[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Welcome to Capitol View on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams sitting in this week as we take a look at what's making news around the state in Illinois politics.

Well, President Donald Trump and Republicans are holding the first ever GOP national mid-term convention this week in Dallas.

So we'll take a closer look.

And also some encouraging financial news for the state of Illinois.

Revenue during the first couple of months of FY 27 is higher than expected, and a couple of bond rating agencies have upped the state's rating.

We'll have those stories and likely some more this week on Capitol View.

To help lead our discussion are Jon Jackson, visiting professor for the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, and Charlie Wheeler, director emeritus of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois, Springfield and a longtime state House reporter and government observer.

Gentlemen, it's good to have both of you back on the program this week.

>> Good to see you having me.

>> It it always seems like a a graduate seminar in politics and government when we have both of you on the show this week.

So looking looking forward to it.

Um, as you mentioned at the top, President Donald Trump and Republicans are gathering today as we record this on, uh, on Wednesday and tomorrow, uh, in Dallas for the GOP's first ever midterm national convention.

John, you've been around conventions for a long time.

What do you make of of the president and Republicans plan to have or to hold this midterm convention as such?

>> Well, it's a big day and a big week for the president and for all those running for Congress, particularly because it's his idea to have this midterm conference or convention.

And it's supposed to be just like the national conventions, except in midterm.

And it's his idea.

And he's invited them to come to Dallas to basically endorse his record and run on his record.

Uh, they can't really avoid that if they show up there, because that's the major purpose.

And that puts him at the center of these congressional elections.

Uh, it's to be a big pep rally, mostly for Donald Trump and the various ones who are there to take part in that endorsement.

They're also going to leave a considerable amount of money.

This is interesting, it seems to me, because they have to pay $25,000 just to register.

And I saw a list of the perks that they can add to that.

The most obvious and notable one to me was they can pay $88,000 and they can get a personal picture with the president, which is a pretty steep price, it seems to me.

But that's part of the deal.

Uh, the national media are making a good deal about this being innovative or unprecedented.

And that's true, as you noted.

If you don't count the Democrats, right?

Because this is the first one for the Republicans.

But the Democrats pioneered this way back in 1974, 1974.

Gerald Ford, as president hadn't been president long, but Gerald Ford's president, all kinds of people are getting in place to run, including Jimmy Carter.

And in addition to all of that, which they wanted some attention to, they had adopted something called the Frazier McGovern report, which was a whole new thing because it was a national party, charter or convention or our Constitution.

National parties hadn't had constitutions up till then.

And so it was a pep rally with people like Jimmy Carter there.

I took a group of grad students mostly out there, and we interviewed people that were delegates in Kansas City.

So I've been following this at least since then, and I've developed a huge database on national conventions and these off year elections.

Trump, however, is having some trouble already with it, because he announced originally that he was going to be the keynote speaker.

And that has been off for a while, because he then said that he was going to be the keynote speaker tonight, and that JD Vance would be the keynote tomorrow night.

Now, I saw an article yesterday that said he was back on saying he would be there to speak tonight or tomorrow night as well, so we'll see about that.

He has had some trouble and I'm sure some heartburn over some of the people that are saying they're not going, including the first lady announced last week she's not going to Dallas.

And, uh, Senator Thune, the president of the Senate, he's announced he's not going.

I saw one study of the members of the House that are running.

Uh, 46 of them are saying they're going to be back in the district taking care of district business.

So there is another study that says 100 people running for Congress are going to be there.

So it'll have a mixed kind of review on that.

Another controversial thing was to do this, he has to skip the 911 memorial in New York City, which is the big one, The president rebutted that by saying he was going to be at the Pentagon.

So we'll see how that all plays out.

But it's going to be really interesting to see what the coverage is by the media and what they get out of it, and what kinds of things they don't step in.

One postscript, and that is you could look at this also as a big endorsement for Paxton, Ken Paxton, of course, running for the Senate against Talarico because they're running neck and neck and they're going Paxton is going to get a lot of coverage, too.

>> Mhm.

John, the president's approval rating is at a probably a fairly new low during his tenure in in office.

I think the latest couple of polls showed it around 33 to 38%.

Um, what impact does that have on, on GOP candidates across the country, especially since they're having this kind of pep rally, if you will, in Dallas?

>> Well, that's exactly why all of those people have announced that they're not going because most of those are in swing districts or they're in purple states, not red states.

And some of them are trying to already put some some space between them and the president.

Like it or not, this is going to be a referendum on the president.

But some of those congressional candidates are trying to get out of the way and develop their own position.

>> Mhm.

I think we're.

And Charlie, also, I think not only are we seeing this at the national level, but here at the statewide level, Darren Bailey, the Republican candidate for governor in his gubernatorial campaign this season, he seems to very specifically has has drawn back from from Trump, which is very different from the campaign he ran four years ago when he was hitching his wagon to all things, all things President Trump.

Um, is that commentary on the status of of Trump's Coattails, do you think, or the status of the way things are in Illinois that we have?

The Republican at the top of the Illinois ticket is distancing himself from the national leader of the of the party.

>> Charlie.

>> Well, it strikes me that what are the problems that Darren Bailey has?

Well, he's got several problems.

Probably the biggest problem is that he is totally out of touch with two thirds of the population in the state of Illinois.

Illinois has, according to the latest census, roughly 12.7 million people.

Now two thirds of them live in the.

In Cook County and the collar counties around it.

Uh, southern Illinois has only three counties in the top couple dozen in terms of population.

And his his message is, is not one that's designed to, to appeal to, to people in the Chicago area.

He's Suggested some things that you think would appeal.

For example, he says, we have to reduce property taxes.

Well, most of the property taxes statewide go to pay for schools.

And he's not come up with any idea.

Well, how are you going to make up that lost money?

He's also said we should do away with tolls.

And he's opposed the tollway.

But the problem with that is there are there's quite a few or a large number of outstanding tollway bonds that have to be paid off.

And if you do away with tolls, there's a big chunk of money.

I think it's close to $500 million.

That now goes for road maintenance, including for projects in southern Illinois that will not be available.

And again, he's not come up with any suggestions of how to to make up that lost money.

For his part, Pritzker seems to be ignoring Darren Bailey.

He doesn't talk about him.

He focuses his concentration on Donald Trump.

And what Pritzker says is the damage that the Trump administration has done to Illinois and a whole lot of different areas.

And he says to people, well, look at the cost of your groceries.

Look at what you're paying at the at the gas pump.

And that's all on Donald Trump.

And it's like Darren Bailey is maybe an afterthought.

So basically, and Bailey also has the problem that he doesn't have any money and he's not going to get any money to campaign.

Pritzker, for all practical purposes, has all the money in the world.

He can throw in beaucoup bucks for himself.

He's also set up a PAC to support Democratic congressional candidates in a number of different states.

And if you think about it, the amount of money that Bailey had the last time out.

A lot of it came from Mega-donors, particularly unions.

Now, if I'm a rich Republican and I have money that I want to try and invest in a political campaign to do the best to further candidates who are going to back my ideals.

I would not waste money here in Illinois.

I would go to one of the battleground states for U.S.

senator, and that's where I would put my money, because I'd get more bang for the buck.

If I can help Republicans keep control of Congress.

That's a lot more helpful to me for for my ideals, my policies that I'm supporting than it would be to elect a Republican governor in Illinois who will not be able to do anything because he will be hamstrung by a Democratic controlled General Assembly and the chances of the Republicans.

Gaining control of the Illinois legislature are less.

And I've used this analogy elsewhere.

I am more likely to be the starting quarterback for the bears than it is for the Republicans to have a majority in the General Assembly.

They'll be lucky if they pick up 1 or 2 seats.

They'll still be in a super minority.

>> Mhm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you raised something that I wanted to touch on also Charlie and John.

We're we're now, what, 55, 54 days out from the election.

And, um, the governor and not only the governor, but all of the constitutional officers in the state have were out in full force here in southern Illinois and also in, in Springfield over the past 2 or 3 weeks as part of the, of the state state fairs going on.

Um, and we've seen all of the, all the candidates out, we've also seen their, their, their challengers, as well as the state's other high profile race for, for U.S.

Senate, the candidates there.

John, what's the impact of having all those candidates present, especially in our region this time of year?

>> What?

Charlie said it was huge last week for the Democrats in this area.

Du Quoin State Fair, we mentioned we're proud of it, but most people don't know and don't care that there are only two state fairs, one in Springfield and one in de coin and the governor and all most all the constitutional officers were down here for that the night before the Du Quoin Fair parade that Jackson County Democrats had a huge thing over in Murfreesboro, and all of the Democratic candidates were there.

The governor and Dick Durbin and all of them were here for that.

But in addition, we have this multi-modal transportation system, which is a train station, but it's for all of Southern Illinois.

The next day, there was a huge turnout, mostly Democratic officials, in a big old downtown thing where we opened that up as well.

So Democrats just dominated last week.

Now, Bailey did not come down at all.

Don Tracy, who is running for the US Senate seat, did come and he got a front page coverage for being here.

But that just kind of indicates what kind of situation we're in.

And especially the Bailey campaign, as Charlie was indicating, is in tough shape and thus other people running, like Don Tracy and all of the constitutional officers on the Republican side are having a tough time getting any hearing at all.

Pritzker, I note, has been pretty consistent talking about his record, but homing in on his fiscal Responsibility that he likes to talk about, and he's bragging about those bond issue houses in New York raised our credit rating for the 12th straight time about two weeks ago.

And of course, he's touting that.

And he needs to push that.

I think he's probably had more impact on how we raise money and how we spend it in the budget.

And anybody going back to Richard Ogilvie, who of course brought us the income tax to begin with.

But his problem is if you've got priorities, you have to pay new money for them and you've got to fund the base.

But you've also and the Democrats partially are not happy about the fact that the school aid formula, for example, everybody's in favor of it.

It's a bipartisan thing.

But they got new money, but not as much new money as a lot of the locals would get.

And so the governor can run on that.

But there's also a downside to it.

I think the governor will run gangbusters even in this area.

He's likely to do well.

But I think he does have national ambitions.

And I think he's looking at the immediate race.

And how does he do in terms of running again in two years?

And I'd say he needs to get to 55.

He got 54 in the fraction last time.

I'm sure they'd like to get to 55% and probably realistic, but we'll see.

>> Yeah.

John, you mentioned something that I was going to circle kind of circle back around on.

Both Moody's and S&P raised the the their ratings and outlook to a stable outlook for for Illinois.

Charlie, is this kind of unprecedented territory given the history of the state, the past.

I don't know, 15 or 20 years with our relationship with the rating agencies.

>> Well, if you go back longer than that, we we had really good bond ratings up until, oh, maybe ten, 15 years ago.

And they started to go downhill, particularly when Bruce Rauner was governor.

Uh, and so now this is the, I want to say it's the, the 12th overall upgrade since Governor Pritzker took office.

And the upgrades are good for state's finances.

Because if you have a higher credit rating, that means bond investors would have more confidence in you and you can borrow money at lower interest rates, and ultimately, you save taxpayers money.

And it was something like, I want to say maybe a couple dozen consecutive downgrades before he took office.

And is a point of note.

Even with the upgrade, Illinois still has the worst rating from S&P global in the country and also from Moody's.

We're only one spot behind new Jersey, Kentucky and Pennsylvania on S&P global scale, but it also shows how far Illinois has come in the past decade, because ten years ago, our rating was five places lower at triple B, which is just one level above junk.

And Darren Bailey, who of course is a Republican candidate for governor, said the upgrade is good news.

But the state's overall ranking shows there's still a lot of work left to improve the state's finances.

His quote is a credit rating tells Wall Street whether Illinois government could afford to pay its bills.

It doesn't tell you whether you can afford yours.

So, yes, I'm glad Illinois can borrow money cheaper.

Now let's make Illinois cheaper to live in.

And I think everybody would agree with that.

And the question is, whose fault is it that it's not cheaper?

And I think for a majority of the people, they would conclude that events happening in Washington DC, with the Trump administration have done more to jack up prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store than anything that JB Pritzker may have done.

>> Mhm.

Well, and despite the current those current conditions that we're seeing for the federal government and the impact that's having on, on energy and gasoline and whatnot, um, the Conference on Government Forecasting and Accountability or for those insiders, it's out with its latest report that indicates that the, the revenue projections or revenue for the first two months of this fiscal year is, is up and up, you know, quite a bit, I think 7% or so.

That's I guess that's considered encouraging news, I would think.

>> Yeah.

The the Commission on Government forecasting and accountability, which is basically the the legislature's financial gurus came out with their report a week or so ago for the first two months of fiscal 2027.

Now, of course, that would be July and August of this year.

And it showed.

The report showed that revenue so far in FY 27 is up 7%, and that's been boosted by strong performances in corporate and personal income taxes and sales tax growth.

And that's surprising in a sense, because the budget that Governor Pritzker signed anticipated very little revenue growth in FY 27.

So this provides kind of a cushion.

And revenue is basically it's up $515 million through the first two months.

Personal income tax is up 5%.

Corporate income tax is up almost is 51%, sales taxes are up almost 12%.

And said, well, this level of growth is unlikely to continue at such an elevated rate.

The stronger than expected totals to start the year will provide additional financial cushion if revenues were to weaken later in the fiscal year.

So that's good news.

So in a sense, on the financial area, both with the bond ratings and with this report, that's good news.

And it's a boost I think, for the governor.

>> All right.

>> I want to ride off of that.

All that Charlie just said by noting that it not only helps the state sell bonds, but it helps municipal government sell their bonds and not pay quite so much for the interest.

And so that gets me to the Illinois Municipal.

>> I was going to.

>> Ask.

>> They're going to be meeting next.

>> Week, and they're going to be at the Hyatt in Chicago.

Mostly mayors and managers.

This is 113th birthday of I ML and national or statewide meetings for mayors, managers, staff, and so forth.

There are 1294 members of I. ML.

So it's a significant force in lobbying and taking care of the locals.

And they're going to emphasize what they do and talk about that at some length this next week in my state and local classes, which I taught for many, many years, I always pointed out that you may not know it, but when government touches you and you touch the government, it's almost always daily.

The local governments, police and fire protection, parks, districts, parks and recreation, uh, traffic control, all kinds of things health departments, those kinds of things.

People don't think about that, but most of it is municipal government, local government.

And I want to add to that the occasion will undoubtedly be marked by considerable accolades to the Chief Executive officer, CEO Brad Cole, who is one of our own.

He was a two term mayor of this town, and he went from that to be CEO 12 years ago.

And I think there'll be a lot of effusive praise for him.

He's also a two degree graduate of Siu, so we're proud to have him in that position.

And I think it's well that we salute I. ML and Brad Cole.

He's going to be gone real soon on on to another career path I'm sure.

But I wanted to put that plug in.

>> Sure.

Gentlemen, we've got a couple of minutes left.

So as kind of gazing out into your crystal ball, you're taking a look.

What what might what are you keeping an eye on or going to be watching in the next the next few weeks.

Charlie, let's start with you.

>> Oh, my.

I guess in long range we will still be looking at how the campaigns develop.

As I said earlier, I don't think there's any any chance that Republicans are going to make any great gains in Illinois.

But in other states, the the battlegrounds are pretty well heating up.

And in a sense, whoever controls Congress, if the Republicans can control Congress, President Trump will be able to carry on with his agenda.

And if the Democrats get control of Congress, President Trump will be thwarted.

And of course, in Illinois, in the Chicago area, there's another question that I think is overshadowing people.

They're kind of looking at the the races for state executive offices and sort of ho hum, Democrats are going to win them all, there's no doubt about that.

And for the legislative districts in the Chicago area, they're all pretty well safe also for Democrats.

So the focus is going to be next spring on the mayoral election in Chicago.

And that is wide open at the moment.

Alexi Giannoulias appears to have much more money than everybody else.

But we're waiting to see.

Uh, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that Mayor Johnson is going to announce in a couple of days that he's going to run again, and he's been toying with it.

He's being kind of cozy about whether he will or not.

But that's going to be what I think people in Chicago and the Chicago media are going to be more focused on than state government races, and there'll be other issues when the legislature comes back, one of the things is we we have to do something to improve our ethics situation.

That'll be a topic for discussion after the election, when the legislature returns to Springfield for its fall session.

>> John.

>> I want to make a prediction right now, and I can be held on this.

I think the House for the Democrats is very doable.

All they've got to get is about four pluses, and the Senate's going to be very competitive.

But Democrats need to get to four or above there, too.

So it's going to be interesting.

>> All right.

We're out of time, gentlemen, for this edition of Capitol View.

My thanks to John Jackson and Charlie Wheeler.

I'm Jeff Williams.

Thank you for tuning in this week for Capitol View.

Have a great week.

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