Gov. Pritzker Has Nobody But Himself To Blame For 'Fair Tax' Fail

CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker's phoniness astounds.

Let me explain: In November 2018, just before getting elected governor, the politically ambitious billionaire had no problem forking over $10.7 million to campaign funds controlled by House Speaker Michael Madigan.

After taking office, the rookie governor didn't hesitate to hire 35 bureaucrats off the clout list sent his way by Madigan, the powerful state Democratic Party boss.

Pritzker put the House speaker's preferred bureaucrats on the board of the Illinois Tollway Authority, a patronage job haven.

The governor's deputy chief of staff in charge of legislative affairs was hand-picked by Madigan.

Pritzker appointed the daughter-in-law of former Ald. Michael Zalewski — a Madigan loyalist whose house got raided as part of the feds' massive corruption probe — to a five-year term as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission.

That's the agency that's supposedly charged with keeping tabs on ComEd, the state's public utility that admitted to trading jobs and more for Madigan's support forwarding favorable legislation.

When the U.S. Justice Department implicated Madigan as the uncharged beneficiary of the massive ComEd bribery scheme, Pritzker didn't demand the resignation of the powerful House speaker.

How could he, really?

Madigan is Illinois' most powerful politician, and he's singularly responsible for wrangling a Democratic supermajority to advance the governor's ambitious legislative agenda — legalized weed, online sports betting, clearing the way for a Chicago casino, boosting the gas tax to repair roads and the constitutional amendment to change the state income tax structure — in less than two years.

Those are just a few reasons it was impossible to take Pritzker seriously Thursday when he said Madigan's reign as supreme ruler of Illinois Democrats must come to an end.

To be fair, calling for Madigan's ouster wasn't even Pritzker's idea. The governor has never demonstrated the fortitude necessary to take on the politician known as "The Velvet Hammer" alone.

It was U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin who tagged Madigan's implied connection to the FBI's corruption probe as a millstone the Democratic Party needs to cut free from its neck.

Durbin is 75 years old. He just got elected to serve what's probably his last term. He doesn't need Madigan anymore. He says what he wants.

Somebody asked Pritzker if he agreed with Durbin's assessment that Madigan needs to step aside, the governor said, "Yes." Anybody who took the governor's one-word rebuke of Madigan as a hard stance against corruption is certainly a sucker.

Scapegoating political failures — and that's what's happening here — is the Pritzker way.

Illinois didn't have a stockpile of protective gear when the coronavirus struck Illinois. Pritzker blamed President Donald Trump.

The state's pension crisis and budget morass? Gov. Bruce Rauner, a one-term Republican, made that mess, Pritzker insists.

The way Pritzker tells it, even the Election Day death of his No. 1 legislative priority — the so-called "Fair Tax" — occurred through no fault of his own.

The governor remains oblivious to the glaring fact that his decision to spend $56 million of his own wealth pushing a tax hike at the same time he's using executive powers to shut down a large swath of the economy — forcing work-a-day folks to file for unemployment — during the coronavirus pandemic's second wave clearly contributed to the Fair Tax's demise.

So, lacking all self-awareness, Pritzker heaped all the blame on lying billionaires tied to Trump-loving Republicans — and Madigan's implied tie to the massive FBI corruption probe — for the murder-by-vote of his attempt to rake in an extra $3 billion in taxpayer cash through a constitutional amendment.

“The Republicans, and the billionaires who sided with them, were effectively able to use the speaker as their foil, and that hurt our ability — our state’s ability — to get things done," he said.

Pritzker said Fair Tax opponents tapped into voter concern that Illinois' government is corrupt and untrustworthy — but that's also not his fault.

"You know that I have proposed significant ethics reforms that I know the Legislature needs to take up," Pritzker said, referring a political promise in his January State of the State Address that never came true because he wasn't ready for reform.

In July, for instance, after Madigan got implicated in the ComEd bribery scheme, Pritzker refused calls for a special session to institute the reforms.

Ethics could wait, the governor said, until after Election Day — when he expected voters would ratify the removal of the state's flat income tax structure, of course.

And now that Pritzker has been weakened by the Fair Tax failure — not to mention the widespread revolt against his renewed pandemic ban on indoor dining — Illinoisans are supposed to believe the governor has turned his back on Madigan in the name of righteous reform?

That's rich, even for a billionaire.

Without Madigan's backing, Pritzker's like every cloutless governor who came before him — helpless without the speaker's support. Everybody knows it — apparently, except for the governor.

On Thursday, Madigan quickly responded to Pritzker's betrayal.

"I look forward to continuing our fight for working families as chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois," Madigan said. In other words, nobody fires the boss.

Pritzker bought himself into Madigan's political machine.

The governor hired the boss's cronies and benefited from the speaker's power.

He's got nobody but himself to blame.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

More from Mark Konkol:

• Pritzker's Political Winter Coming After Voters Reject 'Fair Tax'
• If Voting Results Throw You In Pit Of Despair, Be Like Pastor Bob
• 'No One Right Way' To Fight Virus, But Is Pritzker's Way Best?
• Emails, Secret Report Show Politics Of Science Guiding Pritzker
• Coronavirus Surge: Gov's Pseudoscience Creates Credibility Crisis