Posted: December 13, 2008

By Doug Ibendahl

 

This past week was a busy one for Republican House Minority Leader Tom Cross and Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna, Jr. It must be quite time consuming trying to run after the bandwagon.

 

Both have stonewalled meaningful reform in their own party for years. Both have time and time again turned a blind eye to bad behavior they could easily have done something about. Both take their marching orders from pretty much the same little cadre of self-dealers who destroyed the Illinois Republican Party - that is when they weren't busy playing footsies with the Democrats.

 

But I can take a guess at what happened this week. Corrupt Governor Rod Blagojevich is arrested at his Chicago home at the crack of dawn on Tuesday. It's one of the biggest stories of the year.

 

While they're still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, Cross and McKenna get a call from a handler. It's time to play reformer now. Sure, why not. Nothing else has worked. Let's give it a shot.

 

Cross and McKenna are now glomming-onto the idea of holding a special election to pick the replacement for Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat. Governor Blagojevich would have his exclusive appointment power taken away.

 

It's wonderful that Cross and McKenna are waking up to the merits of direct democracy. We say welcome to America and the 21st Century boys.

 

Of course here's the problem. Both Cross and McKenna have worked destructively against direct elections for our Illinois Republican Party for four straight years.

 

In fact McKenna especially has no real accomplishment to point to since becoming State Chairman in February 2005 except keeping Republicans disenfranchised and voiceless in their own State Party.

 

Well okay, that, and two statewide tsunami disasters at the polls for Republicans.

 

In 2005 the direct election reform (SB600) unanimously passed the State Senate thanks to the leadership of Senator Chris Lauzen. But the bill then goes over to the House side and Cross and his top lieutenant Skip Saviano refuse to permit even a floor vote.

 

By the way, anyone who says it was the Democrats' fault is simply lying. Since the bill would only impact the Republican Party (the Democrats already have direct elections), Springfield protocol says one party doesn't interfere with such "other party only" legislation.

 

Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan personally promised us he would recommend that his caucus vote "yes" on SB600. Madigan told us he wasn't going to be blamed for Republicans not having the same voting rights that his party already allows. That's very reasonable.

 

All Madigan said he needed was one call from the GOP House leadership and the bill would be on the floor for an up or down vote. Madigan of course never got that call because Cross and Saviano refused to make it.

 

Say what you want about Mike Madigan - but his word means something - as opposed to McKenna, Cross and Saviano.

 

But that was far from their only betrayal. Last year Senator Lauzen tried again to advance the direct election reform legislatively. This time Cross and Saviano deferred to McKenna for the role of Benedict Arnold.

 

McKenna actually had the audacity to go behind the back of Lauzen - all of us Republicans actually - to order the Democratic Senate leadership to remove the SB600 pro-democracy language from the pending bill. The Democratic Senator did it - not unreasonably concluding he had to listen to the State GOP Chairman regarding bill language that would only impact the Illinois Republican Party.

 

When the despicable scheme was exposed last year, McKenna at first tried to deny his involvement. But he had been caught red-handed. [See our story from June of last year, State GOP Chairman orders Democrats to squash direct elections for Illinois Republicans.]

 

Cross and McKenna both still refuse to trust Republican voters to directly elect their own State Party leaders - those 19 State Central Committeemen who essentially comprise our State Party.

 

Again, even the Illinois Democrats have that voting right. Our party also used to - until a small group of Boss Hoggs arbitrarily took that right away 20 years ago, during the reign of King of the Boss Hoggs, Governor Jim Thompson. It's hardly a surprise several of those disenfranchisers are still around on the political scene - and they're the ones who pull Cross' and McKenna's strings.

 

None of them want the accountability and greater oversight direct elections would bring. Real democracy is a pesky thing when you're trying to gorge at the trough.

 

Periodically over the past four years McKenna has been wheeled-out to repeat nonsensical talking points like, "if we permit direct elections in our party, we'll get Democrats on the State Central Committee."

 

Many of us think this talking point would sound marginally less asinine if McKenna wasn't getting it from the biggest Chicago Democrat currently sitting on the State Central Committee he chairs. That's our old friend Skip Saviano of course. Skip keeps an "R" by his name, but everyone knows he's a Democrat. Even some of Saviano's own GOP House colleagues joke about it - privately of course.

 

Anyone who trades this much campaign money with this many Democrats is a Democrat (see here). Similarly, anyone with Saviano's voting record in the State House is a Democrat. The fact that Saviano even contributed campaign money to Blagojevich and served on the Democratic Governor's transition team is just par for the course for this double dealer.

 

Over the last few years Cross and McKenna have thrown out many dishonest excuses as to why Republicans can't have their voting rights back. Typically the lie gets exposed, and then they come up with another one. We've debunked them all.

 

Sometimes they even stoop to recycling. For example, a lot of us were pushing this direct election reform at our State GOP Convention in Decatur this past June. Under current state law we can return to direct elections for the State Central Committee at a state convention - or alternatively the statutory language can be tweaked so that a state convention isn't necessary (that's SB600).

 

Anyway, McKenna comes into the meeting room for the Platform and Resolutions Committee at the Decatur convention - the meeting where a resolution on direct elections would be considered. No non-member of the committee was allowed to speak - but McKenna gave himself that privilege as Party Chairman.

 

McKenna did a little welcome and then just launched into badmouthing the idea of giving Republicans back their vote. He repeated all the same dishonest talking points I had heard him parrot three years prior at a State Party meeting. A staffer probably just dusted-off the old propaganda sheet from the file and gave it to Andy to read again.

 

Well McKenna finishes his little anti-democracy speech that would have made Fidel Castro proud and then heads for the door. I was in the audience and I followed him out in the hall. I wanted to ask Andy why he felt the need to repeat dishonest statements that he can't back up - the same dishonest statements that had been discredited years prior.

 

I catch up to Andy and he gets that deer in the headlights look. But before we could even chat, within seconds two of McKenna's handlers literally took our fearless leader by each arm and whisked him down the hall. I'm not even sure if his feet were touching the ground.

 

That's just one little story. It would take a book to describe all the destructive activity that occurred under McKenna's watch during just two days in Decatur. This year's state convention was the most rigged-up yet, and one of the main motivations was to stop the direct election reform.

 

The selfish scheming actually began months in advance of Decatur. During spring and early summer, McKenna's State Party staff seemed almost exclusively devoted to finding new unethical ways to disallow pro-reform delegates.

 

Last month's GOP election disaster in Illinois was set in stone at the Decatur convention. If you dishonor the best Republicans you have - like those who take time to attend a political convention - of course you're going to lose. McKenna and Cross seem incapable of comprehending this obvious truth. I truly think there is something seriously wrong with both of them.

 

The good news is the direct elections reform is going to happen for the Illinois GOP. The momentum keeps building. It's only a question now of who decides to go down on the wrong side of history with the hapless McKenna and Cross.

 

You can see the list of GOP officials we're continually updating HERE to find out where they stand on the direct election reform.

 

You'll see that few are choosing to be with McKenna and Cross - the guys who are only pro-democracy when the national media says they should be.

 

 

Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party. He is Co-Founder of Republican Young Professionals (RYP).