Quinn, Brady, "Whitey" Debate Over Budget

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 15, 2010 1:00PM

Governor Pat Quinn and his GOP challenger in next month's general election, Bill Brady, sparred with each other of Illinois' budget crisis during a debate at Southern Illinois University in downstate Carbondale last night. With a $13 billion budget deficit looming for the next governor to deal with, neither Quinn nor Brady offered any details as to how they would get the state out of the mess.

Quinn cited the $3 billion in budget cuts he's made since taking office in January 2009 and expressed confidence that, if elected, he could make further cuts and balance the budget “without harming education, health care and public safety.” Brady, who has consistently repeated throughout his campaign that he would not raise taxes if elected, lauded Quinn's budget cuts as smoke and mirrors, chided Quinn's deal with AFSCME to avoid layoffs until 2012 (completed just before the union's endorsement of Quinn), and tied Quinn's name to business as usual in Illinois by invoking the name of former Governor Rod Blagojevich a few times during the debate.

Lost in the shuffle while Quinn and Brady attacked each other was Green Party candidate Rich Whitney, who also seemed to be the only one of the three to seize the gravity of the state budget mess. Whitney's budget proposal relies heavily on tax increases and some budget cuts to be determined after a state audit. Which is the reality neither Quinn nor Brady seem to want to say out loud in the final weeks of the campaign, with an unhappy voting public watching.

Speaking of Whitney, he's not very happy with a misspelling of his name on some Chicago voting machines. Board of Elections Chairman Langdon Neal said the error, which spells Whitney's name Rich Whitey, only shows up on the review screen, not the screen where the actual vote is cast. Whitney fears he could lose some votes from the error and fears the misspelling could be construed as racially offensive.