The Progressive Midwesterner

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families , only four U.S. states (California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island), as well the District of Columbia, currently have paid family leave programs, with two other states, Massachusetts and the State of Washington, set to implement paid family leave programs in the near future. Now, legislation has been proposed in two states, Illinois and North Dakota, to create paid family leave programs in those states. There are some differences between the Illinois proposal and the North Dakota proposal, but both proposals would require private-sector employers with at least 50 employees to provide paid leave for employees who take leave because of the birth of the employee's child and to allow the employee to care for a family member who is seriously ill. In Illinois, Illinois State Representative Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) has proposed a paid family leave act here in Illinois (Illinois HB0009). Here is the synopsis of the p...

Ten score years ago, on December 3, 1818, Illinois became the 21st state to be admitted to the Union. Now, with the great State of Illinois celebrating its 200th birthday, here are 20 of the most defining moments in Illinois political history, one for each decade that Illinois has been a U.S. state (although not all decades are represented, and some are represented more than once) and presented in chronological order: Illinois's admission to the Union - During much of the year 1818, what was then the Illinois Territory went through a lengthy process to become what is now the State of Illinois . On April 18, 1818, the U.S. House of Representatives was officially notified that President James Monroe had signed an Act of Congress titled "An Act to Enable the People of Illinois Territory to form a constitution and state government and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states" into law. In July of 1818, delegates to a sta...

Thirty years ago, 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis actually won an Illinois county that neighbors Champaign County (specifically, Vermilion County), while losing Champaign County en route to losing Illinois as a whole as part of a landslide loss nationally to Republican George H.W. Bush. 1988 was the last time a Democratic presidential nominee lost Champaign County, but, until Tuesday, Champaign County had a strong Republican machine that, with few exceptions, dominated countywide elections. On Tuesday, the blue wave hit Champaign County in a big way, with all of the Democratic statewide candidates carrying Champaign County on the way to statewide victory (even Republican attorney general candidate Erika Harold, who is from Urbana, lost her home county on the way to losing statewide to Democratic Attorney General-elect Kwame Raoul), and Democratic countywide candidates in Champaign County winning five countywide races, including the newly-created office of county ...

Based on recent pre-election opinion polling in the gubernatorial race here in Illinois, Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker has a commanding lead over Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, with Pritzker close to majority support in Illinois (only a plurality of the vote is needed to win election to the governor's office in Illinois). Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU Carbondale) has a pre-election opinion polling operation that focuses on polling high-profile Illinois electoral races, such as races for governor, and a recent poll that they conducted had Pritzker with a commanding, but not prohibitive, lead in this year's gubernatorial race : The poll was conducted September 24-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage point for the entire sample. The poll covered a sample of 1,001 registered voters. The election analysis presented here is based on 715 likely voters. The margin of error for likely voters is 3.7 percentage points. When asked, “If th...

While Chicago-area progressives can claim multiple victories from Tuesday's Democratic primary in Illinois (including Chuy Garcia's victory in the 4th Congressional District primary and Fritz Kaegi's victory in the Cook County Assessor primary), progressives suffered a disappointing defeat in the 3rd Congressional District Democratic primary, as Dan Lipinski, the incumbent machine Democrat who is strongly opposed to women's reproductive rights, defeated progressive challenger Marie Newman by an approximately 2.4% margin. Lipinski is almost completely certain to win re-election in the November general election, as the Republican nominee who is running against Lipinski is Arthur Jones, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who won the Republican nomination with no opposition in the Republican primary. The 3rd Congressional District of Illinois includes southwestern and central portions of Cook County, a very small section of southeastern DuPage County, and northern portions of Will ...

With less than two months until the March 20 major-party primary elections in Illinois, Marie Newman, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the Chicago-area 3rd Congressional District of Illinois, is making it completely clear why she's running against incumbent U.S. Representative Dan Lipinski . As many of my blog's readers already know, Dan Lipinski is one of the most right-wing members of the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, having voted against expanding health care access for millions of Americans, co-sponsored unconstitutional legislation to restrict the right of women to make their own health care decisions , has opposed LGBT rights, voted against the pro-immigration DREAM Act, and has voted with fascist Republican President Donald Trump over one-third of the time . Lipinski's voting record is so awful, two of Lipinski's colleagues, Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutiérrez , have endorsed Newman's campaign against Lipinski . Marie Newman, on the other hand, ...

I will note that I am currently serving a two-year term as an election judge in my home county of Vermilion County, Illinois, and I may be asked to serve as a poll worker in the March 20, 2018 primaries here in Illinois. If I am asked to serve as a poll worker in the primaries here in Illinois this year, I will do so to the best of my ability and in an impartial manner in accordance with Illinois state laws. This blog is completely separate from any election judge duties that I may have in the spring of 2018. However, I am also a registered voter here in Vermilion County, and I will publicly mention that I intend to vote for Mary Catherine Roberson for Vermilion County Clerk . As far as I know, Mary's campaign lacks a website or a Twitter page, although her campaign does have Facebook and Instagram pages. Mary is, like me, a progressive Democrat and a lifelong Vermilion County resident who strongly believes in the right to vote. Mary is a critic of the now-dissolved Kobach Co...

On December 3, 1818, Illinois was officially admitted as the 21st U.S. state to join the Union. Thus, December 3 of this year, 2018, will be the 200th anniversary of Illinois becoming a U.S. state, and 2018 is Illinois's bicentennial year. That reminds me that Illinois does have an official state state, which is titled Illinois , although very few Illinoisans know the words to it, and the song Illinois is probably the least recognizable state anthem to the point that songs like Yankee Doodle (Connecticut's official state song), Georgia On My Mind (Georgia's official state song) and Rocky Mountain High (one of Colorado's two official state songs) are more recognizable to many Illinoisans that our own state's official state song. In case you're wondering what the song Illinois sounds like, here is a performance of the song Illinois by the University of Illinois's Varsity Men's Glee Club. As far as I know, a new state song is not currently a prio...