Chris Kennedy (Illinois gubernatorial candidate)
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Chris Kennedy (Democratic Party) ran for election for Governor of Illinois. He lost in the Democratic primary on March 20, 2018.
The son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), Chris Kennedy had not previously sought elected office. Kennedy has worked in real-estate management, manufacturing, the nonprofit sector, and finance, where he managed the Kennedy family investment firm.
In his February 2017 announcement video, Kennedy argued that he would change the direction the state was headed in for the better: "I've seen from so many different vantage points the potential of the state. Then I see the failings of the government...There's growing despair, there's bewilderment. The state needs to change."[1] On his campaign website, Kennedy argues that "we need to get to a place where the government works for us, and with us" and identifies his policy priority as modifications to the state's property tax structure. Kennedy has also identified increased access to education as a key aspect of his platform.[2]
Kennedy received endorsements from Chicago Alderman Jesus Garcia (D), Rep. Danny K. Davis (D), and Chicago Police Accountability Task Force Chairwoman Lori Lightfoot.
Click here for more information on the Democratic primary.
Biography
Kennedy earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Boston College and a master's degree in management from Northwestern University. His experience includes work as the president of the real estate management firm Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. and the chair of his family's investment firm, Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises Inc. Kennedy has also served as the founder of the anti-hunger nonprofit Top Box Foods and as a trustee of Ariel Mutual Funds, the Catholic Theological Union, and the University of Illinois.[3]
Elections
2018
General election
General election for Governor of Illinois
J.B. Pritzker defeated incumbent Bruce Rauner, William McCann, and Grayson Jackson in the general election for Governor of Illinois on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | J.B. Pritzker (D) | 54.5 | 2,479,746 |
 | Bruce Rauner (R) | 38.8 | 1,765,751 | |
 | William McCann (Conservative Party) | 4.2 | 192,527 | |
 | Grayson Jackson (L) | 2.4 | 109,518 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.0 | 115 | ||
| Total votes: 4,547,657 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Governor of Illinois
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for Governor of Illinois on March 20, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | J.B. Pritzker | 45.1 | 597,756 |
 | Daniel K. Biss | 26.7 | 353,625 | |
 | Chris Kennedy | 24.4 | 322,730 | |
 | Tio Hardiman | 1.6 | 21,075 | |
 | Bob Daiber | 1.1 | 15,009 | |
 | Robert Marshall | 1.1 | 14,353 | |
| Total votes: 1,324,548 | |||
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Republican primary election
Republican primary for Governor of Illinois
Incumbent Bruce Rauner defeated Jeanne M. Ives in the Republican primary for Governor of Illinois on March 20, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Bruce Rauner | 51.5 | 372,124 |
 | Jeanne M. Ives | 48.5 | 350,038 | |
| Total votes: 722,162 | |||
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Libertarian primary election
Libertarian primary for Governor of Illinois
Grayson Jackson defeated Matthew Scaro and Jon Stewart in the Libertarian primary for Governor of Illinois on March 20, 2018.
Candidate | ||
| ✔ | | Grayson Jackson |
 | Matthew Scaro | |
 | Jon Stewart | |
| ||||
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Campaign themes
2018
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The Economy & Job Creation The notion of freedom has been critical to the Kennedy family’s political philosophy for more than a century, from championing civil rights to casting off colonialism throughout the world.Freedom and economic justice have never been distributed equally, and in Illinois it is only getting worse. This attack on the American Dream has been going on for decades, and under Governor Rauner we have reached a breaking point. It does not have to be this way. That is why Ra Joy and I are putting forward our plan to rebuild Illinois’ economy and restore the promise of the American Dream to everyone in our state. Our Vision Bold new ideas can inject optimism, confidence and enthusiasm for Illinois’ economic future. The State’s economic plan will remove barriers to participation in the economy and create access and opportunity for all Illinois citizens. An equitable growth strategy includes three major prongs: A robust workforce plan that guarantees Illinois has the highest quality workforce in the country, a business environment that is welcoming to businesses and operations, and a commitment to innovation. A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand firmly with workers, and will look for innovative ways to grow the middle class. Labor is the backbone of our state. Organized labor has a long history of protecting works, whether it be through child labor laws, fighting for safe work spaces, or advocating for the 40 hour work week. Organized labor has protected us, which is why we have to protect them in return. This is why we will fight for a $15 minimum wage and never allow Illinois to become a so-called “Right to Work” state. Our economic plan will protect workers, increase opportunity, and restore equity to our state. Illinois workers should not be asked to work full-time and still live in poverty. Constructing a Strategic Plan for Illinois' Economy Growth The Illinois State Grants Office Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look A Kennedy/Joy administration would establish a State Grants Office to identify, recruit, secure and effectively distribute private, philanthropic, and federal funding in Illinois. Similar to the Grants Office established in Maryland in the early 2000s, the Illinois State Grants Office would host an annual grant training conference, with attendees representing every region of the state, as well as representatives of non-profit organizations and various state employees. The Office will work to secure additional federal grant funding while also building partnerships with foundations across Illinois to better link state agencies and agency partners with grants available across the state. Strategic Planning for Illinois Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look As part of Illinois’ economic roadmap, we will hold regional Blue-Ribbon Economic Development Summits that will bring together experts from every region working to identify the best strategies to accelerate development in Southern and Western Illinois where there is little to no assistance in large-scale community development and metropolitan planning. During the first six months in office, the Kennedy/Joy administration will convene regional blue-ribbon economic development summits with representation from the labor, business, education, workforce, economic, health care, and community development sectors. These convenings will operate as a four-part series starting with a listening and learning tour, followed by high-level planning workshops, proposal development and submission, and finally a formal submission of regional development vision plans for consideration in budget and economic planning. A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow this process in order to identify plans and priorities that are reflective of community needs across our state. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will create a Council of Economic Advisers to advise the state on tax and fiscal policy, with a special focus on revamping the corporate tax code by looking at the full range of policy, including credits and exemptions. The R&D credit is almost universally recognized as one of the highest returns for future economic growth through commercialization of new technologies and increased productivity through advanced manufacturing processes. Even when Illinois did have a state credit, it lagged behind what many other states offered. A Kennedy/Joy administration will recommit Illinois to financial investments that will spur economic growth, including restoring our education and revitalizing research to spawn new ideas, programs and businesses that will put people to work and enhance public funding. The Chicagoland area is home to quality public-private collaborations like the Civic Consulting Alliance, that bring private sector consultants together with government to help solve the big issues facing local governments. A Kennedy/Joy administration would expand these strategies and invest in Strategic Consulting Aid for All of Illinois to cover the entire state and provide local governments the support they need to overcome their largest obstacles and challenges.Overcomes challenges like regional access to clean water, transportation issues, sewage and runoff problems, how we power our new businesses. An Innovation Pipeline for Illinois Universities are often home to critical research operations. Places like Boston, Silicon Valley, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina, among other locations, have research universities that feed into the local economy. These institutions invest in basic research that is developed into applied research, which spurs new ideas and products that attract additional investment. Those new ideas and products can then turn into companies or organizations that employ people who pay taxes, which help fund our schools–all of which fuels a virtuous economic cycle. The alumni of MIT alone have founded over 30,000 companies. We have great universities. There’s no reason we can’t create this same robust system here through our public institutions. As Governor, Chris Kennedy will create this cycle of opportunity in Illinois by bringing together political, business, and academic leaders to work in concert with one another to operate robust research operations and attract local investments. Kennedy Connection The research park has partnered with companies like Yahoo, Sony, Illinois-based Abbott Labs, and the Federal Government to put Illinoisans to work. In-Depth Look Revitalizing Our Community Colleges A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure that our education system drives Illinois’ economic growth by reversing the trend of disinvesting in higher education institutions and rebuilding our vast network of community colleges via a Promise Program that will make college accessible to all residents of the state. Kennedy Connection The U of I has since built on that program and has articulation agreements with community colleges throughout the state. In-Depth Look Organize Non-Tenure Track Faculty Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Courses to Careers A four-year degree can be cost prohibitive, too demanding and inflexible for individuals who need to work in order to support their families. A career education, made up of integrated offerings that include fundamental career courses such as communication and conflict resolution, career-tailored courses, and apprenticeships, can serve as the bridge between a post-secondary education and securing a good job. Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Students to Stewards Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look New Collar Jobs for Illinois' Future Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look No community should be left behind. We need to meet communities where they are. Within the NCJ4I, Illinois will operate a 21st Century Workforce Project (21WP), which will serve as a public/private partnership to advance digital and tech training in rural areas where such opportunities do not currently exist. The program will operate out of local schools, businesses, or community centers, to provide programming with a focus on improving skills today (through teaching and tutoring), tomorrow (through coaching and mentoring), and the future (through internship placement) with an entrepreneurial focus. Key deliverables for participants are the creation of web and mobile apps for (Google Android, iPhone, iPad etc.), accompanying business plans, accrual of college credits (for youth) and case studies on their resumes and portfolios because of hands-on tangible skills gained through internship placements. Parents and guardians would be eligible to apply for monthly trainings and events for youth. Boost Business Incubators Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Modeled on the best practices of the Chicago-based Blue 1647, University Technology Park at IIT, Eiger Lab at Northern Illinois University, and the Small Business Incubator at Southern Illinois University, these incubators would be targeted in smaller towns and cities across the state to provide a resource to entrepreneurs statewide. Business Access and Equity Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to being intentional and deliberate about creating opportunity and access to state contracting opportunities, as well as to ensuring timely and complete data collection and reporting. There are several key sectors that prove to be exceedingly lucrative for contractors—IDOT, Toll Road, and Central Management Services (CMS) and segments of key sectors, such as asphalt. Under a Kennedy/Joy administration, the state will work to increase minority participation on state contracts. The administration will set a 20% Minority and Women-owned Businesses (M/WBE) state contracting mandate for Cook County and 15% for the rest of the state, following the example of the University of Illinois system, which has goals of 22% for their Chicago campus, and 15% for the Peoria, Rockford, Springfield and Urbana campuses. To oversee and enforce our policies, the state will create a new cabinet level Office of Inclusion that will serve as a watchdog to review and monitor the fine print of all state contracts and aggressively hold firms accountable for achieving state contracting participation goals, and seek out new firms that can take advantage of such opportunities. The Office of Inclusion will also enforce M/WBE participation goals and ensure data collection. The Office of Inclusion will ensure that companies that have been convicted of violating guidelines should be barred from bidding on other state projects, and principals convicted of fraud at the state or local level will be prohibited from state contracting opportunities, even with other firms. The Office of Inclusion would maintain a database of such companies to ensure that the state has a record of companies seeking to defraud the system while maintaining key incentives to ensure minority participation in contracting opportunities. We will establish a Business Equity and Access Program (BAEP) that will set a goal of $1 billion worth of contracts for Minority and Women-owned Businesses (M/WBEs). The Kennedy/Joy administration will establish a statewide BAEP team by executive order that will explore ways to eliminate barriers to expand the participation of M/WBEs in State contracting. The BAEP team will make recommendations on state initiatives based on their findings. Access to state contracting opportunities is a critical mechanism to expand existing businesses and create a pipeline of new businesses that contribute to the State’s economic growth. The Kennedy/Joy administration will create the Pipeline Gateway Program that consists of a pool of new businesses that receive intensive technical assistance and special access to contracting opportunities that position them for more lucrative contracting opportunities down the line. The pool would only be available for first-time contractors and subcontractors with the state. The Kennedy/Joy administration recognizes that the state can play a role in creating a robust pipeline of participation in contracting opportunities that can help businesses expand their capacity and position them for more and larger contracts. However, all too often pipeline programs create one or two successful businesses but exclude the remainder of smaller businesses that can often be blocked by their more familiar and experienced counterparts. Once businesses in the pool successfully obtain their first contract, they are moved out of the pool and into the general database of M/WBE businesses. The administration will aggressively recruit new businesses to replenish the pool. This program ensures that benefits of contracts aren’t realized exclusively by the M/WBEs that have already had significant exposure and opportunities to state contracts. It “spreads the wealth,” which results in more high quality, high performing M/WBE businesses across the state. The Kennedy/Joy administration will create a “Bridging the Gap” loan program to invest at least $20 million to expand access to short term bridge loans for M/WBEs. We recognize that access to upfront capital remains a significant barrier to business expansion and participation in contracting opportunities – particularly for M/WBEs. The Bridging the Gap loan program will provide qualified M/WBEs with the short-term resources they need to participate in contracting opportunities with the State. A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a “Mentoring for Success” Business Assistance Program by leveraging the massive talent of business professionals across the state. The Mentoring for Success business assistance program will be a free program that consists of a corps of volunteers and current and retired professionals (attorneys, accountants, financial, communications, information technology and other professional experts) that will be deployed to provide one-on-one technical assistance to M/WBE businesses seeking to participate in contracting opportunities with State agencies. The goal is to deploy 250 such professionals within the first two years and scale up to 500 such businesses. The Mentoring for Success program will complement existing technical assistance programs utilized by the state. Employment and Criminal Justice Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Micro-Loans to Minority and Women Entrepreneurs Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Illinois’ program will be financed by capturing a portion of the revenues from business filing fees and used to issue micro loans to minority and women entrepreneurs. A microfinance strategy recognizes that pathways to traditional loans are blocked for many members of these communities, whether it be because of bad credit or no credit, redlining, or criminal convictions. These barriers can no longer be allowed to forestall Illinois’ economy and keep hard-working people in poverty. Protecting Our Workforce Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Holding Government Accountable In order for our state to thrive, we have to start holding ourselves fiscally accountable. That begins with holding our government accountable to its workers. Paying workers their constitutionally protected pensions, never taking a pension holiday, and beginning to recognize the promises Illinois made to its workers will put money back into Illinois’ economy, give retirees a better quality of life, restore faith in government, and continue to attract a highly talented workforce to government. Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look
Furthermore, we need to maximize the state’s role as an investor by:
Create an Illinois Index Fund Kennedy Connection Chris is also Chairman of the Audit Committee for Ariel Mutual Funds, Chairman of the Investment Committee for the Chicago Community Trust, and he manages the Kennedy family financial investments. In-Depth Look Rebuilding Illinois: Job Creation Through Infrastructure Investments Kennedy Connection The success of businesses is built on reliable and sophisticated infrastructure. Chris experienced this first-hand when he led the Merchandise Mart, which relied on O’Hare International Airport to make it easier for exhibitors and customers to visit the Merchandise Mart. Similarly, the success of the Apparel Center was derived from access to a fiber-optic cable, which attracted high-speed trading firms to the building. In-Depth Look A Kennedy Joy administration is committed to leveraging infrastructure investments to spur economic growth, particularly for challenged communities. A Kennedy/Joy administration will reserve funds for capital spending to target infrastructure investments in under-resourced communities along with technical assistance from the State to invest in community development projects related to infrastructure and transportation. Moreover, the State will invest in building a robust workforce program designed around infrastructure investments that will target the hard to employ, underemployed, reentry individuals, and veterans, for jobs within key sectors for capital investments, including: broadband access, open lands, transportation, and water infrastructure. Broadband Investments to Close the Opportunity Gap Kennedy Connection At U of I, we were able to create a critical mass of leading researchers, and the momentum began to build on itself with great research in the pipeline, a pipeline whose pump was primed by a relatively low investment in a fiber optic network. In-Depth Look A Kennedy/Joy administration will encourage more municipalities across the State to set up broadband as a public utility to meet the needs of residents—particularly in rural towns across the state. We will also create partnerships with franchises to arrange agreements for lower cost broadband services in towns and rural areas of need. A Commitment to Agriculture Our agriculture economy has significant interface with the environmental movement, and harmonizing these two vital interests will be top of mind for our administration. Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look A Kennedy/Joy administration will build on the work of FARM Illinois to establish a Governor’s Council on Agriculture to create a permanent planning group to implement a strategic, long-term plan and much-needed improvements to the state’s agriculture policies. This council will commit to refreshing Illinois’ agriculture roadmap every three years. Working with the public university system, a Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in the university system’s agriculture schools to attract and retain a labor supply that is properly trained to develop tomorrow’s great agricultural innovations. Reducing the waste in the farm-to-fork process begins with protecting our state’s natural resources, investing in infrastructure and supporting local efforts to reduce agricultural waste. It results with food distributors investing in our state to feed the nation. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in marketing for our local farms. By developing specialized marketing plans for each region of the state and our various harvests, we can market Illinois products to the world. Welcome to Illinois: Investing in Tourism Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look To accompany such planning, a Kennedy/Joy administration will adopt a more expansive, proactive tourism promotional plan that highlights our state parks, nature preserves, and other important natural lands. Overall planning will integrate into technical assistance for local communities to explore capital investments that would create or expand green spaces and outdoor activity spaces, particularly through a set-aside fund dedicated to capital spending for under-resourced, low-income communities that often bear the brunt of toxic pollutants. We would work to create a statewide biking network of bike paths throughout the state to connect communities where no paths exist to places like Chicago where many have been developed. Ideally, these paths would be built to provide better access to our public buildings as well as to our open spaces, such as our schools, libraries, public parks, and outdoor destinations. This effort would be integrated into plans to update existing roads, making all of our state easy and enjoyable to travel. But Illinois’ tourism opportunities do not stop at our open spaces. A Kennedy/Joy administration will grow Illinois’ trade show industry in our urban centers by harnessing economic development strategies to expand the restaurant and hotel industries while also investing in capital upgrades and on-going marketing dollars to boost the year-round use of state and county fairgrounds to attract people to events throughout Illinois and allow commerce to occur. Returning to Our Roots: Revitalizing Illinois as a Transportation Hub Much of our infrastructure was built in the 1930s with an intended lifespan of 50 years—the system is long overdue for upgrades, rehabilitation, and repair. Illinois’ major waterways serve as vital connections for commercial shipping of goods or travel throughout Illinois and the rest of the country. Illinois also has over 1,750 State-regulated dams, with a number of older dams whose condition and level of risk are unknown. Many of these dams are decades old and merit funding for repair and, in some cases, replacement. Our rails are critical to providing efficient and reliable transit in the midst of a transitioning economy. The Illinois rail network is the second largest in the country. Almost every North American railway connects in Chicago, which makes our major city arguably the most active rail hub in the country. Kennedy Connection In-Depth Look Illinois must invest in revitalizing our transportation infrastructure to optimize efficiency and capacity. We can no longer afford to underspend compared to other American and international cities and states. Protecting and Providing a Fresh Water Future for the Next Generation The burden of water loss and costly lost supply was further found to be discriminatory, with the medium price for water in predominantly African American communities costing 20% more than mostly white communities for the same volume of water. Kennedy Connection We also replaced the fan unit that cooled the computer equipment in our corporate office because it used City of Chicago tap water to cool the air temperature, and then returned that tap water to the common sewer system and then passed it back to the water reclamation district. By modifying the fan to an air-cooled system, we save 4 to 5 million gallons of water per year. In-Depth Look Health Care Affordable Health Care for All These aggregated insurance pools will emerge as an economic and political force in the state with clout, leverage, and contacts to overcome the insurance lobby. By allowing the largest employers in the state to work together to negotiate the cost of health coverage and drug prices, existing insurance companies will become nothing more than benefits managers. Once established, with a solid foundation of committed members and employers, the employer-backed option will be made available to anyone in the state—including undocumented immigrants—which will further drive down costs for plan holders and the overall health care market in Illinois. Keeping the Affordable Care Act Strong: A Statewide Health Insurance Mandate The new Republican Tax Plan has eliminated the Obamacare health care mandate, which is predicted to cause everyone’s premiums to rise and leave more people without health insurance. States around the country are working to enact statewide health care mandates, and Illinois should be no exception. A Health Care Mandate for Illinois will keep everyone insured and help control the rising cost of health care. Medicaid Buy-In Program A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a Medicaid Buy-In Program to allow those families who cannot afford a plan on the Health Care Exchange but who also don’t qualify for Medicaid to pay a less expensive premium, based on their income, in order to receive Medicaid coverage. Mandated Transparency for Hikes in Drug Prices A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow the state of California’s lead and mandate Drug Price Increase Notification Requirements. Drug companies will be required to issue a notification and justification if they plan to raise the price of a drug 60 days prior to the increase, and insurance companies will be required to report how increases in drug costs affect the cost of health care premiums and copays. This law will create transparency for consumers so they can speak to their doctors about alternatives, and the law will provide information to regulators so that they can more effectively intervene when rates are being raised without proper justification. Mandate Transparency for Hospital Profitability Increasing Access to Health Care Medical facilities generate millions of dollars of unused drugs that are untampered with, in sealed packages, and unexpired, but in Illinois they are required to dispose of these medications. A Kennedy/Joy administration would create a Prescription Drug Buy-Back Program where a state-backed non-profit would act as a repository, collecting, sorting, and controlling for quality drugs that are donated by licensed medical facilities. The non-profit repository then donates the unused medication back to pharmacies across the state who distribute them to uninsured and underinsured individuals. Not only does this increase equity by making medication available to people in the state who have the least access health care, but it reduces unnecessary waste that drives up the cost of health care for everyone. Make Medical Care Available in Every Illinois County Illinois must be a nationwide leader in telemedicine, which is the new frontier of medical care. That’s why a Kennedy/Joy administration will require insurance companies and Medicaid to cover telehealth services that will increase access to care across our state. Currently 26 other states require insurance companies to cover telehealth services, while Illinois has lagged behind. Telemedicine brings much-needed care to people wherever they are and serves to lower overall health care expenses by providing preventative care, which will save taxpayers money over the long term. Illinois should embrace telemedicine. Oppose a Medicaid "Work Requirement" Extending Eyeglasses and Contact Prescription Expiration Periods Protecting Our Workers A Kennedy/Joy administration will fight attacks against home health care workers, like those that have come from the current administration. These attacks, like the plan to cap income eligibility levels for seniors and people with disabilities to receive care, or the scheme to limit the number of overtime hours home health care workers can work are wrong. Both measures would destabilize care for these populations and cause home health care workers financial hardship. Paid Family Leave Whether you’re a mother who has just given birth, a new father who wants to spend time with his family, caring for a loved one, or suffering from an illness yourself, Illinoisans should not incur an economic burden for needing to attend to circumstances in their personal lives. Additionally, paid leave must include adoption and foster children entering the home as qualifying reasons to take paid leave. There are only eight countries in the entire world that do not offer paid maternity leave. Not only is the US one of those eight countries, but we are the only high-income country that doesn’t offer leave, according to the World Bank. Illinois cannot afford to wait for the federal government to institute nationwide paid family leave. Offering paid leave is an issue of fairness as much as it is a good business practice. If Illinois is to be an attractive state for the next generation to build their careers here, we cannot afford to deny workers rights they can get in other states. In states like California that have had paid family leave in effect for over a decade, not only did the vast majority of large and small businesses alike report no noticeable effect on the profitability and performance of their businesses, but employers also report improved morale and productivity. Treating Addiction and Mental Health The opioid crisis is claiming lives across our state: in big cities like Chicago, which have long suffered from government indifference to issues of addiction—particularly in predominantly minority communities—and in rural areas, where addiction to opioids has exploded in recent years. A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow Vermont’s innovative lead by adopting a Hub and Spoke model to treat addiction. A Hub and Spoke program is a comprehensive addiction treatment plan where patients first interact with the “hub,” or nexus where they receive intensive treatment from teams of nurses, counselors, and prescribing MDs. At the hub clinic patients receive a medical assessment, care coordination, therapy, and medication-assisted treatment using anti-withdrawal medications like methadone and buprenorphine. Patients must come to the hub daily in order to receive their anti-withdrawal medication. Over time as patients become more stable, they are transitioned to the different “spokes” for specialized treatment that varies from patient to patient. The spokes include: mental health services, pain management clinics, family services, residential services, inpatient and outpatient addiction programs, medical homes, and support services to help manage outstanding legal issues like probation or parole. Ensuring Continuity of Care and Access for the Reentry Population This is particularly true for inmates who have mental health or substance-use disorders. Without health care coverage, many of them are released without the ability to get the medications they need. Before they are released from prison, inmates should be confirmed participants in Medicaid. This means that prisons must make an effort to sign inmates up early enough to have the inmate’s enrollment ready on the day of his or her release. In addition, the state would ensure that inmates released from prison work directly with a care coordinator whose responsibility is to help them find a primary care doctor, make and confirm appointments, and learn about urgent care, health care specialists, and transportation benefits. A Kennedy/Joy administration would work to seamlessly coordinate between the Department of Corrections and the State Medicaid program. Set Limits for Prescription Narcotics Illinois should also prevent pharmacy shopping by creating a state tracking system that notifies pharmacies if patients are trying to fill prescriptions for narcotics at multiple pharmacies during a short timeframe. Expand Number of Needle Exchange Sites and Coordinate Care Gun Violence Transparency Requirements Fund Primary Health Clinics and Integrate Mental Health Services Caring for Seniors and People with Disabilities Training a Pipeline of Direct Care Workers Increase the Personal Needs Allowance Increasing Nursing Home Staffing and Oversight In order to offer quality care, Illinois must also increase the number of mandated direct-care hours per resident per day in order to meet federal standards. Currently, Illinois mandates a minimum of 3.8 hours per resident per day while federal standards recommended that each resident receive 4.1 hours. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work to make sure that all nursing home residents receive the care they deserve. In order to maintain quality and consistency of care, the state must pay nursing homes in a timely manner. A Kennedy/Joy administration will direct the State Comptroller to create a revolving loan fund so that the state pays nursing homes what it owes them immediately. Standing with Women: Women-Specific Health Care Broader Access to Birth Control Standardize the State's Sex Education Curriculum to be Inclusive of Women's Needs Standing with the LGBTQ+ Community: LGBTQ+ Specific Health Care Increase Access to Health Care There is only one clinic outside of Chicago where a transgender person can receive hormone replacement therapy. That means that people across our state have to travel great distances for this medically necessary treatment or go without. A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to increasing the number of hormone replacement therapy providers throughout Illinois. We will follow the example of Florida by working to provide PrEP at no cost for our high-risk and/or low-income population in every county in Illinois. A Kennedy/Joy administration will also fund LGBTQ+-specific mental health and counseling services at community health clinics and in grade schools, as well as in our public university system. Standardize the State's Sex Education Curriculuim to Be Inclusive of LGBTQ+ Needs Cultural Competency Training for Health Care Providers Gun Violence Chris has called for an eight-point plan to combat gun violence in Illinois. Chris will reinvest in high-risk communities and strengthen oversight of illegal gun access and unlawful gun use by licensing gun dealers, cracking down on “gun trains” and creating a gun tracing program, among other measures. He will divert at-risk youth away from violence through support for community-based diversion programs; fund and expand proven programs and techniques that reduce violence; and expand trauma and mental health care in communities and for individuals impacted by violence. He will further support a full return to community policing with a concentrated effort to recruit future candidates from the communities offcers intend to serve; and pursue criminal justice reform that supports perpetrators in becoming productive citizens. Invest in basic economic issues like public education and jobs programs We need to re-invest in our public schools, and we need to invest in communities from top to bottom. We need to create job opportunities that are not just entry level jobs or summer jobs. We need to look at areas of pinstripe patronage for areas of opportunity – in everything from streets and sanitation to bond counsel, from lifeguards to the people who invest the state’s money. Reduce the flow of illegal handguns and unlawful gun use by strengthening our gun laws We need to pass a gun dealer licensing bill. Efforts stalled in Illinois’ November 2017 legislative session to advance Senate Bill 1657 in the House. As governor I will move forward with this legislation. We need to learn from the work underway in New York and even efforts already happening in Chicago to create a state gun-tracing program. We can partner to work in cooperation with other states so we can trace the ownership of all guns that were used in a crime. We need to close the gun show loophole where people can buy guns at traveling trade shows without having to go through the background checks that gun dealers in the state are required to perform on buyers in their stores. We need to pass a lethal order of protection to keep guns out of the hands of those in the midst of mental crisis or whose loved ones report concern for their own safety or the safety of others around them. We need to ban anyone on the terrorist watch list from receiving a FOID card in Illinois and call on President Trump to share the terrorist watch list with the state police immediately. If he won’t, we will demand that he explain why he refuses to do so. We need to confront the gun train issue. It’s time to put the railroads on notice where train cars full of guns can get left overnight with little security only to be robbed. We need to make it clear to our rail lines that if they operate in a way that threatens public safety, then we will take legal action. Provide support to at-risk youth through diversion programs We can do so much more to identify at-risk youth and divert them from a life of crime. We need to provide our schools with before school, after school, and summer programming to keep kids engaged in productive and developmentally supportive activities that will help them stay out of trouble. Our ex-offenders provide us with a valuable resource and we should work with them to provide our youth with guidance and learning opportunities. Provide support to communities through community-based violence disruption programs We need to rectify his callous politics-over-people budget cuts and invest in our most vulnerable children and communities. We need to restore or expand programs where we have seen progress. Programs like Becoming A Man, Redeploy Illinois, and chapters within Ceasefire that have demonstrated good track records for redirecting juvenile and adult offenders. We need to create a dedicated grant program to support a continuum of violence prevention services that are indigenous to the communities where support is needed the most. Provide necessary trauma treatment and mental, social and emotional health services to individuals impacted by violence Just as we try to prevent violence, so too must we acknowledge that it will still occur. We need to be prepared to support victims. Not just in hospitals and with sutures but with mental and emotional health support. The challenge of trauma is never just physical. For communities disproportionately affected by violence, we need to commit to providing required mental health screenings and counseling services to those who experience violence. Provide proactive, community-based mental, social and emotional health services Our property tax burden keeps our school system from putting in place the staff and programming for the kind of social and emotional learning proven to reach the children who are growing up in communities surrounded by regular violence. We must make sure that there are resources for social and emotional learning in every school, along with hospital and clinical services that are readily available to their families. Illinois should be a place where people look to, to learn how to heal their own communities. We should support the people in the communities where they are already doing the healing, and try to build on that good work. Fully fund and support community policing with a concentrated effort to recruit police officers from within the communities that need their service We need to understand that the criminal justice system that we have built is a contributor to the violence in our state. When budgets got tight, we cut back on the number of police officers and now we don’t have a full-strength force like we did years ago. Estimates vary, but as an example, there are somewhere between 1,000 to 2,000 fewer police officers in Chicago than there were a decade ago. Our officers have legitimate frustrations that the training designed to help them integrate into new and different communities from the ones they grew up in is insufficient. Without adequate training, we breed alienation between the police and the communities they need to help protect. Expand and enhance restorative justice programs in our jails and for our ex-offenders We don’t do enough to prepare our incarcerated population to reenter society successfully and not recidivate. It costs $38,268 per year to imprison a single person in Illinois. If we do not address the root causes of recidivism, we’re just kicking the can down the road–dooming people to become repeat offenders, ruining lives, and accumulating greater and unnecessary costs to the state. It makes no sense to release someone from prison, someone whose life we have controlled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and not have given them the tools and skills they need to succeed in our communities. Every person who comes out of our prisons should know how to read, have a driver’s license, a state ID, a path to a job, housing, and a bank account. Education Education is a public good, but right now high-quality public education is not accessible to everyone in Illinois. This has implications for the long-term future of our children and of our state. Today, jobs move to where the highly skilled workforce is. If we give the world a highly skilled workforce, the world will give us its jobs. The goal of public education is to make the next generation employable by providing pathways to workforce readiness and college readiness. We must provide these pathways. According to the state’s own reporting, two-thirds of Illinois students are not graduating from high school college-ready. This has disastrous effects for students, many of whom have to take expensive remedial courses when they first enter college, putting them behind and often causing them to drop out due to financial hardship. Workforce readiness is low as well, due to a lack of investment in vocational and workforce development training. When students leave high school without learning the skills they need, it has a ripple effect, both for them and for the state’s economy, which can only thrive when we have a highly skilled workforce. We can do better and we can give our children a better life by investing in our schools. Illinois’ education outcomes are not the fault of hardworking teachers or parents. Rather, these outcomes lay at the feet of a broken system that has inequitably funded Illinois’ public education system for decades and passed a series of unfunded mandates that amount to empty promises. A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure equitable and adequate funding for schools, a reinvestment in public neighborhood schools, support for our teachers, smaller class sizes, better school facilities, a new focus on trauma care and social emotional learning for high-need communities, and a cradle-to-career approach that will guide students, their families, and their communities toward futures filled with opportunity and economic advancement. We will appoint a State Superintendent and staff whose vision aligns with ours and who will be the champions of education in our state. Together, we will prioritize education in the budget and ensure that there are funds to support the programs and services our children need to thrive. School Funding Currently, the more money that a district can raise through property taxes, the more money it can spend on education per student. This allows us to spend the greatest amount of money on the students in the wealthiest communities who need the least amount of additional services. This violates the fundamental concept of equity. School funding on the state level should be wealth-neutral so that all of Illinois’ children receive the same basic level of high-quality education, independent of how much their homes are worth or the amount of wealth in their communities. Local districts should be free to generate more revenue to supplement state funds, but no district should suffer for the inability to fund schools locally. The new state school funding formula requires an additional $5 billion to adequately fund education in Illinois. We cannot rely on an inequitable property tax system to continue funding our schools.
Reform the Property Tax System This is because Illinois disproportionately relies on local property taxes to fund our schools, with state contributions making up a smaller portion of funding compared to other states. We do this because a handful of elected legislators have outside jobs as property tax appeals attorneys. Being a State Representative or a State Senator is not a full-time job, and some of our legislators have outside jobs that make them millions of dollars appealing people’s property tax bills. This is a clear conflict of interest. These elected officials keep our schools reliant on funding from property taxes, a system that they benefit from, as opposed to moving to a graduated progressive income tax to fund our schools. The state’s new education funding formula gives us all a reason to care about assessed property values in every community in every county of our state. Under the new education funding formula, education dollars for local school districts are allocated based on a school district’s needs coupled with local capacity to fund schools, which is calculated based on the total assessed value of property that the school district can tax. If a local government artificially decreases their total property values, as the Cook County Assessor routinely does, there is a potential for money to flow away from communities that need it most. In Illinois, undervaluation complaints can be filed by any unit of government with an interest in the outcome of a property’s valuation. With the changes to the state funding formula, the state of Illinois has an interest in the accurate assessment of every property across the state. A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a task force to track property valuations across the state and file undervaluation complaints at the local level to ensure that local schools across Illinois are getting the funding they need. Investing in Our Communities Right now, in Chicago only 25% of students are going to their designated neighborhood schools. This is a good measure of school quality as interpreted by families themselves. Instead, kids attend neighborhood schools in other parts of the city, private or magnet schools, or charter schools. When parents don’t feel comfortable sending their children to their designated neighborhood school, they should be free to send them elsewhere, but they should not have to face this choice. A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand with communities to make sure neighborhood schools are viable options for families. Oppose School Closings Neighborhood schools and access to education are the foundation of opportunity. Yet, across the state, local governments are closing schools. When a neighborhood’s school is closed, we are doing more than taking away a classroom, we are taking away a community’s social center, their libraries, their nurses, their support that working families rely upon—we are ripping out the heart of the community. When schools close, we are disrupting a child’s entire life and robbing the community of its central organizing force. A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand with communities to fight back against school closures across the state because all students deserve access to quality education in their community. Moratorium on Charter Schools A Kennedy/Joy administration will put a moratorium on opening new charter schools in order to prioritize funding and fully supporting the schools we already have. Illinois needs to fundamentally rethink the way it funds public education so it doesn’t matter whether you live in Northbrook or on the Southside of Chicago, you can get a quality education that prepares you for the workforce. Roll Back the Illegal Voucher Program Curb the State Charter Commission Currently, there is a proposal before Governor Rauner that would limit the SCSC’s ability to overturn decisions made by local school districts. A Kennedy/Joy administration would support these efforts to return local charter control to the hands of local districts. Supporting an Elected School Board Without an elected school board, the residents of Chicago have very little influence on the decisions made by the board. Consequences include a widening achievement gap between black and white students, school closings, an expansion of charter schools, illegal, multi-million dollar contracts, and two recent CEO’s removed from their jobs due to corruption and ethics violations. A Kennedy/Joy administration supports local control and supports an elected school board for Chicago Public Schools. Investing in Our Teachers A teacher in a community that experiences a lot of violence may not need the same professional development programs as a teacher in a community where a lack of transportation is a major challenge facing students. Teachers should be able to have local control of their professional development programs—education professionals on the ground are best suited to know what kinds of supports they need most. That is why we will leverage teachers’ expertise in a 360-degree effort to identify, evaluate, and direct state-funded or influenced professional development investments. A Kennedy/Joy administration will expand professional development programs through the Illinois State Board of Education and the Regional Offices of Education and earmark funding specifically for professional development tailored to regional needs. We will create a new ISBE-facilitated teacher review committee to evaluate professional development programs. This information will then be disseminated to local school districts so they can choose which of these programs is best for local schools. This will help make sure teachers are receiving the best professional development possible for their students’ success. Sensible Standardized Testing A Kennedy/Joy administration will de-emphasize standardized testing in favor of more time for intentional classroom instruction while also committing to evaluate and distribute state standardized test results in a timely and efficient manner so that educators can use this measure as one among many real-time benchmarks of student performance. Diversifying the Teacher Pipeline A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in recruiting a diverse pipeline of teachers from the communities where they will serve. This includes supporting colleges and universities that serve a high proportion of students of color, like Chicago State University, and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions. We will also look to replicate programs that focus on recruiting male educators of color, recognizing that these educators are vital members of any instructional community. Financial supports are crucial to widening the pipeline into the teaching profession—particularly for people of color. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with our in-state universities to remove barriers to entry for low-income students and students of color who want to become teachers. No Limits Based on Native Language: Supporting English Language Learners A Kennedy/Joy administration will tackle the teacher shortage problem for ELL teachers in addition to making sure school materials are available in translation and that after school tutoring and supports are offered in the appropriate language for non-native speakers. Investing in Leaders The State of Illinois has been a leader in principal training as one of the first states to legislatively require a total redesign of our principal preparation program in 2010. The results have been very positive, but we need to build on them by growing the pipeline of principals who are prepared to undergo the intensive training the state requires. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest the funding needed recruit, develop, and train high-quality principals across our state. Early Childhood Education And yet, kindergarten, much less all day kindergarten, is not required in the State of Illinois. A Kennedy/Joy administration supports all day kindergarten for all children and will help local school districts implement it statewide. Preschool We spend $1,600 less than the national per pupil average of $4,976, and $13,438 less per pupil than the nation’s leader in preschool spending, the District of Columbia. Even worse, Illinois spent over $850 less per pupil in 2016 than it did ten years ago in 2006. The result is that only 20% of three-year olds and 26% of four-year olds are enrolled in preschool in Illinois. Moreover, preschool teachers are underpaid and not incentivized to enter the profession. The state must do more to fund both its Preschool for All program and build a strong teacher pipeline of well trained, well paid professionals. A Kennedy/Joy administration will be committed to expanding quality preschool programs statewide by establishing an Early Childhood Education State Agency. This new agency will centralize funding for early childhood education across the state’s mixed delivery system of childcare providers and early childhood education classrooms and make the state better equipped to decide how to increase access to quality programs equitably. A Kennedy/Joy administration will commit to funding the expansion of early childhood education as a priority for the state. This includes a commitment to paying our share and increasing our contribution to the Preschool Development Grant, a federally matched subsidy, while also increasing funding to the state’s Preschool for All program through the Early Education Block Grant with an emphasis on increasing the number of seats available to high-need, low income children first as we build towards truly being able to offer free preschool to every child in Illinois. Childcare A Kennedy/Joy administration will increase state investment in childcare subsidies to high quality child care providers who provide early childhood education to thousands of kids across Illinois. We will also expand eligibility for more children and families to receive childcare so that more parents can afford quality childcare and continue working to support their families. Investing in Our Schools Overcrowding is also a problem facing schools across Illinois. Peoria, Champaign, Naperville, and Chicago all have schools that are suffering from overcrowding. Brookdale Elementary in Naperville is projected to have 70 more students than they can support over the next five years. One in five CPS students started the 2016-2017 school year in overcrowded classrooms, some of which exceeded 30, even 40 students per class, and many of which were concentrated in black and brown communities on the South and West sides of the city. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work towards adequately funding the new education funding formula through a progressive graduated income tax so that every school gets the resources it needs to hire enough staff to provide quality learning experiences for students. Outdated and undersized school buildings can also contribute to a child’s struggle to learn. Too often, critical school activities like physical education classes or band lessons occur in a cafeteria. By upgrading school facilities, we give children a better and safer environment to learn. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with local school districts to develop strategic long-term plans for capital development and invest in education infrastructure as a part of a statewide capital bill. Classroom Innovation A Kennedy/Joy administration believes all schools should have the freedom and the funding to enable our educators to innovate in the classroom, whether that be through adaptive learning platforms that make use of technology in the classroom, flipped classrooms that emphasize collaboration in the classroom, or asset-based approaches that focus on encouraging students’ strengths and interests rather than emphasizing the areas where they struggle. Preparing Students for College and Career Caring for the Whole Student A Kennedy/Joy administration will address traumas that plague school children across the state by investing in trauma specialists in schools and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs that have proven effects in reducing depression, improving emotional outlook, helping students make responsible decisions, and increasing positive social behavior with others. Children in high-need communities cannot be expected to perform at the same levels as their peers in wealthier communities without additional wrap-around services that acknowledge and address the barriers they face outside of the classroom that directly impact their outcomes in the classroom. It is the state’s responsibility to educate all children, and it is Chris and Ra’s belief that the state does not live up to its obligation without making strategic investments in trauma and SEL wraparound services that help to even the playing field. By investing in these trauma support services, children will get the help they need to move forward, grow, and learn the skills they need to succeed in a 21st century economy. Caring for the Mind: Fostering an Arts Education Supporting the arts in schools is also an issue of cultural equity. Low-income students with arts-rich experiences in high school are more than 3 times as likely to earn a B.A., and they are more likely to obtain promising employment, volunteer in their communities, and vote. Yet, underfunded schools in low-income communities are far more likely to lack the financial support to fund the arts in their public schools. Our state as a whole continues to make only a minimal investment in arts education. The weak to non-existent funding for the Illinois State Board of Education’s Arts & Foreign Language budget line item is just one example. A Kennedy/Joy administration will commit to equitably funding the arts in public schools throughout our state. Caring for the Body: Ensuring Physical Health When a student is hurt or sick in school, she should be able to see a nurse. In the absence of care, a student’s physical pain or discomfort can escalate into a serious medical event, which is a danger to the student. Perhaps more often, the student is distracted by something going on with them physically that prevents them from concentrating and learning in school. A Kennedy/Joy administration will address funding inequities and make sure that every school has the resources it needs to hire a nursing staff to meet the health needs of every student. For so many children, physical education classes (PE) is the first introduction to the habits that go into building a healthy lifestyle. Physical activity has also been shown to make students more alert and successful academically. In fact, Illinois was the first state in the nation to require five days of PE classes per week. However, nearly 40% of the schools in Illinois—nearly 1,200 schools, cannot provide five days of PE due to lack of funding and proper facilities. As part of the new school funding bill that passed over the summer, Governor Rauner limited Illinois’ historic physical education mandate, allowing districts to reduce the number of days from five to three instead of adequately funding these important programs. That’s not leadership, that’s an abdication of responsibility to our children. A Kennedy/Joy administration will adequately fund schools so that no district or principal needs to compromise students’ physical health in order to continue teaching them English, Math, Social Studies, and Science. Caring for Students with Disabilities A Kennedy/Joy administration would encourage schools to hire special education classroom assistants for classrooms of special needs students as well as invest in the counseling services these children and their families need to navigate the educational process. Parents of children with special needs often need an individualized, one-on-one approach to make sure that their child is getting the highest possible education. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with disability rights advocates and local school districts to make sure that schools are adequately funded, meeting state standards, and working to give every child a quality education. A Kennedy/Joy administration knows that Illinois’ school districts must comply with federal IDEA laws that guarantee a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities and ensures special education and related services for those children. In far too many districts across the state, budget cuts force schools to choose between the needs of general education students and special education students. Protecting the legal rights of children with disabilities will be a top priority for a Kennedy/Joy administration. One of the biggest challenges for students with disabilities is the transition from school to the workforce. The majority of adults with disabilities are unemployed or underemployed. This is unacceptable. Illinois is the birthplace of the Special Olympics, which was founded by Eunice Kennedy, and under a Kennedy/Joy administration, Illinois will be a leader in workforce development training for people with disabilities. Our administration will work with the largest employers in the state, as well as the state’s supply chain, to create on-the-job training programs and internships that prepare students with disabilities for the workforce and ease the transition out of school. Supporting Parents, Supporting Communities The program provides a sense of community for parents: they grow invested in their school as the place that their community calls home, and over time, parents become activated as advocates for their children, their school, and the broader issues in their community like violence, heath, immigration issues, and housing affordability. The Parent Mentorship Program model helps parents become mentors, grows mentors into leaders, and together they make change in their communities. A Kennedy/Joy administration will support children, their parents, and communities across the state by investing in the expansion of the Parent Mentorship Program. Ending the Racket We need to end the property tax racket in Illinois and restore equality to our state. By doing so, we will put the state on a path to a graduated progressive income tax that will require the wealthy to pay their fair share and ensure greater educational fairness. Resources that were formerly tied up in the property tax racket can now be channeled into funding local law enforcement, expanding social services, and creating economic opportunity. My administration will work to reform a broken system that benefits connected property tax attorneys—Democrats and Republicans alike—at the expense of communities across our state. By eliminating conflicts of interests, stopping corruption, and increasing transparency, we can end the property tax racket in Illinois and prevent the next generation from being forced into a life of economic servitude. End Conflicts of Interest The best way to do that is to amend the Illinois Constitution. Until that can be done, a Kennedy/Joy administration will amend the Attorney Act to limit State Representatives and State Senators from practicing as licensed property tax appeals attorneys in the counties from which they are elected. By holding legislators to the same standards we hold local sheriffs, we can get rid of the inherent conflicts of interest that prevent Illinois from fully and fairly funding our local schools through a graduated progressive income tax. Stop Corruption Increase Transparency and Modernize the System In addition to requiring disclosure, a Kennedy/Joy Administration will instruct the Department of Revenue to backtest these formulas and disclose the findings so that residents from across the state will know how their local assessors are performing. Require Local Assessing Agencies to Show Work Product in Their Decisions In addition, it is crucial that homeowners are able to trust that their local assessor is qualified to perform what are often very complicated assessments. We will call for standardized training and licensing of assessors across the state. Mark-to-Market Assessing A Real Income Approach to Commercial Valuation Protect Taxpayers If commercial properties are undervalued in a community—causing homeowners’ properties to be artificially over-assessed—this community will look like it is wealthier than it is since its property appears more valuable on paper than it actually is in reality. The disastrous result will be that the state’s funding formula will allocate this community fewer education dollars, under the assumption that the community doesn’t need greater funding because it has enough local resources to fund its schools. In Illinois, undervaluation complaints can be filed by any unit of government with an interest in the outcome of a property’s valuation. In 2005, the City of Chicago filed undervaluation complaints against eleven high rise commercial buildings in downtown Chicago to protect over $30 million in taxes from being pushed onto homeowners. Across the state, commercial properties are escaping their tax burdens at the expense of homeowners. With the changes to the state funding formula, the state of Illinois has an interest in property across the state. A Kennedy/Joy administration will track property valuations across the state and file undervaluation complaints at the local level to ensure that local schools across Illinois are getting the funding they need. TIF Reform While we may not always agree with how or where TIF districts are designated, once they are established, the economic development projects they benefit should not be shortchanged by the broken property tax system. When local taxing bodies fail to file undervaluation complaints to the assessor against these TIF-bound commercial properties, the state must step in. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will create a TIF Ombuds person to monitor and file undervaluation complaints against properties located in TIF districts. Disability Rights Working to better the lives of people with developmental disabilities was a call to action for the Kennedy family. Chris wants to carry on that legacy. As governor, Chris would protect and defend public programs and funds that eliminate barriers for people with disabilities, such as financial support for personal aides and paraprofessionals in our schools, programs that create workforce opportunities for the disabled, and critical healthcare funding streams like Medicaid, which provides affordable health care for people with pre-existing conditions. Environment If Illinois does not act as a leader in protecting the environment and pursuing clean energy policy, we will damage our competitiveness, and ultimately we will have to follow the lead of other states. A diverse group of stakeholders, including our coal companies, know Illinois needs to be a leader in sustainability. He will hold Illinois accountable for fulfilling the promises in the Future Energy Jobs Act, and he will work with a coalition of labor, advocates, and political leaders to upgrade our infrastructure. Across the entire sustainability field, one of the best ways to improve our environment and the clean energy sector is to protect and invest in our research institutions. Chris believes that science, research, and the future of energy storage will offer us a direct path to fostering more robust, sustainable solutions. He will be a leader in advocating to protect federal funding for our research labs, like Argonne and Fermi, while also working to create robust research operations in our university system that can assist us in planning for a better, more sustainable future in Illinois. Fight for $15 Wages like this hinder people from covering basic needs such as housing, food, and transportation. No one who has a full-time job should have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. Chris believes we should provide the people of Illinois with a livable wage. Instead of standing with the people of Illinois, Governor Rauner vetoed Senate Bill 81, which would have raised the Illinois minimum wage to $15 by 2022. By that same year, a single worker in rural Illinois will need to earn $32,178 a year to cover basic living costs. That’s a $15.47 an hour wage for a full-time worker. For higher cost areas like Chicago, single workers will need more – roughly $17.65 an hour – to afford the basics. These estimates do not even account for those who have or wish to raise a family who they will need to support. This is unacceptable. As Governor, Chris would increase the minimum wage. Government Reform Government reform is critical to Illinois’ future because we have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. Our political system is not serving the best interests of everyone in the state. We have allowed the middle class to become a donor class to the wealthy. Middle class and low-income households Illinois pay more in taxes than they would if they lived in almost any other state, and they get less back in government support than they would if they lived in most other states. This is not sustainable. Immigration Chris’s grandma, Rose Kennedy, taught him at an early age lessons about prejudice in Boston and the hardships that Irish Catholics suffered. They were characterized as lazy, unteachable and a burden on society. She described the signs that were hung above the back service doors of restaurants and bars, placed there overhead by the owners that read N-I-N-A – No Irish Need Apply. She knew prejudice, and she made sure in her conversations with her children and her grandchildren, over years and over decades, that prejudice would never come from within her family. Chris recognizes that immigration is largely a federal issue, but he believes that governors can affect the outcome of every congressional race in the state. To protect our undocumented residents here in Illinois, Chris would uphold the Trust Act and resist any effort by the federal government to pursue forceful and organized deportation. At the same time, he would use his leadership role as governor to convince the congressional delegation to support comprehensive immigration reform, and unlike Governor Rauner, Chris will support the multi-state lawsuit to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was established under President Obama. Labor Chris believes that American workers should be able to organize a union and fight for better wages and working conditions that strengthen unions and benefit all working families. So-called “Right to Work” legislation is just a clever name for union busting and lowering workers’ wages. LGBTQ+ Chris fully supports proactive efforts to advance civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people in Illinois. He will provide full support for efforts to toughen anti-hate crime legislation, protect every person’s right to marry the partner they love, work in a safe environment free from discrimination and harassment, ensure full access to health care for themselves and their partners, adopt children, and have access to all rights afforded to heterosexual and cisgender men and women. Marijuana Chris further believes that the issue of legalizing marijuana should be separated from the issue of using taxes as a revenue stream to fund state government. He does not believe that the economic chaos that Governor Rauner has imposed on the state should be the driving factor that leads us to new forms of revenue without understanding the impact of such decisions. If the medical and scientific evidence supports the legalization of marijuana, then Illinois should legalize marijuana, whether it is helpful to the state budget or not. This decision should be taken on its own merit and not made in the fog of political conflict over paying for state government. Mental Health Illinois needs to demonstrate comprehensive support for mental health care, which has been gutted under Governor Rauner. Even before the budget impasse, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reported that more than half of service providers in the state said they are unable to meet their patients’ needs and an estimated one million residents who require mental health services went without treatment. In Illinois, we need to protect Medicaid and pursue more federal resources to fund mental health services. We need to support community-based care over costly, less effective institutional care; and we need to provide clear guidance on mental health coverage so providers don’t deny necessary and available care for mental health services. Illinois can also provide better mental health support through integrated care among our social service programs and public institutions, such as early intervention programming in schools or through collaborative programming between mental health care providers substance abuse treatment centers. Chris recognizes that the inability of mental health providers to meet patient demand results in more people becoming homeless or landing in the prison system, which can be prevented through better care. The fact is, Cook County Jail has become Illinois’ largest mental health provider. Our state’s failure to treat mental illness arguably creates more fiscal damage in the long run because we are incarcerating more people at a high cost – estimated to be more than $33,000 per prison per year. We should not be overcrowding our prison system with people who would be better served through mental health treatment. Pensions We need to reassure current workers that the state will fully fund their pensions. Most of our public employees are ineligible to receive Social Security, and many rely on their pensions to live. The average pension payout is only $33,000-$50,000 per year for state employees and teachers. As Governor, Chris Kennedy will provide a responsible budget plan every year that pays our bills on time and pays down our debt while pursuing a more progressive tax system in Illinois to move us toward a fairer tax system. Chris will not delay necessary payments into the state’s pension funds, which has historically caused severe pension shortfalls in the past and continues now under Governor Rauner. Today, Illinois is on the brink of financial collapse and everyone is going to need to give a little to get us out of this. Chris would bargain in good faith with our public sector employees on any potential changes to our pension system for future workers and retirees. Tax Fairness Chris will drive down local property taxes by increasing state funding for public education while also instituting a ban on elected officials being allowed to serve as property tax appeals lawyers so as to restore integrity in the relationship between our government and our property tax system. He will call for a transparent process and significant overhaul of any property tax systems in our state that proves to discriminate against certain communities. Women's Rights Women–especially middle-class and low-income women–have suffered because of Governor Rauner’s discriminatory, irresponsible budget cuts over the last two years. Chris vows to reverse these damaging measures that turned women away from shelters for domestic violence; cut the wages of nurses and home healthcare workers, the majority of whom are underpaid women; prevented women from receiving cervical and breast cancer screenings; and increased the number of homeless women and youth on the streets. Chris believes that our government has a responsibility to do everything in our power to protect all citizens. For many women, that means providing services that ensure they are safe from domestic violence while treating domestic violence as a public health and public safety issue. More than half of mass shootings in the U.S. are precipitated by domestic or family violence, and the majority of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or partners. When women are unsafe, so is our society. As governor, Chris will restore funding to social service agencies that provide support to women who are victims of domestic violence, and he will call on law enforcement to partner with social workers and together, work to devise better interventions for women who are victims of abuse as well as for their perpetrators. Chris also understands that gaining rights and protections does not guarantee women access to the same opportunities as men. He believes that as we fight to advance women’s rights, we also must work to unwind entrenched biases that feed discriminatory practices and behavior, and allow for unjust policies to go unchallenged. As governor, Chris would adopt a similar measure to that of California, Connecticut, and Maine, which would require businesses small and large to provide 2 hours of sexual harassment training. [4] |
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| —Chris Kennedy for Illinois[5] | ||
Campaign finance
2018
The table below presents campaign finance figures obtained from Illinois Sunshine on March 15, 2018.[6] For current campaign finance information, refer to Illinois Sunshine or the Illinois State Board of Elections' contribution and expenditure databases.
Polls
2018
| Illinois gubernatorial Democratic primary, 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poll | Pritzker | Kennedy | Biss | Hardiman | Daiber | Marshall | Getz | Someone else | Undecided/Other | Margin of error | Sample size | ||||||||
| Capitol Fax/We Ask America March 7-9, 2018 | 35.37% | 15.65% | 14.58% | 0.87% | 1.46% | 0.68% | 0% | 0% | 31.39% | +/-3.1 | 1,029 | ||||||||
| Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, Southern Illinois University February 19-25, 2018 | 31% | 17% | 21% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 25% | +/-4.5 | 472 | ||||||||
| ALG Research for Biss February 6-11, 2018 | 32% | 24% | 24% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 16% | +/-4.4 | 500 | ||||||||
| Global Strategy Group for Pritzker January 29-31, 2018 | 41% | 16% | 22% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 20% | +/-3.5 | 801 | ||||||||
| We Ask America January 28-30, 2018 | 29.79% | 11.50% | 17.43% | 1.73% | 0.87% | 0.74% | 0% | 0% | 37.95% | +/-3.4 | 811 | ||||||||
| Capitol Fax/We Ask America October 17-18, 2017 | 39% | 15% | 6% | 1% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 36% | +/-3.0 | 1,154 | ||||||||
| Garin-Hart-Yang June 26-29, 2017 | 38% | 44% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 18% | +/-4.0 | 602 | ||||||||
| AVERAGES | 35.17% | 20.45% | 15% | 1.09% | 0.76% | 0.49% | 0.14% | 0.14% | 26.33% | +/-3.7 | 767 | ||||||||
| Note: The polls above may not reflect all polls that have been conducted in this race. Those displayed are a random sampling chosen by Ballotpedia staff. If you would like to nominate another poll for inclusion in the table, send an email to [email protected]. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Illinois gubernatorial Democratic primary, 2018 (no margin of error information) | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poll | J.B. Pritzker | Chris Kennedy | Daniel Biss | Undecided/Other | Sample Size | ||||||||||||||
| Global Strategy Group for Pritzker (February 9-13, 2017) | 37% | 23% | 21% | 19% | 802 | ||||||||||||||
| Note: A "0%" finding means the candidate was not a part of the poll. The polls above may not reflect all polls that have been conducted in this race. Those displayed are a random sampling chosen by Ballotpedia staff. If you would like to nominate another poll for inclusion in the table, send an email to [email protected]. | |||||||||||||||||||
Online presence
2018
The following social media statistics were compiled on December 11, 2017.
| Candidate | Followers | Likes | Comments on Last Ten Posts | Followers | Following | Tweets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Biss |
32,688 | 30,611 | 45 | 10,842 | 531 | 4,732 |
| Kennedy |
50,618 | 49,939 | 45 | 4,440 | 161 | 861 |
| Pritzker |
47,555 | 45,984 | 773 | 18,424 | 1,756 | 5,622 |
Tweets by J.B. Pritzker Tweets by Chris Kennedy Tweets by Daniel Biss
Campaign advertisements
2018
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See also
| Illinois | State Executive Elections | News and Analysis |
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External links
- Search Google News for this topic
- Campaign Facebook page
- Campaign Twitter page
- Campaign Instagram page
- Governor of Illinois
- Kennedy for Illinois
Footnotes
- ↑ CNN, "Chris Kennedy, RFK's son, joins Illinois governor race," February 9, 2017
- ↑ Kennedy for Illinois, "Let's Stand Up, Together," accessed December 13, 2017
- ↑ LinkedIn, "Chris Kennedy," accessed August 10, 2017
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Chris Kennedy for Illinois, "Chris' Vision," accessed February 16, 2018
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedillinoissunshine
