[MUSIC] >> Welcome the capital view on WSIU.

I'm Brian Sapp.

The Blue wave and last week's elections swept more Democrats into the legislature.

We'll talk about what these larger super supermajorities could mean for next year's General Assembly spring session.

And one of the first tasks for legislators will be to find a new leader after House Speaker Chris Welch announced he will not seek reelection to his post.

But before all that happens, legislators have plenty to tackle in the coming veto session.

This week, we welcome a new guest, Maggie Dougherty with Capitol News Illinois.

And we have her colleague, Brenden Moore.

Maggie and Brendan, thanks for joining us.

Good to see you.

>> Good to be with you, Brian.

>> Yeah.

Thanks for having us.

>> Um, so not many as we were getting ready here.

Not many surprises in last week's election.

One of the things that I think of note, though, is the extension of the majorities here in Illinois.

Brendan, can we start with you?

Can you kind of lay the land?

How much did that blue wave sweep into Illinois?

>> Yeah, I think we're not surprised that Democrats extended their supermajorities in the legislature and that all the statewide won their races.

But I think we were surprised by the extent of it.

I mean, even Democrats did not expect to do as well as they did.

Uh, Governor Pritzker and all the statewide constitutional officers got over 60% of the vote, which, uh, is for a governor, Democratic governor.

That's a record for modern times for for the governor.

And then in the legislature.

Uh, the Democrats really flex their muscles and took advantage of a gerrymandered map and all this momentum nationally to really just, uh, have I mean, they already had a stranglehold, but, uh, they, they, they, they further expanded that it appears like it's going to be 45 Democrats in the Senate to only 14 Republicans.

And in the House, at least 84 Democrats to 34 Republicans.

So functionally, that means that Republicans, uh, are further marginalized in the capital.

Uh, they, uh, the Democrats don't really need them to pass anything.

Uh, and on the Democratic side, you know, I guess it doesn't really change anything in the sense that you already had supermajorities, But it may also make it a little bit more unwieldy, a little bit more difficult, a little bit more, um, maybe negotiating behind the scenes on, on several key topics because you have more members that you have to, that you have to deal with.

Um, you know, there's, you know, some, I guess you could say, uh, perhaps there might be some more moderate voices in the Democratic Party because a lot of these districts are fairly purple and some may even see, say, uh, have been red in the not so recent past.

So, uh, perhaps, uh, a little bit more, uh, a big tent for, uh, the supermajority Democrats, but certainly, uh, a, a blue wave blue tsunami.

Uh, there were some talk that perhaps it would not be as pronounced in some of the blue states where Democrats are in charge, but it, it was just as pronounced, if not more.

Uh, and it is going to be um, again, not not a change in status in terms of, of a supermajority, but, uh, really just, uh, expands the dominance of the Democratic Party in Illinois and further puts Republicans in the hole.

>> Um, Maggie, as we put on our analysis hat and Brendan talked about, you know, the larger caucus to try to work with.

Um, Will Davis representative Will Davis was here speaking at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.

And one of the things he noted was that he talked about Brendan talked about was these New Democrats that came in are probably from those purple districts.

How do you see this playing into the spring session with policy?

And also, is there a worry that they could overextend their hand or overplay their hand?

>> Yeah.

I mean, I think it's definitely a good point.

You've got just so many new members in the caucus.

It's more interest to manage.

Right.

Um, I think it'll be interesting to see if the progressives feel like, with the sort of national momentum and movement around this, they need to follow through on some of these big promises.

I mean, at the national level, especially, there's promises about abolishing Ice and all these, you know, pretty progressive things.

And they might feel like they need to follow through on some of that to keep voters coming back.

I mean, it was pretty momentous turnout this time around.

Um, and if you're trying to harness that energy, I think it'll be interesting to see if they're pushing for more progressive policies on that front.

Um, you know, I think that Brendan talked about the sort of strength of this blue wave that we saw and how it was bigger than people maybe expected.

I think like, especially in the collar county counties, we saw a really big swing.

Uh, I think maybe Brendan pointed out that in McHenry County, You.

Pritzker was leading by 11 points as of last night when I looked.

And that's the reddest color.

Hasn't voted for a Democratic governor since 1852.

I mean, that's a that's a big swing.

And not all of the candidates who were running in in districts that flipped from red to blue were necessarily running on moderate platforms.

So I do think that there might be a little bit of that kind of fracturing there in terms of you have some really progressive people, uh, entering onto the scene, and where does that leave the party?

And maybe that'll factor into the discussions around the speakership.

You know, if we see the Progressive Caucus trying to get somebody in there to represent those efforts, you know, I think that'll really impact how things play out in Springfield this next session.

>> Um, before we move on, I have one more about this.

Brandon.

I wanted to kind of pick your brain again.

The as you said, these districts are gerrymandered and they've talked about this.

The will there is there.

Could they overplay their hand?

And, um, like we talk, if they do kind of go down this more progressive path, um, alienating.

We had 45 counties that have now passed these advisory, um, initiatives about separating from the state.

Is that going to add to that or I mean, how do you see that playing into, you know, the next year or couple of years until the next election?

>> I think Maggie touched on this, but but I think a real story here is, is the increasing, um, I guess, partisan divide in the state between the regions.

So downstate stayed pretty red, although there were some pickups for Democrats in some of the urban areas in the Danville area in the Metro East area, uh, they picked up a few seats.

Even down in the Carbondale area.

It looks like the Republican is going to hold on, But that was a lot closer than expected.

Um, Scott, duty looks like he'll be fine, but, uh, I think Chip Markel did pretty good.

Better than I think a lot of people thought he would.

Uh, so so Democrats, you know, perform pretty well in a lot of places, but, um, but the big thing is, uh, you don't have a lot of Republicans representing the Chicago region anymore.

Uh, like literally, if you look at a map on the, the Senate districts, uh, Senator John Curran, who's the minority leader, is on a literal red island in the midst of blue, uh, Senate districts.

And he got lucky because the, the Senate Democrats didn't even, you know, put up a challenger against him.

And he probably would have lost if they did because his district was a Kamala Harris district in 2024.

Um, and that's the scary thing for Republicans is that they had a few of those instances where, where Democrats didn't put up a candidate that if they just had, they probably would have won because they had a D next to their name.

I mean, we even saw that with, you know, Senator Seth Lewis, a moderate Republican, represents DuPage County who lost to a literal DSA member.

Uh, the Senate Democrats weren't really even, you know, wanting to win that one.

They didn't put a lot of money in that district, but they won it anyways, because sometimes that's just what happens when you get a wave.

Uh, but to the answer, the answer your question about whether or not that, um, you know, the Democrats may be overextend themselves.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that that is a possibility.

Uh, I mean, a lot of these districts are very purple districts, though the types of districts that you get opportunities to flip in a wave year.

But obviously, you know, waves recede.

Uh, whether that happens in 2028, I think that's an open question because Donald Trump will still be the incumbent president, but it is possible to see, you know, maybe come 2030 if you have a Democratic president, uh, and maybe a less favorable national climate, that that could be an opportunity for Republicans to, uh, win some of these seats back because, you know, you think, oh, it's never going to end.

It's never, you know, it's a permanent thing.

But politics is never permanent.

These things go back and forth.

So there could be some opportunities for Republicans in coming cycles, but it's not going to happen overnight, that's for sure.

>> Definitely.

I mean, like you said, stop and take a look in this small moment.

It does.

It's super intense.

But it was just two years ago where there was a red wave.

But, you know, President Trump had large numbers and we saw the moves that way.

So two years can be a long time.

And yeah, I think representative duty and Chip Markel down here, that's a good example of, you know, maybe not everything is so partisan.

I wanted to move on one more, um, statewide race.

Governor Pritzker won, as you said, large margins.

His first press conference was ostensibly helping Illinois, but it did have a national tone.

Brendan, um, does this give us any inclination?

Uh, Representative Davis, when he here again said it's the worst kept open secret.

I know the governor keeps saying he's thinking about it, but where did where do you think he stands on looking at his future here in the state and nationally?

>> The governor has has inserted himself into a lot of national issues for the past couple of years.

And that's going to continue.

Uh, I mean, it's only going to ramp up.

Actually, I guess I should, I should say, uh, he, uh, as you said, uh, the day after the election, uh, released this 200 point plan for what the new Congress should do and, you know, kind of list everything from reversing Medicaid cuts to, um, you know, some tax policy stuff to, uh, you know, just a little bit of everything under the sun.

Uh, And, you know, you could argue that it is a platform that somebody could use to, uh, to run on if they were going to run for president.

Uh, and we know Governor Pritzker is mentioned on a short list of Democrats who may seek the nomination in 2028.

Uh, he won't offer any hints as to what his next move is going to be, but, uh, this is the next step.

I mean, winning, winning reelection was, was, uh, you know, something he had to check off the off the, uh, the box, uh, check that box.

He did.

He did it, uh, with a pretty, you know, historic margin for a Democrat in Illinois.

And, uh, and I mean, Barack Obama announced for president in February of 2007 and so on that timeline.

I mean, we may be just a few months away from from, uh, hearing Governor Pritzker's next move in that regard.

So, uh, just I would tell people, get used to it.

I mean, he, he did some national interviews after that, uh, later in the week.

Um, he's we're not going to hear from him this week.

He's, uh, he had a minor procedure, so he's out of the light limelight this week, but, uh, but yeah, he will continue to be a national voice.

Uh, you'll see him on cable news and on podcasts, uh, talking about some of this policy stuff, you know, pushing back on the president.

And, uh, I mean, the invisible primary has already started for president in 2028, and he's going to be very much in the mix of that.

>> Um, Maggie, just really quick, I wanted to get your, your thought on the governor trying to you talked about these progressives in the legislature.

Do you think the governor isn't going to want to make big waves and sink his hopes nationally?

Do you think there could be some butting heads there as we come into the spring session with the legislature wanting to do things, the governor trying to take maybe a more cautious approach, how do you see it?

>> Uh, well, you know, I think that he is probably running on a pretty progressive, you know, platform.

I think that a lot of the things that he's proposed in this 200 point plan that he put forward are in line with things that he's done as governor.

He's proposed that they would raise the minimum wage.

That's something that he did, you know, early on in his tenure here, he hasn't said how much he thinks that the federal minimum wage should be.

I think that Juliana Stratton has said it should be $25 an hour.

You know, there's some other AI regulation things that he's been a big proponent of in here, uh, you know, reversing immigration policies that have been enacted under the Trump administration, which has been something that he's butted heads with quite publicly with, you know, President Trump on the national stage.

So I don't know that it necessarily conflicts.

I think it's, you know, it's very well thought out so that if he does decide to run, he's got kind of all of his chips in order to do so.

>> All right.

We're going to move on.

Stay with the legislature.

Brendan.

Right before the election, I think it was, uh, the Sunday before I opened up X Twitter and saw you share that there was something coming in the legislature, we find out that that was, um, Speaker Chris Welch deciding not to run.

A lot has happened since we recorded last.

Can you kind of give us a short synopsis of how the decision was made?

And I want to really move on to what this means next.

>> Yeah, just very quickly.

I mean, we got wind of this that weekend that something could be coming.

And then Monday, that Monday we had enough to go on that, uh, perhaps 20 to 30 members were prepared to oppose his, uh, his speakership, uh, reelection as speaker.

Uh, and we're going to basically sign a letter saying, so that letter dropped Wednesday night, and it was 26 House Democrats on it, although we were told that there were more members that were opposed that had not signed.

So, uh, the opposition to the speaker is more widespread.

And within 24 hours of that letter, that statement coming out, the speaker announced that he was not going to seek to retain his gavel.

So I think we were all kind of stunned by the speed of it, but not by the final outcome.

Uh, it's it's been reported extensively how the speaker has faced a lot of criticism for the way he handled the sexual harassment case involving Harry Benton, uh, and his own interactions with this staffer who, uh, you know, on social media that some, you know, raise some eyebrows.

Uh, and then there was a lot of other stuff that, that, you know, was kind of percolating below the surface that that kind of came up.

And, uh, so, so the final result wasn't all that surprising.

So, uh, it was pretty clear that Democrats, House Democrats wanted new leadership, wanted a new day in the caucus.

And that's kind of where we move now.

Uh, we have an open race for speaker.

Um, we've heard, uh, that, you know, through the grapevine, there are, uh, candidates that, uh, are interested, but but nobody has announced yet.

Uh, and nothing has been kind of formalized yet.

Um, they have to organize it and figure out kind of how they're going to run a speaker's race.

We still got two months until, uh, until the speaker vote.

Uh, but, uh, there's going to be a lot of horse trading and jockeying going on behind the scenes.

Uh, because, uh, you got to get to 60 votes.

Uh, it's not just a majority of the caucus.

You need to get 60 votes, you need a majority of the House, which means that you have to, uh, you have to find somebody.

Whoever gets it is going to be somebody who can, um, put cobble together votes in a very fractious and diverse House Democratic caucus.

Um, not the easiest thing to do.

Uh, but it will be interesting to see who, who, uh, may emerge.

>> Okay.

Um, I want to move on because we have just under ten minutes and I wanted to talk, uh, finish up our time today, uh, with talking about the veto session.

I'm going to start with you, Maggie.

You cover energy policy, and you talked about and wanted to keep hearing about AI and data centers, and there hasn't been a clear thing.

What do you think we can expect when it comes to the this veto session when it comes to the AI and data center issue?

>> Yeah, absolutely.

So I talked to Senator Bill Cunningham, who's a real sort of architect of these energy policies in the Senate.

And he said that he thinks that something could come together.

The governor's been a little bit, um, not skeptical exactly, but maybe more reserved in making promises here about what to see in the veto session.

But I think that we can expect to see that there will be at least something discussed.

I mean, I know the draft language has gone out to the stakeholders here for a version of the Power Act, which was the sort of leading bill on data center regulations.

Um, I would expect to see ratepayer protections being the number one thing.

You know, the lawmakers do not want to see residents paying for the costs of data centers.

Um, you know, that could mean special rate cases for the regulators to consider for them.

It's also going to be a big discussion about making sure the data centers bring their own energy to the grid.

What kind of energy that is, is going to be a really important discussion here.

You know, the data centers would like to be able to bring natural gas to the table.

That's something that might be a red line for environmental groups who feel like they've already really compromised on allowing nuclear energy, which is not, you know, renewable in that sense.

Um, so that is something that I expect to be a big fight.

Uh, there's also probably going to see some protections for the noise levels of, you know, backup generators and data centers.

Probably the diesel generators are going to have a lot of discussion.

The, you know, pollution that those put off can be very disruptive and disturbing to local communities.

So, uh, Senator Cunningham suggested that we might long term see a transition from those diesel generators to backup battery, which would be, you know, a big fight, but something that I think people would be excited to see on the environmental and local fight side of things.

And then probably also NDAs between local government officials and data centers, because that transparency piece has been a really big fight with local communities, feeling like this decision has been made outside of their hands and wanting to know what's going on behind the scenes, not wanting to see backroom deals.

So those, I think, are going to be the kind of big core things in this bill.

And then there's, you know, a million more details to iron out.

>> Yeah, there's always those little details.

And, uh, before we move on to our next thing, I hear you talking and, you know, being a reporter here and not covering a lot of the statewide or policy issues, you see, people have raised these concerns and people are not people.

The people, the electorate raise these concerns.

And then data centers and now Legislators and other policy makers seem to have heard.

And to me, it's just kind of interesting that, uh, that they had their voice heard and they've moved this quickly to adjust their, their tone.

I think there's money to be made.

And, and maybe that's, uh, helping move this along.

I wanted to our last topic, we have about five minutes.

And if we have a little extra time, we can work in something else.

But the bears last week after the election, that was the you know, I like watching the bears.

But, um, this new stadium, there's a ton of talk about it.

Brendan, is it all talk?

Is there something going to happen do you think?

>> They're talking like something is going to happen.

Uh, I mean, they, they they they're they're there has been momentum, uh, in, in Illinois and the Illinois side over the past, I guess I'll put it at six weeks.

Uh, remember the beginning of October, Commissioner Roger Goodell, came for an in-person meeting with Governor Pritzker and some of the top legislators, and they started talking about what could we put together in a veto session that could allow the bears to stay in Illinois?

And since then, they've been hammering out details of a bill that would look pretty similar to what passed the Illinois Senate at the in the wee hours of the morning, the last day of session.

So this would be a public ownership model where basically, um, municipalities, uh, over with over 70,000 people in Cook County, uh, could form their own stadium authorities.

So that would be, you know, it could be Chicago, it could be Arlington Heights, it could be a few others.

Uh, and they would own the stadium, which would allow for the bears to basically not have to pay property tax, although they would privately finance the stadium.

Uh, and they would own everything around, uh, this prospective stadium, obviously, they own a lot of land in Arlington Heights and want to do a stadium district there.

Um, so it would be a, um, more similar to kind of what Indiana has put on the table and what like other, um, uh, what the model is across the country in terms of public ownership of stadiums.

Um, but, uh, it, uh, the reason why this, this, this kind of the winner over the payment in lieu of taxes plan that passed the house in April is because this is site neutral.

So in theory, Chicago can, can compete to have a stadium project, uh, which, you know, again, gives some cover to Chicago legislators who maybe were a bit wary of voting to, uh, for legislation that would make it easier for the bears to leave city limits.

Um, I think most people see the writing on the wall, understand the bears want to be in Arlington Heights, but at the very least, this would give Chicago an opportunity.

Uh, so that's kind of where, where things are at.

Obviously, there's an infrastructure piece to this too.

The state has always said they would pick up the public infrastructure.

Uh, so they're trying to figure out the details of that.

Uh, there's probably going to be some other elements of this bill, uh, that, you know, economic development elements, uh, there's probably going to be some revamped, uh, star bond language.

So that's, uh, state and local income tax, uh, generated, uh, within, uh, a project area that could be go back and be used to pay for infrastructure in that area.

Um, you know, there's, uh, it's been used in a few other parts of the state.

Uh, so, so that they're, they're working out the final details.

We haven't seen legislative language yet, but, um, everyone seems pretty optimistic, uh, even with some of the, uh, I guess, leadership, uh, uh, changeover in the house that, uh, it appears like, uh, you know, things are, are in a pretty good place, but obviously, uh, we won't truly know that until they get back to Springfield and the negotiators can talk to their caucuses and kind of take the temperature.

>> Okay.

Um, last thing we have about a minute left.

Um, Maggie, we got keep it short here.

Any, uh, we only have six days.

Should we expect much out of this, uh, fall veto session?

Or do you think these are probably going to be the top two things that you're seeing?

We got about 30s here.

>> I definitely think these are going to be the top two things.

Um, you know, I think it's most likely we'll do hearings and, uh, discussion this week and then all the real action will happen in December.

>> Okay.

Brendan, you think this is the two things we should keep our eyes on?

>> Yeah.

I mean, these are these are the two headline items.

I would say, you know, you maybe watch out to see if there's any conversation about ethics, about changing some of the House procedures, following some of these sexual harassment issues that we've seen.

Uh, the, uh, the committee investigating Carol Ammons, uh, indicted Carol Ammons is going to meet.

So that's something also to keep an eye on.

But yeah, bears and data centers are probably the two things that, uh, you know, can probably get done in that short time.

>> All right.

Great.

Maggie.

Brendan, thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you.

Brian.

>> Glad to be here.

>> That's it for this week's episode.

On behalf of Maggie Doherty and Brenden Moore, I'm Brian Sapp.

Thank you for watching Capitol View.

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