The same “blind spot” that triggered Gov. Bruce Rauner’s timid response to a racist cartoon prompted his veto of a bill rewriting a school funding formula that “punishes” poor and minority students, Mayor Rahm Emanuel charged Wednesday.
The cartoon by the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank that has placed former staffers in key roles in the governor’s office, depicted a black child in a Cubs cap begging for money for school from a wealthy white man.
The cigar-smoking man was showing one pocket empty and the other stuffed with tax increment financing money.
“Everybody that looks at that cartoon can see that cartoon for what it says. And that same blind spot led a governor to a veto of an education bill that doubled-down on the failure of the most inequitable funding of education. It’s wrong and it’s time the Legislature override the governor,” the mayor said Wednesday.
In the wake of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Emanuel said the governor “has a responsibility to speak out” when he sees a cartoon that “everybody else can see for what it is.”
“It’s unfortunate the governor did not see what everybody else can see, then felt that he couldn’t raise his voice because his entire leadership . . . inside the governor’s office is staffed from people from a very far right-wing think tank that’s out of the mainstream of not only Illinois but the Republican Party,” the mayor said.
“He’s showing more loyalty to the people from that . . . think tank than he is to speaking to the moral requirements of his office, which is to condemn bigotry, condemn stereotypes.”
Emanuel made those remarks after joining forces with mayors from Democratic suburbs to turn up the heat on the General Assembly to override the governor’s veto of a school funding reform bill that the governor has condemned as a “Chicago bailout.”
Robert J. Nunamaker, mayor of Fox River Grove, was asked why he was supporting a bill that would give $300 million to the Chicago Public Schools.
“We’re smart enough to know that Chicago is the economic driver of northern Illinois and, if Chicago is sick, we all catch cold someplace along the way. And Chicago is not gonna be great without good education. You have to see through that,” Nunamaker said.
“In the suburbs, we are plagued with a property tax problem. It’s over 70 percent in most areas. People paying property taxes are tapped out. We are looking forward to this new funding formula as a first step toward fixing some of those problems.”
Emanuel used the “Chicago bailout” label to send yet another message to his old friend Rauner.
“You’ve decided that the best political argument for you is to pit a child in Chicago against a child in any one of these cities. To pit a taxpayer of Chicago against any other taxpayer across the state. You’ve abdicated your responsibility as leader of the entire state,” he said.
Late Tuesday night, Rauner sought to undo the damage from a statement his newly revamped communications office issued earlier in the day, when a top spokeswoman said that the governor would not offer an opinion on a cartoon some called racist — because he is “a white male.”
In a second statement, the governor said he “can understand why some people found the cartoon offensive. And I believe we should do more as a society and a nation to bring us together, rather than divide us.”
But Rauner said it was “not my place to comment on every cartoon or picture that comes from people outside the governor’s office or to tell people how they should feel.”
He urged everyone to “put this behind us so we can focus on solving the very real challenges of education fairness and economic opportunity facing our state.”
