North Cook News

State Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) recently attracted the attention of local radio talk show host Dan Proft and Illinois Policy Institute President and CEO John Tillman, whose remarks likened Biss to the machinery of House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago).

The Illinois GOP recently lampooned the speaker with a short animation-style spot via its website, launching its "Drop the Mike" campaign to further expose how Madigan and his allies are working not for constituents, but for their own machine.

Commentator and former consultant Proft hosts a daily weekday morning radio show on AM 560, “The Answer,” in Chicago. In addition, Proft is a principal of Local Government Information Services (LGIS), which owns this newspaper. Proft also ran a brief gubernatorial campaign in 2009 using the tagline “Illinois isn't broken. It's fixed," taking advantage of the last word’s double meaning in relation to Illinois’ corruption woes.

Proft referred to Biss in a 2016 conversation with Tillman as “one of these intolerable prigs from the North Shore,” again wasting no words. Proft explained that Biss had written an op-ed piece criticizing Texas’ economic policies despite the fact that the state is “home to six of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country (and) created more jobs since the Great Recession than the other 49 states combined,” according to Proft.

Calling Illinois “the worst-governed state in America,” Proft quoted Biss as saying “Texas’ achievements are real, but they come at a huge cost: lower wages, less regulation … and a weaker safety net are causing poverty to rise and the middle class to shrink in Texas.”

To level the playing field, Proft invited Texan Chuck DeVore to address Biss’ dismissal of the Lone Star State.

DeVore, a representative for the National Initiatives for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, spoke about demographics, relative cost of living and other aspects of the overall equation for measuring individual states’ performance and programs to confront poverty in a rebuttal of Biss’ allegations.

Tillman is regarded as one of Illinois Policy’s foremost affiliates, according to the group’s website, having formed numerous entities to stimulate economic competition in Illinois. He supports free enterprise and liberty, frequently consulting with nonprofit organizations on strategy and marketing direction.

As an adjunct to the Illinois GOP’s new “Drop the Mike” ad calling out Madigan’s shenanigans, the satirical online campaign’s thrust could also be said to include Biss based on some of his legislative initiatives.

Biss previously served as a state representative for the 17th District before being elected to the state Senate for the 9th District in 2012. As far back as 2013, Tillman criticized a pension bill proposed by Biss, stating that it would only perpetuate a broken pension system, unfunded liability and continued taxpayer burden.

“Illinois is suffering from a pension crisis, and is in severe need of reform,” Tillman said at that time. “But the plans on the table would not reform pensions; they simply would pop the balloon of political pressure facing lawmakers, and would delay real reform for years to come … politicians are merely tinkering at the margins, leaving in place a system that has failed before and will fail again.”

Tillman suggested that Biss is overly focused on raising taxes.

In April 2016, Biss supported a bill that would require the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to raise the hourly wage for personal assistants and home health care workers from $13 to $15 per hour — which would cost the state $86.8 million annually, North Cook News reported.

Not only did the bill not pass; it raised eyebrows among analysts. Kristina Rasmussen, executive vice president at the Illinois Policy Institute, said that Biss’ proposal would have created an unintended but predictable backlash of fewer patients receiving health care, with the added effect of taking aides away from their duties to attend mandatory training.

“(There) is a real disconnect here from the legislators who are saying they are worried about the budget, and then billing new spending when we can’t afford what we already have,” Rasmussen told North Cook News.

Additionally, Crain’s Chicago Business unabashedly labeled Biss last July a “lakefront liberal” and “the unofficial leader of the egghead caucus in a legislature rarely known for even common sense.”

Biss escaped being “cast” as one of the Illinois GOP’s main characters in its recently released “Drop the Mike” campaign, but his approach may lump him into the same category as Madigan’s cronies, parodied in the spot:

“I’m Mike Madigan and I rock Illinois; I’m Speaker of the House and these are my boys,” it began, introducing his Andy Manar, Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker. “I’m the longest-serving speaker in the U.S.A. … and I’ll make you suckers pay; spent 46 years cuttin’ deals with my cronies, makin’ mad loot for myself and my homies.”

“The people of Illinois deserve to know whether potential gubernatorial candidates will be independent of Mike Madigan,” Illinois Republican Party spokesman Steven Yaffe said, summarizing the campaign’s intent. “Do they support his unprecedented reign as speaker, and will they demand that he step down as chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois?”

“Illinois, it’s time we drop the Mike,” the spot concluded.