What could Madigan to do match the publicity an Obama endorsement would get. I bet far far more people know who Obama is than Madigan and Madigan's primary challenger would put the fact that they were endorsed by Obama in every Ad.
There are... certain advantages to having him around. From a
Crain's story about Illinois's capital spending bill:
Also included in the bill was $50 million in undesignated funds targeted for the city under the designation SOCC, or “State Only City of Chicago” money.
The $50 million originally was supposed to be only $40 million, according to an Oct. 10 letter from acting Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Omer Osman to then-city Transportation Commissioner Tom Carney that an anonymous source passed on to me. But somehow that total got bumped up by $10 million.
What to do with that $10 million windfall? The letter makes it clear: “This correspondence confirms the understanding between IDOT and the city that this additional ten million dollars of SOCC funds is designated for use in [Madigan's district], located in southwest Chicago.”
“The SOCC is a long-standing practice by the General Assembly to appropriate funding from the state’s Road Fund, specifically for transportation improvements in Chicago,” IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell told me in an email. “As can be the case with some funding, the legislative intent is not always clear. In this particular instance, the department worked to clarify the intent of the additional SOCC funds with the leadership of the General Assembly and communicated that intent with the city.”
You might not care for the guy personally, but you might like having new streetlights and filled potholes and all the other service the machine can provide. I'd certainly trade in my alderman if it meant we got our streets plowed immediately every time it snowed.
