By Dave Dahl
SPRINGFIELD – He is not governor anymore and does not even live in Illinois anymore. But Bruce Rauner does visit Springfield occasionally to see friends and go hunting – doves, this week.
In what he says is his first interview since leaving office in 2019, he tells WJBC News why he thinks he lost in 2018.
In a word, Trump.
“Anytime a new president comes in, that president’s party tends to get shellacked at the state level and on the local level” in the election at that president’s midterm, Rauner said. “Republicans were cleaning up when Obama was in the White House, and when the Republicans took the White House under Trump, Republicans got shellacked. It was pretty clear that, in a state like Illinois, that was rabidly against Trump, that there were going to be a lot of headwinds for Republicans.”
At one point during the 2018 campaign, Rauner said, he wanted to recruit a replacement for himself on the GOP ticket. His coming-out as pro-choice by signing a major abortion rights bill probably did not help.
Asked how he would have handled the pandemic as governor, Rauner said it’s wrong to discourage vaccines, masks, and social distancing. But he also ripped Democrats for keeping schools closed and, quoting Rauner, “spending money like confetti.”
Rauner, now a Floridian, says he is helping candidates there and devoting time and money to veterans’, educational, and environmental causes.
Mismanagement of veterans’ facilities have shadowed both Rauner and the current governor, JB Pritzker. That would be deadly outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease at Quincy and of coronavirus at La Salle, respectively.
The former first lady, Diana Rauner, still lives in Chicago and manages a preschool readiness organization, Start Early, formerly known as Ounce of Prevention.
Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]
