Bruce Rauner Announces Gubernatorial Run

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 5, 2013 5:45PM

Venture capitalist and businessman Bruce Rauner formally announced his candidacy for Illinois governor with a dry and inoffensive three-minute video where he blasted state government as broken and worked to burnish his credentials as a man of the people.

Rauner, who narrated the video and doesn't appear in it until the final minute, described himself as a farm boy who "learned to ride a horse at 6, milk a cow at 8 and fire a rifle at 10." (That should cover voters downstate.) He also referenced what most of us already know about state government: The corruption; the cronyism; the inability to pass any form of legislation that can fix the pension mess. But he offered no solutions of his own as to how he would tackle the problems. Check it out.

In an interview with the Sun-Times, Rauner took swipes at House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Culelrton and organized labor for helping dig the state into its current pension hole.

“You don’t see them talked about. They are arguably the most powerful politicians in Springfield,” Rauner told the Sun-Times. “They own the Democratic party in Springfield…It’s a corrupt, pay-to-play political system that’s broken. It’s pay-to-play politics at its worse. Until we take that on, we will never reform Springfield.”

Rauner established an exploratory committee and engaged in a statewide "listening tour" in March in advance of today's announcement. He's a major ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and was one of the more vocal anti-union hawks during last year's teacher's strike. Rauner told the Sun-Times he would use his executive powers if elected to act as a hard-line negotiator with the unions to enact lasting pension reform.

Rauner joins Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford in seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination.