Quinn captures lead, not hearts, poll finds - From The Chicago Tribune(R-IL )

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

llinois voters continue to be dissatisfied with the job Democrat Pat Quinn is doing as governor, but so far they're willing to stick with him rather than switch to Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, a new Chicago Tribune poll has found..

Although the survey shows voters think Rauner is better equipped to deal with state government's massive financial problems, it also indicates that Quinn has been able to paint the wealthy Republican equity investor as out of touch. And despite a summer filled with reports on Quinn administration scandals involving state grants and patronage hiring, voters view the governor as more trustworthy than his opponent.

The poll found Quinn at 48 percent support compared with 37 percent for Rauner, with 8 percent undecided. And 5 percent went to little-known Libertarian candidate Chad Grimm — support that likely would have gone to Rauner if Republican forces had been able to knock the Libertarian Party slate off the ballot.

Helping fuel Quinn's early advantage was the poll's finding that 43 percent of voters identified themselves as Democrats while only 24 percent called themselves Republicans and 28 percent said they were independents. The partisan split is identical to a Tribune poll in fall 2008, when home state Democrat Barack Obama made his first bid for the White House, and also represents a high-water mark for Democrats in Illinois in a nonpresidential year since 1998.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-illinois-governor-race-met-0914-20140913-story.html#page=1

[The Magistrate]

1. I Like This, Sir

Rauner would be a disaster, and is out of touch in more ways than one. His attacks on Gov. Quinn for patronage and scandal do not stick because everyone in Illinois knows Quinn is the quintessential 'good government' type ( something we in Chicago tend to abbreviate to 'goo-goo' ). He has built his entire career on this, and been at it a long time; trying to convince people he is corrupt is like trying to deny Campbell's makes soup. To put it bluntly, his reputation as a reformer and straight arrow is one reason people here have never warmed to him much, but that is also the reason they remain likely to prefer him to a land-shark like Rauner in Springfield.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

2. In our area he'll win handily. What worries me are the suburbs outside of Cook. But I am

feeling cautiously optimistic. He' always struck me as being ethical especially given many of the specimens e have in our state.

[former9thward]

3. Yes, the "good government" type who destroyed the state legislature in the 80s.

For those outside of IL, IL used to have a proportional system of electing members to the legislature. Each district had three representatives, two of one party and one of the other. This meant no matter where you live Democrats were represented in Republican areas and vice versa. Quinn sponsored a referendum which ended that and cut the legislature by 2/3s. He sold it as a "cost cutting" measure.

It has been a disaster. The number of reformers in the legislature has dropped to about zero and all the power has been transferred to the "four tops" which are the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and House. The average representative has no power and just votes as their leader tells them. Democrats who live down state or the suburbs no longer have representation and the same for Republicans in Chicago.

This referendum by Quinn was the most un-democratic thing you can think of.

[The Magistrate]

4. I Remember That, Sir

Not a big fan, myself, but my preference for him over Rauner as governor is infinite.

One of the problems with 'good government' types is that their appreciation for the laws of unintended consequence are generally well below average....

"An idealist is one who, noting that a rose has a better fragrance than a cabbage, concludes it will make a better soup."

[former9thward]

5. On that, we agree.