Why does Gov. Pat Quinn keep making former state Rep. Careen Gordon look like she’s his co-conspirator in a political payback scheme?
If only Quinn would focus as much on, say, reducing Illinois’ vast expenditures as he does on awarding successive state jobs to Gordon.
And even more regrettably:
If only Quinn realized that, because of this tawdry episode back in 2011, Gordon will spend the rest of her career trying in vain to distance herself from it.
And from him.
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Recall that Gordon, a Democrat then from Morris, lost her re-election bid last November. She then approached Quinn about an $86,000-a-year job on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Gordon later told the Tribune’s Ray Long that, during their conversation, Quinn asked her what she thought about the possibility of a tax increase.
No mystery there: Gordon had left her constituents with the impression that she would oppose the income tax increase Quinn favored. An Oct. 30 story in the Kankakee Daily Journal — and the accompanying video of Gordon explaining her stand to Daily Journal staffers — attests to that.
But on Jan. 11, Quinn’s 2-percentage-point personal income tax increase cleared the Illinois House with the minimum 60 yes votes — Gordon’s included. And, three days later, Quinn appointed her to the Prisoner Review Board. In a subsequent editorial, we termed that timing a Quinncidence.
In succeeding weeks, many lawmakers grew uncomfortable about the circumstances of Gordon’s appointment. She left the Prisoner Review Board last month rather than face a difficult confirmation vote in the Illinois Senate.
Monday, though, brought another Quinncidence: Gordon began work as an $84,000-a-year associate general counsel for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Quinn told the Tribune on Tuesday that his office approached Gordon about the opening after one of his aides suggested she would be a good fit: “I’ve liked (Gordon) from the moment I met her and worked with her in the Legislature,” Quinn said. “I’m happy that we can get her on board with our administration.”
Really? An aide approached the very busy governor of Illinois about … a job opening in the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation? An opening that, just by Quinncidence, does not involve Senate confirmation?
The headline on Wednesday’s resulting story read, “Quinn hires Gordon, denies quid pro quo.”
Gordon, who denied in January that her conversion to tax hike supporter wasn’t her half of a barter with Quinn, now is referring questions about her latest appointment to the governor’s office.
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We would never suggest anything improper about this chain of events involving a governor and a legislator who, in the final hours of her lame-duckery, awarded him a tax vote he desperately needed.
But as that chain of events grows curiouser and curiouser, Quinn and Gordon become increasingly linked in what may well be an unspoken compact:
If Gordon didn’t for some reason feel entitled to Quinn’s employment attention, wouldn’t she have sought work anywhere other than state government after the Prisoner Review Board fiasco?
And if Quinn didn’t for some reason feel obligated to find Gordon a job somewhere — anywhere — in state government, wouldn’t he have spared her from not one but two serious embarrassments?
Yet here Quinn is, awarding Gordon another job. And here she is, accepting it.
