A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
The Education of Michael Noland
In every election, every candidate learns a little more about what it takes to win. Unfortunately, these lessons don�t always translate into integrity�they are often a matter of putting on a better show, to enhance the way voters perceive you, rather than to improve the person you actually are.
In the case of Michael Noland, who is running for Senator in the 22nd District against Billie Roth, the lessons clearly fall into the former category. Noland has a singularly unappealing personality, full of bluster and arrogance. Listening to Noland debate a point, one must steel one�s self for a verbal assault, for he believes that a quantity of words will trump a quality of ideas.
It�s been said of Noland, entirely accurately I think, that he makes a great impression�the first time. It�s all down hill from there.
Noland is so unappealing a candidate that Illinois Speaker of the House Mike Madigan refused to back his candidacy�twice. And Madigan will support anybody. When he was candidate shopping last year, the Speaker was willing to accept just about any warm body with a modicum of name recognition. It really didn't� matter what party they were part of before or what they believed. A pulse was all that was necessary.
Yet Madigan steered clear of Noland. (Twice!) What does that tell you?
Democratic Senate Leader Emil Jones has lower standards apparently, so Noland has enjoyed the full backing of his party for the first time.
But that did leave him with a big problem�he needed to get up to speed, and quickly. With party money on his side, he might actually win this time.
And so begins the strange, often amusing, tale of the education of Michael Noland. It would be a challenge�to hide the wild man; the angry, bitter sides; the arrogance; and an appalling level of ignorance about the way government actually works. But this would be his last, best chance and he had to get it right.
There was a lot of baggage to hide. In his previous runs for the House, he had put some scary positions out for public inspection.
He recorded those positions on Project Vote Smart�s website, declaring that people ought to pay more income taxes, more gasoline taxes (yikes!) and that marijuana should be legal. He was, clearly, a classic, extreme, 60�s-style liberal, and 60�s-style liberals don�t get elected anymore unless their last name is Kennedy (and they aren�t currently under indictment).
So Lesson One was not to say that stuff any more. Not that he doesn�t believe it of course�leopards really don�t change their spots�but it would not be prudent to actually say it. Project Vote Smart did not get any contributions from Michael Noland this year.
Lesson Two involved a particularly descriptive phrase: �the status quo.� Early on, Noland defiantly declared that it was �time to change the status quo in Springfield.� Your humble correspondent heartily agrees with that sentiment, but then I know who the �status quo in Springfield� happens to be, and has been, for the last four years: the Democratic party.
Surely that message doesn�t go over particularly well with Nolan�s sponsor, Emil Jones. Jones is, after all, the epitome of the �status quo.� In August, Noland quietly removed that particular phrase from his website.
Another lesson learned.
Lesson Three covered the one thing that is most important to state government: the way it spends our money. For a brief period of time, Illinois Democrats attempted to claim that the state�s budget is balanced. Nobody with a fifth-grade or higher education was buying it.
By deferring payments and accumulating debt, the state was�briefly�able to show more revenue than expenses. It didn�t mean a thing, as the Chicago Tribune quickly pointed out. It was the equivalent of a homeowner trying to claim he is solvent even though he ignored his mortgage payment and paid the bare minimum on his massive credit card debt.
Yet at a couple of events early on, Noland duly parotted the party line. �Illinois is in the black� he proclaimed. And what color is the sky in your world Mikey?
The message changed after that short journey into fantasyland. Illinois has problems, he decided, but they are all George Ryan�s fault. How Ryan convinced Democrats to increase the state�s debt from $9 billion to $21 billion, he did not explain. No matter. Voters get bored with numbers. Another lesson learned.
Lesson Four took a bit longer to digest, since it involved the sort of subtle understanding that is clearly not Noland�s forte. He was positively, shamelessly in love with House Bill 750, the �tax swap� bill that promised to solve all of Illinois educational woes.
On the surface, it sounds great. Residents would get a property tax reduction and pay more income taxes, but income taxes affect the rich more, right? So who cares?
Except that HB750 would relieve business and industry from funding practically any educational needs at all. Commercial and industrial concerns pay about 40 percent of the property tax bill. Under HB750 they would pay practically zip�nada-nill�property tax for education. Their income tax contribution would be negligible at best.
So here we have a Democrat educating the biggest tax break in history fro Illinois businesses. Not a cigar-smokin� Republican, but a tie-dyed in the wool liberal who wanted to push almost the entire burden of educational funding onto you and I. Worse, those property tax reductions would be guaranteed for the first year only�after that, it was up to the General Assembly to reinstate the reductions each and every year. We all know how long that would last.
HB750 was a disaster, one that is (thankfully) quite dead. But Noland had a hard time letting go. Either he didn�t know or didn�t care, what the bill actually meant. Both conclusions are equally disturbing. Yet, eventually, he let go. The glories of HB750 eventually fell away from his rhetoric�a difficult, but important lesson.
As the election nears, Michael Noland has learned a lot. He�s a much better, more polished, candidate than when he started. The question is whether anything has really changed inside.
His opponent, Billie Roth, is an experienced, tough, straight-shooter who knows every in and out of government and who is ultra-careful not to make any promise she can not keep. If Noland is Jell-O, Roth is a rock, and she�s proven that the things she talks about�lower taxes, better services, accountable government�are the things she can actually deliver.
Michael Noland? He�s still trying to figure out the right things to say, much less what he believes.
The Education of Michael Noland remains a work in progress. The question that we, as voters, have to ask ourselves is: do we want to pay for it?