In search of relief from the grim, dog-eat-dog politics of President Trump’s first days in office—oh, how will I survive four years of this?—I’ve gone back in time to revisit the good old days of FDR.
“I don’t have Rauner’s money—so I’ll have to outwork him,” Pawar says. “I believe we have to change the narrative in this state. Rauner’s told us that government is the enemy. Just like Trump, Rauner’s played on our differences, pitting one group against another. He’s got us fighting over scraps.”
To those who say such dreams are impossible, he invokes the spirit of FDR, who faced far tougher challenges when he was first elected in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression.
Instead, you cut your deals to get what you can—like Barack Obama did. In Pawar’s case, he dropped his calls for citywide TIF reform so he could spend local TIF dollars on public schools in his ward.
So far Pawar is the only Democrat to declare. Predictably the state’s Republican Party responded by denouncing Pawar as a tool of Madigan, even though they barely know each other. That’s their tactic, and they’re sticking with it.
