Madigan ad: Dems ‘are on your side’
Speaker to air TV ad to set tone, says memo to legislators
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan will begin airing a TV ad in the new year, weeks before fellow Democrat Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker is inaugurated, according to a memo distributed to lawmakers.
The 30-second spot paid for by Madigan’s campaign fund is unusual in that it won’t run in advance of a state election. Instead, it’s meant to “set the tone for our efforts to create a better Illinois and move beyond the failures of Bruce Rauner and the extreme agenda of Donald Trump,” the memo reads.
“The contents are based on new polling conducted following the November election,” it says. “This is a first step in an ongoing process of promoting our Democratic agenda.”
The commercial doesn’t mention the incoming governor but features Madigan briefly. It also includes a brief shot of President Donald Trump’s Chicago tower and highlights Democrats’ push for affordable health care, a key campaign point for the party in last month’s midterm congressional races.
“In the fights that lie ahead, Democrats are on your side,” Madigan says at the close of the commercial.
The memo says the spot will start airing on Jan. 2, about two weeks before Pritzker takes the reins of state government. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the spot will air statewide for a week.
Rauner spent years and millions of dollars working to sully Madigan’s name, trying to blame most of the state’s ills on the longtime speaker who is also chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois. Democrats, though, prevailed in big numbers in the November election, giving the party the Governor’s Mansion and Madigan his biggest House majority in years.
In the aftermath of the election, Madigan’s state Democratic Party organization issued a memo saying the “Rauner Republican playbook of attempting to make the entire 2018 election a referendum on Speaker Madigan, to distract from Republicans’ record, is a failure.”
Rauner, on other hand, told reporters last month that he was “very scared for the people of Illinois” as a result of Pritzker’s win and the bigger Democratic majorities in Springfield.
The new class of lawmakers gets sworn in on Jan. 9. Pritzker will be inaugurated on Jan. 14.