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| Prison scandal puts Hynes back in race |
| By southtownstar.com |
| Published: 01/25/2010 |
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January 25, 2010 By Rich Miller With the primary election just around the corner, just about everybody I know has asked me who I think will win the various races. I try to avoid making win/loss predictions, and this campaign season is a prime example for why everybody should just sit back and wait to see what the voters do. For instance, a month or so ago, Comptroller Dan Hynes looked to most longtime political observers - including me - like he was toast. Stick a fork in him. Sayonara, dude. Pretty much everybody had given up on him. Hynes had spent millions of dollars and hadn't closed the gap between himself and Gov. Quinn. His message at the time - that Quinn's tax increase proposals were bad for the middle class - just wasn't working. He trailed Quinn in every poll by anywhere from 20 to 30 percentage points. Then, of course, Quinn's administration was hit with a scandal that has not stopped reverberating. His Department of Corrections director secretly let loose hundreds of violent prison inmates before their scheduled release dates in order to save a few bucks. Quinn first said he knew about it, then said he didn't know about it, then blamed it all on his director, whom the governor has since adamantly and repeatedly refused to fire. Because Quinn wouldn't fire the guy, Quinn effectively took ownership of the scandal for himself. If he had fired the director, Quinn could've blamed everything on an underling and moved forward with some media-friendly prison reforms. But since Quinn refused to budge, Quinn was the one who got the blame - because blame always moves upwards if no actions are taken. And when some of those early released prisoners committed violent crimes after they were given their "Get out of Jail Free" cards, that blame became intense. Read More. |
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