Numbers could add up for downstate guy in race

By John Kass

Chicago Tribune

November 13, 2009

State Sen. Bill Brady, the Bloomington Republican running for governor in the Illinois Republican primary, isn’t your typical lawyer politician.

He runs a construction business and can do math with a pencil on a two-by-four. After all the trite commercials from another candidate about the hair of disgraced former Democratic Gov. Bouffantovich, it’s plain arithmetic that could figure in the GOP primary. It revolves around the numbers 6 and 1.

Six of the candidates are from the Chicago metropolitan area. Brady is the only one from downstate. He figures they’ll split the vote.

“Mathematically, this makes sense, but what boggles my mind is that in our polls, 50 percent of the people in the Chicago metropolitan area say they’re more likely to vote for a candidate who comes from the outside,” he told me.

We were sitting over lunch at Ditka’s. Naturally, I was compelled to order the pork chop. It was extremely tasty. Brady, now running from the center-right, asked for meatloaf. Having grown up in the food business, I never order meatloaf. Ever. It’s just like ordering a Ham Salad Surprise. You never really know. And I thought conservatives were skeptics.

Bill, you don’t get meatloaf at home?

“Why? Is there something wrong with meatloaf?” he said, digging in. “This is delicious meatloaf. I love meatloaf.”

And he chomped on some to prove it.

This column on Brady is one in a series of pieces on the candidates running for governor. The Democrats were first in line, and now the Republicans are getting their say. My big idea was to let them do the talking and introduce themselves to readers, and to try to curb my sarcasm until after Thanksgiving.

But at least one of the candidates is using one of the columns to suggest I’ve endorsed him: State Sen. Kirk Dillard, the Republican from Hinsdale, caught a headline that said “Dillard a rare find in Illinois politics.” The headline was about our steaks, not his politics, but my army of spies tells me he’s been repeatedly mentioning “Kass says I’m a rare find!” at candidate forums, as if I’m in his corner.

Endorsements aren’t my job. And politicians savvy enough to run for governor know that we don’t write the headlines over our columns. So if I were Dillard, I wouldn’t play such lawyerly word games. I told this to Brady while repeatedly piercing my pork chop with a forked vengeance best served cold.

“OK,” Brady said. “I get it.”

Hey, I’m just saying.

Brady, 48, runs his construction and real estate management business with his brothers. He was first elected to the Illinois House in 1993, and has been in the state Senate since 2002. Though a career pol now, he also works for a living.

“The No. 1 issue isn’t taxes. It isn’t health care, education. It’s employment,” Brady said. “People in Illinois are worried if they’re going to have their job tomorrow. It’s an 85 percent issue.”

To that end, he advocates giving tax credits to small businesses for creating new jobs, eliminating the so-called death tax and cutting the bloated state budget by 10 percent.

“We need to make Illinois a competitive place to live and work,” Brady said. Whether he can do it, I can’t say.

In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination and wouldn’t stand up to what I still consider the corrupt elements of the Republican Party. I didn’t think he had a chance, and I figured he would split the conservative vote, allowing Judy Baar Topinka to polka dismally toward failure and give former Gov. Rod Blagojevich another term before he was indicted. And that’s what happened.

But I figure that we’re all entitled to a mistake, and he’s older and wiser now. The other conservatives in the race are political newcomer Adam Andrzejewski and the rapier-tongued pundit Dan Proft.

I asked Brady about the state of the Republican Party, still broken by the appetites of imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan, and by the reach of Combine masters like Blagojevich’s co-defendant, Springfield Republican boss William Cellini.

“The reality is that Democrats aren’t philosophical, and they’ll embrace their nominee regardless of where they are on the issues,” Brady said. “But Republicans in their core are pro-life, pro-marriage, anti-tax, anti-corruption and anti-gambling. And they feel that candidates who aren’t these things are hypocritical. And they won’t support them. So to win this election, a candidate has to bring the party together.

“Our nominee [Topinka] lost 30 percent of the people who called themselves Republican conservatives. And the middle is not partisan, not philosophical, and at the end of the day they look for a candidate who is supported by their party, as long as they’re not scary,” Brady said.

Brady is working overtime not to be scary. And then I looked at the meatloaf on his plate. Eureka! Meatloaf isn’t scary, is it?

But then, like that Ham Salad Surprise, you just never know.

Brady Unveils Education Reform Package

Supports eliminating cap on charter schools, higher tuition tax credits, vouchers and abolishing the State Board of Education

 

Sen. Bill Brady, Republican Candidate for Governor, unveiled a comprehensive education reform package today to give parents a greater choice in their children’s education and to better prepare Illinois students for college educations and 21st Century vocations and careers.

“Just as Illinois is economically challenged today with jobs leaving the state, so are we educationally challenged by not giving our students greater opportunities to receive the best education possible,” said Brady.  “We must give our students a better education so they are ready and able to become productive members of our workforce.  We must innovate, build on success and eliminate barriers that serve the educational bureaucracy, not our students.”

Brady’s plan includes lifting the limit on charter schools, increasing tuition tax credits, empowering school boards and parents to enact voucher programs and giving high school students the opportunity to earn a community college associate’s degree before they graduate.

“We need to give local school districts, parents and students a greater voice in education,” said Brady.  “We need to work to ensure the greatest chance for success for every Illinois school and every Illinois student.”

“My plan to reform education in Illinois starts with a clean break from the rigid educational structure of today with the elimination of the State Board of Education,” said Brady of Bloomington.  “Doing so will give local school officials, teachers and parents a greater voice in the operation of their local schools.”  ?

“I will restructure our educational bureaucracy by creating a streamlined, efficient and smaller department truly accountable to the Governor and thereby the people of Illinois.  This downsized department under the Governor will administer the financial disbursement of resources, helping school districts in a way that will ensure more dollars go to the classroom and not to educational administration expense.” ?

Brady’s plan for greater parental involvement and greater student achievement includes:

• Eliminating the cap on charter schools in Illinois, allowing an unlimited number of charter schools to operate in Illinois at any given time.  Doing away with the cap would also lift the geographic constraints currently imposed on charter schools.  Current legislation limits the number of charter schools to 120 at one time — 70 in Chicago, 45 for the rest of the state and 5 devoted to re-enrolled high school drop-outs. 

 

• Increasing tuition tax credits by 50 percent a year.  As it stands now, an eligible Illinois household can receive a maximum $500 in education expense tax credits a year.

 

• Empowering school boards by action or parents by referendum to open their school district to vouchers, allowing state tax dollars to follow the student.  The voucher would be at a minimum level equal to the pupil state support of that school district.

 

• Allowing every high school student in Illinois the opportunity to achieve in their high school years a two-year associate degree through cooperative efforts between the state’s 49 community college districts and regional offices of education.  This would ensure students graduate with a better education and more prepared to pursue a higher education in a four-year institution or enter the workforce.

“For far too long, our state has fallen behind nationally and internationally,” said Brady.  “We have graduated students, in many cases, with a subpar education and a lack of skills needed for the workplace today.  We can accelerate our students’ chance at success with a program that integrates our secondary schools and our community colleges.”

Brady unveiled his plan at the Chicago International Charter School’s West Belden Campus, a K-8th grade institution in Chicago’s Austin-Belmont Cragin neighborhood.

“West Belden is a shining example of the educational opportunities Illinois children need and deserve,” said Brady, the only candidate with business and legislative experience.

Brady also reiterated his support for preserving the home school system.  ?

“As Governor, I will continue to ensure that parents who decide to school their children at home remain independent of state oversight and free of any bureaucratic requirements,” said Brady.  “I will do all I can to make Illinois the strongest supported home school state in the nation.”

On the Road – A Busy Week Throughout Illinois

It was a great week on the campaign trail, as we traveled from one end of the state to the other, including Harrisburg and Vienna, where Nancy and I each saw many Southern Illinois Republicans ready for a Brady victory in 2010, and DuPage County, where I spoke at the Young Republicans statewide convention and stopped by the Choices for Life dinner supporting Woman’s Choice Services.

On Wednesday, 800 Illinoisans turned out for a governor’s forum in Will County hosted by the Homer- Lockport and Joliet Tea Party groups. A great event and lively debate.

The Illinois Republican Party hosted a debate on Thursday, the first time all seven Republican Candidates for Governor shared the same stage. I was the only candidate who outlined a specific plan to bring jobs back to Illinois and to keep more jobs from leaving the state. I also stood out from the rest with my positions on health care, balancing the budget, taxes, education and concealed carry. Here are a few of my quotes from the debate that were highlighted by the media:

“Just as I worked to defeat Obamacare when he was a state senator in Illinois, we will defeat it, hopefully, at the federal level,” said state Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington). “But if we fail to do that, I will impose the [states' rights] 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and tell the federal government they have no right to take our tax dollars and redirect them to provide a national health care program … It’s time someone slapped the hand of the federal government and said ‘enough is enough.’” — Chicago Sun-Times

“We know the Democrats can elect Mickey Mouse if they nominate him. They’ve proven so,” joked Bill Brady, a state senator from Bloomington. — Northwest Herald

“There’s not one area of state government that cannot do more with less by cutting fraud and waste that the Blagojevich-Quinn administration has put in place.” – Senator Bill Brady, WGN-TV.

“Illinois is one of two states in the nation that denies its citizens the right in the Second Amendment, that are afforded in 48 states, for people to protect themselves,” Brady said. – Chicago Tribune

Looking Ahead: Tune into FOX Chicago Sunday on FOX 32 tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. for my interview with Dane Placko and Jack Conaty. We discuss my campaign, positions on the issues, and why I am the best candidate for all of Illinois.

Watch Thursday night’s debate. Let’s do what Republicans did in Virginia and New Jersey!

Tuesday was a great day for the Republican Party in elections throughout the country.

Republican governors ended the Democratic reigns in Virginia and New Jersey. Their common message: creating jobs, less government and ending corruption. That’s my message to Illinoisans for 2010, and it’s a winning message that I will carry to the Executive Mansion.

The field is set for the 2010 Republican primary, which is now just 90 days away.

The seven GOP candidates for Governor will face off in a debate sponsored by the Illinois Republican Party Thursday evening, November 5, at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. If you cannot attend the state party event in person, there are some other ways to watch or listen to the debate.

First, the state Republican party will be broadcasting the debate live at 15 Republican organizations throughout the state. Those locations, which will receive a closed circuit broadcast, are listed below.
In addition, WLS-AM Chicago (890) will broadcast the entire debate at 7 p.m. the following evening, Friday November 6. You can also listen to the broadcast at www.wlsam.com.

The 15 debate watching parties around Illinois hosted by local Republicans are:

DeKalb County
Jackson County
Johnson County
Knox County
Lee County
Marion County
Menard County
Peoria County
Perry County
Rock Island County
Sangamon County
Shelby County
St. Clair County
Stark County
White County

I hope you can join fellow Republicans and Brady for Governor supporters at one of these locales.