Pat Quinn Concedes and Vows to Work to Pass Minimum-Wage Hike

posted Nov. 4, 2014; updated Nov. 5

By Dennis Robaugh | Patch Editor

Everything about the 2014 battle for the Illinois governorship hinged on money. High unemployment and struggling businesses, threats to the middle-class standard of living and wage stagnation. Bruce Rauner and Gov. Pat Quinn each sought to capitalize on the pocketbook and finance concerns deeply affecting Illinois.

And the money poured into this race set a record, too, making it the most expensive state campaign in history at $100 million.

Quinn, trailing at election day’s end as votes were still being counted, refused to concede to Rauner on Tuesday night though NBC News and the Associated Press each called the race for the Republican challenger. With 99 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday morning, Rauner had 1,742,403 votes to Quinn’s 1,585,332.

“I believe in making sure that when you vote in an election, every vote counts,” Quinn said. “We will never, ever yield until all of the results are in.”

On Wednesday, however, the Democratic incumbent yielded and conceded the race to Rauner, the first Republican elected governor in Illinois since 1998.

“It’s clear we do not have enough votes to win the election,” Pat Quinn said Wednesday at 3:35 p.m. in a press conference. “We respect the result. We respect what the voters did yesterday.”

Quinn said he appointed his chief of staff to act as liaison for the transition to Rauner’s administration. He also said the new administration should work with the legislature to help shape the next budget.

Rauner, however, hadn’t waited for Quinn to come around. He gave his victory speech Tuesday night.

“This is a victory. This is a victory for every family in Illinois,” Rauner said, vowing to lower the tax burden on people and bring the state a “booming” economy. “This election is about bringing back our great state.”

» Related: Voters Delayed Due to ‘Batman vs. Superman’ Movie Shoot

At 10:15 p.m., NBC News called the race for Rauner, who appeared to be leading with 52 percent of the vote. At 10:27 p.m., the Associated Press also called the race for Rauner. Quinn, ensconced in a room at the Hotel Allegro in Chicago, sent people to his campaign party shortly thereafter to tell reporters he would not concede.

“No, it’s not over, not by a long shot,” said Paul Vallas, the Palos Heights native who joined Quinn on the ticket as his lieutenant governor candidate, noting that hundreds of thousands of votes have yet to be counted in Chicago and downstate, including the provisional, vote-by-mail and grace-period votes, as well as votes from people who stood in line today to register and vote. “At the end of the day, we knew this was going to be a close election.”

About 2,000 Chicago election judges did not show up at the polls, thrown off by a “dirty trick” robo-call that informed them they could not report for work. On Wednesday, the Cook County state’s attorney announced a criminal investigation would be launched.

Some polling places in the city of Chicago did not open on time and others were ordered to stay open late due to voting problems. In the Ravenswood community in Chicago, some people who were lining up for same-day registration and voting didn’t get to cast their ballot until 3 a.m

In 2010, Quinn held onto the governor’s office by a slim majority of 32,000 votes — less than a percentage point. Votes were counted for several days before Quinn would acknowledge the outcome. This time around, Quinn lost to Rauner by 170,00 votes, according to unofficial results.

Close to $100 million was spent in the battle for a blue-state governor’s seat, and more than $26 million of that came from the Winnetka multimillionaire’s pockets. Business interests and labor also ponied up millions.

Like their campaign positions, the two men couldn’t be more different. Quinn lives in a modest home on Chicago’s West Side and can’t remember to mow his own lawn. Rauner owns several multimillion-dollar dwellings, including a mansion in Winnetka, a Millennium Park townhouse, a penthouse on Central park in New York City, a Florida Keys villa, ranches in Wyoming and Montana and a Utah ski resort condo.

Rauner’s campaign portrayed Quinn as ineffectual, noting his utter lack of accomplishment in office after taking over for the now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich. And Rauner tried to chain Quinn, a man who takes pride in his reformist roots, to a pair of cement blocks: machine politics and corruption.

And not without reason, either. A $54 million neighborhood anti-crime fund launched four years ago has been likened to a “political slush fund” after the state auditor general found “serious deficiencies” in the program’s focus, operation and financial management. And a patronage scandal in the Illinois Department of Transportation didn’t help either.

For his part, Pat Quinn waged a nasty class-war campaign, proclaiming this gubernatorial vote as a sign of whether your sympathies rested with privileged millionaires or minimum wagers. And if the clash of classes wouldn’t convince voters, Quinn also portrayed Rauner as a classless, rich, vindictive cartoon-character of a tycoon who bullied business associates, pocketed millions by outsourcing American jobs overseas and benefitted from profiteering that kept sick babies from receiving much-needed medicine.

Rauner countered by putting his wife Diana on television to tell voters he could be trusted because he’s a likable Republican with no social agenda who only wants to revive the state’s economy. He tried to appeal to Democrats and independents by cutting an ad with his wife in which she calls herself a Democrat. While touting his experience making money in high finance and big business as a plus to getting Illinois out of its economic pit, Rauner also hoped everyone would see him as “just a regular guy” who wears an $18 wristwatch and idolizes his late grandfather, who worked in a Wisconsin cheese factory. Rauner’s dad was a vice president at Motorola who raised his family on the North Shore.

The campaign also led to the abrupt resignation of one of the state’s leading government reporters, Dave McKinney, who left the Chicago Sun-Times after Rauner’s camp tried to smear McKinney and pressured the paper with a request to bar him from covering stories about Rauner’s past business dealings. McKinney issued a public letter of resignation, saying the paper no longer had reporters’ backs.

Early voting set a record in Illinois this year, with more than 500,000 voters casting early ballots compared to 382,000 four years ago. Overall voter turnout, however, was pegged at 52 percent, or average.

If the results hold true for Rauner, losing the governorship in President Barack Obama’s home state would be a personal embarrassment to the president and a blow to Democrats. The president and the first lady campaigned several times in Chicago on Quinn’s behalf to rally the base, knowing that overwhelming turnout in Chicago could outweigh the Republican-leaning vote in the suburbs and downstate.

Rauner didn’t forsake the city of Chicago entirely, securing support from a group of Chicago’s black pastors and enlisting one, South Side pastor Corey Brooks, to make a TV ad on his behalf. After the ad began airing, Brooks’ church was struck by thieves and vandals and the pastor received death threats.

Regardless of his stated campaign agenda, Rauner still would have to govern with veto-proof Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the firmly entrenched duo of House Speaker Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

Rauner addressed that head-on in his victory speech Tuesday night, noting voters decided they want government divided between two parties. He said that called for bipartisan solutions.

“Just a few minutes ago I placed two very important phone calls. i called Speaker Madigan. I called President Cullerton. And I told them this is an opportunity for us to work together,” Rauner said. “This is our time. This is a transformational period.”

But on Wednesday, aides for Madigan and Cullerton said no such conversations took place. Call? What call? “There was no call … and no conversation,” Steve Brown wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday afternoon.

Later in the day, a Rauner aide said the governor-elect placed the call and left a message but his statements on election night didn’t imply he actually spoke with the legislative leaders.

» Related: Watch Video of Rauner and Quinn’s Election Night Comments

Underscoring Democrats’ hope to bring out the vote on class-based financial issues, two non-binding questions were put to Illinois voters:

• Should the state’s minimum wage be raised from $8.25 to $10 an hour?
• Should a 3 percent tax be levied on anyone who earns at least $1 million in personal income each year, with the cash dedicated to public schools?

“One issue I was very pleased to see yesterday voted on by the people loud and clear was raising the minimum wage in our state,” Quinn said Wednesday after his concession speech. “It’s not enough for a mom, or dad or anyone to raise a family on.”

Two thirds of Illinois voters cast a ballot in favor of raising the minimum wage from $8.25 to $10, and Quinn said that is a cause to which he will dedicate the remainder of his time in office. Quinn took no questions and left the podium after making that pledge.

And what’s next for Rauner? The Republican was purposely vague about specific plans to tackle the state’s vexing financial problems. Now that he must govern, we’ll find out soon enough.

STATEWIDE OFFICES: Still No Treasurer Decision

As of Wednesday night, a winner had yet to be declared in the state treasurer’s race. Republican Tom Cross, a state representative from Oswego, seeks his first term as treasurer, facing Democratic state Sen. Mike Frerichs of Champaign. Cross had 1.646 million votes to 1.625 for the Democrat. In other state races:

• Republican Judy Baar Topinka won her second term as comptroller, beating Democrat Sheila Simon, the state’s current lieutenant governor.
• Democrat Lisa Madigan won her fourth term as attorney general, beating Republican Paul Schimpf, an attorney from Downstate Waterloo.
• Democratic Jesse White won a record fifth term as secretary of state, beating Mike Webster, a Republican from Willowbrook.

U.S. CONGRESS: BRUCE DOLD WINS

With the way most of Illinois’ congressional districts are drawn, few elections are close affairs. One emerged this year as a “race to watch” on the national stage. Democratic U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider faced former GOP Rep. Bob Dold in a rematch of the 2012 election, in which Schneider prevailed after Democrat-led redistricting. This time, Schneider lost. Dold secured 52 percent of the vote, according to unofficial totals late Tuesday. Schneider, of Deerfield, conceded at 9:35 p.m., thanking his family for their support.

“To my team, some of you have just joined us, some of you have been with us from the very beginning ... I simply could not imagine having taken this journey with anybody else,” he said. “To the more than 30,000 people who invested in this campaign, thank you.”

Schneider spent more than $4.2 million, and Dold spent more than $3.1 million in pursuit of this U.S. House seat, according to OpenSecrets.org.

“Tonight we fell short of our goal ... we fought incredibly hard the entire way,” he said. “I will rest easy in knowing we did everything we could.”

Dold, of Kenilworth, took the stage at his victory party in Libertyville at Austin’s Saloon just before 10 p.m.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I could not be more excited to represent you again in the United States Congress and to be your voice,” Dold said, going on to thank Schneider for his service and his family for their sacrifice during the campaign.

In other suburban congressional races of note:

• Dan Lipinski (D) of Western Springs defeated Sharon Brannigan (R) of Palos Heights in the 3rd District.
• Bobby Rush (D) of Chicago defeated Jimmy Lee Tillman (R) of Chicago in the 1st District.
• Robin Kelly (D) of Matteson defeated Eric Wallace (R) of Flossmoor in the 2nd District.
• Peter Roskam (R) of Wheaton defeated Michael Mason (D) in the 6th District.
• Tammy Duckworth (D) of Hoffman Estates defeated Larry Kaifish (R) of Carpentersville in the 8th District.
• Jan Schakowsky (D) of Evanston defeated Susanne Atanus (R) of Niles in the 9th District.
• Bill Foster (D) of Naperville defeated Darlene Senger (R) of Naperville in the 11th District
• Randy Hultgren (R) of Winfield Township defeated Dennis Anderson (D) of Gurnee in the 14th District.

U.S. SENATE: DICK DURBIN WINS

The sixth time was not the charm for Jim Oberweis, who lost yet another election, this time to incumbent U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who won re-election to a fourth term, a record for a Democrat in Illinois.

Oberweis — owner of Oberweis Dairy, purveyor of quality ice cream and milk, which will celebrate its 100th year in business in 2015 — has now lost two congressional bids, one gubernatorial primary and three attempts to win a U.S. Senate seat, a losing streak which pegged some to dub him “the Milk Dud.” He continues, however, to serve in the Illinois Senate, representing the far west suburbs in the 25th District.

Durbin has been the U.S. Senate majority whip since 2007 and has been regarded as one of the Senate’s most liberal members. With the change in control of the Senate to the Republicans, Durbin will move into the minority leadership.

Oberweis conceded around 9 p.m., saying he “did what he could to hold him accountable and it just didn’t work.” Durbin made a victory speech at 9:30 p.m. in which he revealed that if he won this election he promised to start eating Oberweis ice cream.

“People across Illinois and America want more. They want a Congress that solves problems, I’ve heard it from every corner of this state. They want decent paychecks. They want an increase in the minimum wage. They want the peace of mind of having health insurance,” Durbin said in his speech, thanking organized labor for its support. “ And they want us to work together to find solutions.”

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VIA NBC CHICAGO