“I’VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING, SITTIN’ ON A RAINBOW, GOT THAT STRING AROUND MY FINGER…”

2/2/10


A cabal of native Southsiders has been puzzling over the reported $250,000 ($225,000 of which was forked over last week) contribution from 14th Ward Alderman and Committeeman Ed Burke to Pat Quinn. One of the group opined that perhaps the contribution was made because Burke could control Quinn but couldn’t control Hynes. My thoughts are below. The first paragraph has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but is at least as succinct of my philosophy of life as is the masthead of this blog:


It’s always good to see cynicism of any kind, monopartisan, bipartisan, or multipartisan. This optimism thing is much overrated and blinds us to the truth all around us.

I like our friend’s point on Burke’s ability to control Quinn, and a quarter million tends to get one’s attention. (But see two paragraphs hence.) Being able to control Quinn would come in especially handy when one considers that Quinn, should he be elected, would be the only hope for a counterweight against Mike Madigan. So Burke could be putting up the big dough either to counter yet another rival south side Irish committeeman (This could be yet another round in the old as history game of “Who has the biggest male member here?” Oh, sorry…we are talking Irishmen, so the metaphor falls short on a number of fronts.) or he could be making this generous contribution on behalf of a friendly south side Irish committeeman, just to make sure that Governor Quinn doesn’t get the strange notion that he somehow will be boss down in Springfield. I don’t know which, because I know nothing of Burke’s relationship with Madigan, though I know nothing that would indicate it is either overtly or covertly hostile. Note, too, that a big contribution from Burke probably looks bad enough for Quinn (which also may have something to do with its timing), but a big contribution from Madigan would look awful for Quinn. If this contribution is being made on behalf of, or out of friendship for, Mike Madigan, removing Dan Hynes as an obstacle to the gubernatorial ambitions of Lisa Madigan might also have something to do with it. On balance, though, I suppose that Burke fronting for Madigan here is a stretch, especially since we are talking about $250,000. This is the kind of money Nixon used to collect in suitcases from shady characters in places like Bimini and Costa Rica.

Still, this also could be a case of a quarter million looking big to us (and to most people), but not looking all that big to Burke, especially as he realizes he is getting older and there won’t be that many elections as big as this one in his lifetime. He might figure that he has this big pile of dough and this is the biggest thing he might ever see again.

A couple more things on our friend’s point about the relative ability to handle Quinn and Hynes. While I suspect it is true that Quinn would be more easily controlled than Hynes, one would never want to bet much of anything on one’s ability to control Pat Quinn. Harold was right when he made the observation that Quinn is something of a showboater and a loose cannon, and, believe me, Harold was probably not the first or last to make that observation. While, as I said above, a quarter million gets one’s attention, Quinn is quite enamored of himself and would resist control by anyone, even by someone capable of wielding that kind of dough; it would conflict with his self- and media- image.

To the extent that Quinn might be more controllable than Hynes, such relative pliability would not be attributable so much to anything intrinsically strong or resistant in Danny Hynes but, rather, the long line of potential controllers of Hynes with which any potential additional controller would have to contend.

Bad weather today…low turnout. Maybe some of the fringe candidates (Andrezejewski, Hughes) I perennially support actually have a chance. Naw, probably not.