Marathon Pundit: ILL-inois Dem guv showdown set: Bill Daley vs. Quinn

Pat Quinn's base?

Yesterday Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan revealed that she will not run for governor in 2014, citing her father as a conflict of interest. "Dad" is Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House and the chairman of the state Democratic Party. Which means that Lisa, who has been AG for ten years and plans to run for reelection to that post, views her job as the state's chief law enforcement officer as not being a problem for the Prairie State's 13 millions residents.

Welcome to ILL-inois.

So the Democratic field is set for next spring's gubernatorial primary, the hapless Pat Quinn vs. William Daley, the brother of the former Chicago mayor and onetime Obama chief of staff.

The only thing blocking a Daley victory, in my opinion, will be knee-jerk anti-Chicago bias of downstate Democrats. But depopulation and a conservative shift of the electorate south of Interstate 80 might mean that the anti-Chicago vote won't amount to much.

It's Daley's race to lose.

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