Daily Debunk: The shadow politics

Republicans seek win on Fair Tax Amendment even as ‘nobody knows it’s their thing’

State House Minority Leader Jim Durkin says anyone “confused” about the Fair Tax Amendment should vote against it, but just who’s sewing confusion on the issue? (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

State House Minority Leader Jim Durkin says anyone “confused” about the Fair Tax Amendment should vote against it, but just who’s sewing confusion on the issue? (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

There’s no party affiliation on the Fair Tax Amendment, and that could benefit Republicans trying to defeat it, according to a pair of professors at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Professors Christopher Mooney and David Merriman held a UIC Alumni Exchange webinar Thursday on “The Graduated Income Tax Referendum: What Illinoisans Need to Know.”

“There’s a lot of smoke and confusion” on the issue, said Mooney, whose area is political science. He called the voter referendum on the Fair Tax Amendment “the only statewide race of any interest this year.”

Generally, Republicans in Illinois are looking at an uphill election campaign, bound to President Trump and facing the possibility of losing seats both in the General Assembly and in the state’s congressional delegation.

Bruce Rauner ran for reelection as governor two years ago, campaigning to reverse a Democratic supermajority in the state Senate and stave off one in the House. But he lost, Democrats in the Senate increased their supermajority, and House Democrats won a supermajority. Along the way, Lauren Underwood and Sean Casten won suburban congressional seats long held by Republicans.

Prospects for the GOP don’t look a whole lot better this year with the race for president between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden attracting most of the attention. But Mooney said Illinois Republicans were actually targeting two ballot initiatives without party affiliation: the Fair Tax Amendment and the retention vote on state Supreme Court Judge Thomas Kilbride.

“This is a chance for the Republican Party to have a win in Illinois in 2020, the year they’re not going to have a lot of joy,” Mooney said. “But this is only because the party’s not on the ballot. … The reason they might have success here is nobody knows it’s their thing.” He suggested Republicans were flying “under the radar” on the issue.

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“This is a chance for the Republican Party to have a win in Illinois in 2020, the year they’re not going to have a lot of joy. … The reason they might have success here is nobody knows it’s their thing.”

UIC Professor Christopher Mooney (Zoom)

“Between Trump and Bruce Rauner and demographic shifts in the state, the GOP as a competitive force in the state has really been decimated — and really ‘destroyed’ I think is not too strong of a word,” he added. “So this is an opportunity for them to have a win. … You have this hope for the Republican Party, but really it’s a very, very thin hope.”

Mooney pointed out that for years the state’s party apparatus has been bankrolled by Rauner, Kenneth Griffin, and Richard Uihlein. Rauner has left the state since losing two years ago, but Mooney said Griffin has contributed a combined $100 million to efforts to defeat the Fair Tax Amendment and Kilbride’s retention, and Uihlein has joined him in contributing to the Coalition to Stop the Proposed Tax Hike Amendment.

“One guy is ponying up millions of dollars to fight this thing,” Mooney said of Griffin and the Fair Tax.

Mooney said it’s actually the campaign to pass a graduated income tax that has the uphill fight there. “The cons have a better argument,” he said. Proponents of a progressive income tax have to sell the nebulous notion of what’s “fair,” while opponents can simply ask, “You trust these guys?” Meaning, do you trust the General Assembly to make use of the extra $3.4 billion in revenue and not come looking for more with additional hikes in the tax brackets?

“This is a superstrong argument in the state of Illinois,” Mooney said, with its recent history of governors doing prison time for corruption, along with the General Assembly historically playing shell games — backed by both major parties — on lottery revenue and so-called pension holidays.

“The ‘trust me’ argument is a hard one,” he added. Opponents, on the other hand, “just have to blow a bunch of smoke up” in an attempt to peal off enough votes to keep the Fair Tax Amendment from amassing the 60 percent supermajority it needs to ratify a change in the state constitution.

Earlier this week, state House Minority Leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs said that “if someone’s confused and they can’t tell whether or not which side is making sense, (that’s) all the more reason to say that, ‘I’m not ready to vote for this,’ and they should not because this is a very complicated issue.”

And yet who’s sewing confusion on the issue? The conservative anti-tax Illinois Policy Institute, with a bogus lawsuit (since thrown out of court) on the ancillary language in the formal amendment pamphlet stating that it has no effect on retirement income. The aforementioned Coalition to the Stop the Proposed Tax Hike Amendment, with its TV ads suggesting that a graduated income tax would adversely affect small businesses (it would affect them no differently from anyone else making either more or less than $250,000 a year). And various anti-taxers using the debunked argument that a progressive income tax would prompt “tax flight” adding to the “Illinois exodus,” a position that Merriman likewise debunked, pointing out that after New Jersey enacted a “millionaire tax” the number of millionaires in the state actually increased.

“The proponents have a tough job to start with,” Mooney said. Add to that that Republicans arguing against it are “not on the ballot, and they only need 40 percent to win,” and it’s a tough fight.

Merriman, who like Mooney is a scholar with the university’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs, agreed that making the “fair” argument was difficult, pointing out, “When you think about fairness, you have to think about it in the context of the entire economy.”

He added that an important question to ask is “What’s the alternative?” Is it that a flat tax will have to be raised on everyone if a graduated income tax isn’t approved to additionally tax only those making more than $250,000? Republicans might welcome that.

Just as Mooney pointed out that Republicans would have a decent chance to put another of their own on the state Supreme Court if Kilbride loses his retention battle in the 3rd District extending across much of the northern part of the state, minority Republicans in the General Assembly could likewise resist any tax increases — even if one is necessary, especially with tax revenue lost to the coronavirus economic crisis, as Merriman pointed out — and then use that as a springboard in two years to launch a revival on an anti-tax platform.

Mooney suggested that Griffin could potentially be using his huge contributions on these hot-button issues to raise his political profile for a run against Gov. Pritzker in a battle of billionaires. “It seems very unlikely, especially after the experience of the Rauner administration,” he said, adding that Griffin would likely be labeled “Rauner II.”

“On the other hand,” Mooney said, “hubris is a very powerful force for the superrich, as it is for a lot of people. So who knows. Maybe he’s going to do it anyway and see what happens.”