Following a series of political misfires during the past month, Gov. Bruce Rauner on Thursday tried to reset his administration by parting ways with his recently rebuilt press staff after a weeklong flap over a school funding cartoon some lawmakers deemed racist.
The first-term governor's difficulty in moving past the cartoon issue is emblematic of what can happen when a chief executive who ran as an outsider is paired with a staff without experience running government.
Since making wholesale changes in staff last month, Rauner has had to dismiss a new traveling assistant after it was discovered the "body man" had posted racially insensitive and homophobic statements on Twitter. Then the governor took several days to respond to Lake County flooding. When he did visit the area, he told reporters it was premature to declare a disaster area before doing so hours after his news conference.
The governor also struggled to formulate a response to the deadly protests involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., at first saying he could not say whether a woman's death at the hands of a driver who crashed into protesters was "domestic terrorism."
Taken together, the challenging summer has made it difficult for Rauner to generate a sense of momentum as he heads into what is expected to be an expensive and grueling re-election bid.
More is at issue for Rauner besides the cartoon. His abrupt move to drop his new communications team reflected longer-term high-stakes concerns over his political future.
Left without many big first-term accomplishments following a long-running budget stalemate in which Democrats blocked his economic agenda, the Republican governor finds himself once again attempting to readjust politically.
Rauner first began the recalibration last month following a stinging and embarrassing defeat when Democrats, joined by some Republicans, enacted a state budget and tax-hike package over his veto -- effectively ending the stalemate that kept Illinois without a full-year spending plan that devastated social services and threatened to sink the state's credit rating to junk status.
Gone were longtime staffers who had worked for Rauner from his campaign and joined his administration in top positions. In their place, Rauner brought on several people from the Illinois Policy Institute. Before becoming governor, Rauner donated more than $500,000 to the libertarian-to-conservative think tank, which largely shares his worldview.
But the matchup between a governor holding his first elective office and a new staff that previously had worked to criticize government from the outside has had trouble meshing.
In the case of his new communications team -- Diana Rickert, Laurel Patrick, Meghan Keenan and Brittany Carl -- Rauner said they did not mesh at all. In a rare conference call to staff Thursday morning, the governor said they were "good people trying to do good work" but ended up not being a "good fit," according to a source who was on the phone call but was not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Rickert and Keenan are Policy Institute alumni. Patrick previously had worked for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Later in the day, at an event in Naperville, Rauner acknowledged the difficulty of working in government.
"The work that we do for the people of Illinois is incredibly difficult and very stressful. It's a burnout, high stress, it's hard on people's families," the wealthy former equity investor told reporters.
As for what he feels is his repeated difficulty in getting his message out, Rauner called the communications effort "incredibly hard because we have attacks, we have political attacks coming 20 times a day, we have social media attacks coming 100 times a day, we have false rumors planted that have to be dealt with or responded to" in addition to "legitimate questions" from the media.
"It is really hard, really hard, and we need to do all that while also getting out the message about the positive changes that we are trying to drive and the wonderful work that we're doing on a bipartisan basis, wonderful legislation that we've been able to achieve," he said.
But in the earlier conference call to staff, Rauner maintained there was a larger, even more encompassing messaging mission -- the need to counter his "enemies."
"The reality is in addition to the enemies on the other side of the aisle (Democrats), we have enemies in the media and enemies who should be on our side, some of them former members of the administration," the source recounted Rauner as saying.
During that conference call, Rauner also told his staff to expect but to ignore more "rumors" about departures, including talk that his chief legal counsel, Dennis Murashko, was leaving the administration, the source said. By late afternoon, Rauner released a statement saying Murashko was departing at the end of the month to join the private sector.
Since the departure last month of more than 20 governmental and political aides -- some by firing and some who resigned in protest -- and the hiring of new staff members, Rauner often has found himself stepping on his own message. It's a reflection of a lack of preparation and attention to detail and a possible lack of knowledge by his new aides.
Nowhere is that better illustrated than in the kerfuffle over the cartoon. The Illinois Policy Institute drawing showed a black child panhandling for money from a suit-wearing white man with a cigar, in a commentary on Chicago's use of tax-increment financing districts and school funding.
After lawmakers in both parties called the cartoon racist last week, Rauner declined to take a position, saying he hadn't seen the drawing.
Pressed by reporters Tuesday, Rauner's office initially issued a statement in which the governor again did not take a position. A spokeswoman added that as a "white male," Rauner would have no further comment.
By Tuesday evening, Rauner disavowed that statement and aides sent a new one, saying that the original did not "accurately" depict how he felt. While the governor said he opposed racism, he again did not take a position on the cartoon.
On Thursday, the governor was back out in public, saying at a Naperville pension bill signing that his job "is not to comment on every cartoon, every political statement."
By the afternoon, however, Rauner found himself enmeshed in controversy over the drawing once again at a separate event on the West Side.
A reporter pressed African-American lawmakers on whether Rauner should speak out more forcefully against the cartoon.
Democratic state Rep. LaShawn Ford of Chicago touched the governor's arm as he asked: "Will you apologize to the black people about that cartoon, even though you didn't draw it? Let's make it right today. Can you apologize?"
The governor offered his response, raising his voice.
"I'm not apologizing for anything I had nothing to do with. Let me be crystal clear. And that organization that did that cartoon, they should talk to you about what their views are, and I'm not gonna," Rauner said. "I have fought for racial justice, equality and opportunity my whole life."
Ford later returned to the microphone and said the cartoon issue "should be put to rest," agreed with Rauner that he wasn't responsible for drawing it, and said "you don't have to apologize for the art." Ford also asked Rauner to "stand up" against racism together.
Rauner complied. "We in Illinois, we in America, we stay united against racism, against prejudice, against bigotry, against hate speech in all its forms and we've got to stand strong together," he said.
The controversy overshadowed a bill-signing ceremony for a package of bipartisan changes in the criminal justice system affecting expungement and sealing of criminal records to help ex-offenders' efforts to gain employment.
At the same event, Rauner also clouded his administration's response to a bill sought by immigration activists and many in the business community that would prohibit local law enforcement from detaining people for federal authorities based solely on their legal status absent a criminal warrant.
One of Rauner's now-departed press staff had said the governor would sign the bill Monday, despite sometimes fierce objections from conservative lawmakers and groups. But on Thursday the governor said, "We will be making an announcement about that bill soon." As for what his administration had previously promised, Rauner said, "I don't know what's all been announced."
Rauner's staff shake-up, which included a July 17 announcement of four new members of his communications staff, has been followed by several missteps.
Earlier this month, Rauner made a rare national TV appearance in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier. On questions ranging from immigration reform, the Affordable Care Act, the state's budget impasse and whether he would seek a second term, Rauner referred variously to how things were "broken" at least 10 times in the interview, earning a crude social media rebuke from conservative commentator Ann Coulter.
In addition to the initial fumbling on whether the Charlottesville death was "domestic terrorism," Rauner also was unaware of a resolution that had passed the Illinois Senate urging law enforcement officials to recognize white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations. Asked about the resolution, Rauner at first assumed it came from the U.S. Senate, and tried to brush it away by saying he was "not so focused on day-to-day in Congress."
Another error came after Rauner issued his rewrite of legislation changing how the state distributes tax money to school districts. In calling on lawmakers to support his changes, the governor said it would require only a simple majority to uphold his veto and make sure schools could get their money. Actually, it would have required an extraordinary majority of three-fifths in the House and Senate.
Rauner did not directly answer questions from reporters as to whether his staff should have been aware of the higher vote requirement. A Rauner spokeswoman later acknowledged the governor was mistaken.
The governor's staff moves Thursday did not affect his new chief of staff, Kristina Rasmussen, and his new deputy chief of staff for policy, Michael Lucci. Both had been top officials at the Policy Institute.
Rauner sought to downplay the institute's influence.
"A very tiny fraction of our administration is from that organization, and ... in no regard does that organization speak for me or my administration, and I do not lean on them for any particular issue or policy," Rauner said.
But now Rauner must find a new messaging team -- positions that may be difficult to recruit for, given the turnover.
"Getting that message out while we've got the noise and the false attacks and the rumors, it's really hard," he said. "And getting people who can do it well and are willing to do it on that scale, it's a challenge."
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