As Gov. Bruce Rauner marked his first few days in office by signing several executive orders, Reboot Illinois' Madeleine Doubek reflected on how the new governor could make his term similar or different from the previous governor:
I know we're well into the term of Gov. Bruce Rauner, but I keep thinking about the odd and unsettling way former Gov. Pat Quinn chose to end his time in office.
Quinn took more than a day to concede, never really congratulated the winner and helped secure a platinum parachute of a job heading up the Illinois Sports Facilities Board for his campaign manager, Lou Bertuca. He tried to hand out more than 100 other appointments and issue executive orders to force his way on wages for workers with state contracts and on his successor's and future governors' financial disclosures, but Rauner nullified those in his first week. Then Quinn capped it all off by not showing up for the transition of power when Rauner was sworn in.
Clearly, it is a difficult, painfully personal rejection to lose an election. It must be especially so when you see yourself as a lifelong champion of the people, a fighter for the little guy. And those people you thought you'd toiled for all of those years reject you. Even in your home Democratic base in Chicago and Cook County, they reject you.
That's got to be rough and that rejection ought to be something most of us can understand would be tough to take. It doesn't, however, in the least bit excuse or explain Quinn's actions, which were not at all gracious, classy or even democratic.
Is there something to learn from any of this? Perhaps the lesson for us, and for our new governor, is that it's tricky, if not nearly impossible, to be both an outsider and an insider.
Read more about what Rauner can learn from Quinn at Reboot Illinois.
Rauner also will have to learn from and work with other Democrats during his gubernatorial term--Democratic legislators and their leaders. Capitol Fax's Rich Miller says that a new poll shows that Illinoisans want Rauner and his new colleagues to work together to govern the state well. See the breakdown of responses across demographics at Reboot Illinois.
