Quinn for Illinois

Governor Patrick Quinn certainly is not a perfect candidate. He’s made some serious missteps, such as releasing prisoners too early only to see 50 of them return to custody. He’s proposed or gone along with some horrible quick-fix solutions to the state’s budget woes, such as video poker and — again — raiding state employees’ pension fund. He’ll come out for a good policy, such as ethics reform, then quickly back off when he gets some heat, for example discarding the recommendations of his own ethics commission last August.

Yet from his first days in public service, Quinn has been standing up for “the little guy” against the entrenched special interests. We want to see him stick to his reform guns, act on his passion for reform, and show some grit in dealing with the state’s entrenched political interests. In less than a year as governor, Quinn has some significant accomplishments, to be sure. And he has taken a particularly bold stand in calling for a state income tax hike. We support this course. Let’s be realistic: there’s no way out of this budget crisis without one.

Dan Hynes has been a great State Comptroller, particularly when it came to enacting the Rainy Day Fund, which helped alleviate the state’s budget crisis for a while when it began. Hynes is the best candidate when it comes to dealing with the crisis with the state pension funds, a particularly important issue in this community because it is home to the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Rather than blaming state workers for actually expecting the benefits promised them, or proposing raising the retirement age or sticking state pensions in dubious 401Ks, Hynes said the main problem with pensions is not benefits, but lack of state funding. Under Hynes, the state would develop a new long-term plan to pay off the pension debt and then adhere to it.

In a highly charged campaign, candidates are prone to sling mud at one another. But, we are disappointed with Hynes’s recent attempt to reach into the “way back” machine and draw on the late Mayor Harold Washington in a TV spot. The ad in question refers to when the Mayor fired Quinn as his director of the City Department of Revenue in 1987. The attack ad is a poor attempt at swaying the African-American vote. Hynes’s willingness to lean on the legend of the late Mayor is puzzling at best, considering Hynes’s own father launched a campaign to unseat Mayor Washington, only to pull out late in the process.

Hynes would be an excellent choice for governor for those who want change, particularly concerning state pensions. But because Quinn has proven to be as steady a hand as we could expect in this crisis, we feel he deserves a full term to prove himself. The Gazette endorses Patrick Quinn for governor in the Democratic primary.