay out common-sense strategies. He also can model his platform on principles that GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels — contrasting his sure-handedness to Quinn’s flip-floppery drives Illinois Democratic leaders berserk — has employed in Indiana. A Daniels sampler from his May 4 talk at the Union League Club of Chicago:
* On job creation: “Indiana seeks to be a place of maximum opportunity for private enterprise. … Our regulatory agencies operate at the speed of business, not the speed of government.”
* On rising debt: “We adults and elders are immorally taking exquisite care of ourselves at the expense of the young.”
* On paying public employees for performance: “We shouldn’t pay you more at the end of the year because you’re still breathing.”
* Indirectly, on Illinois’ half-year-late payment of health providers and social services agencies: “In Indiana we have a quaint practice. We send you a check instead of an IOU.”
Sen. Brady, a state doing penance for George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich needs a governor who will deliver a new era. Your opponent portrays you as a social conservative because he knows many voters disagree with you on those issues. But those aren’t the issues that should set the outcome of this race.
You can let Gov. Quinn drive the discussion away from the economic spiral over which he presides. Or you can take the risks that Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels have taken. That would give Illinois voters a better view of how Gov. Bill Brady would attack this state’s crises.
