McKenna the Wild Card in GOP Race for Guv
December 14, 2009
Greg Hinz
He has way more money than any other candidate — but still is an unknown to many voters, despite an earlier statewide race.
He positions himself as an outsider in position to clean up Springfield — but his family is about as inside as you can get, and he himself headed the Illinois Republican Party.
He has some legitimate credentials in opposing tax hikes — but much of the GOP's grassroots never has warmed to him.
Meet Andy McKenna Jr., who by virtue of background and financial resources may be the real wild card in the crowded race for the GOP nomination for governor.
By ideology, Mr. McKenna, 52, is a full-fledged conservative, both on social and fiscal issues.
For instance, to close the state's budget gap, he says he'd not only work to lower pension benefits for newly hired state workers and trim income eligibility for Medicaid to the pre-Rod Blagojevich level, but also reduce state spending to the fiscal 2006 rate — and freeze it there at least until 2013.
Mr. McKenna offers only partial details about how he'd accomplish that. Across the board cuts are available, if nothing else works, he says. But Chicago's corporate elite often find a way to accommodate requests for tax increases, and Mr. McKenna is a scion of that elite.
Mr. McKenna's father, Andy McKenna Sr., serves on just about every corporate and civic board in Chicago that counts and was a key backer of City Hall's drive to lure the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
Mr. McKenna Jr. has spent his adult life working for the family-owned Schwarz Paper Co. where, until he recently stepped down, he served as president. And the contacts he and his family possess led him to the state GOP chairmanship and fueled both his current campaign for governor and a 2004 race for the U.S. Senate.
Then there was a flap earlier this year when Mr. McKenna heavily flirted with running for the U.S. Senate instead of governor — this, while he still was GOP chairman and privy to inside details about other candidates.
Mr. McKenna has answers to all of this. At least some of them are pretty good.
For instance, he says he considered the Senate bid only because national GOP leaders couldn't get a firm commitment to run out of U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Highland Park, and wanted someone else lined up.
He takes credit for working hard behind the scenes to keep Springfield Republicans solidly against an income-tax increase this year, and indeed both House GOP Leader Tom Cross and Senate Republican Leader Chris Radogno give credit to him and his running mate for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine.
Mr. McKenna further notes that he opposed a 2008 sales tax hike to fund mass transportation, despite strong support for the increase from many corporate chiefs who argued it was necessary to keep the Loop economy humming.
Such activity legitimizes him as an outsider, even though he often was counseling the insiders, asserts Mr. McKenna. To underline the point, his TV ads trumpet him as "the only outsider businessman running."
Another plank in Mr. McKenna's platform is creating more jobs in Illinois. Like most of the candidates, he mentions a mix of tax credits and lowering costs. But he has an interesting diagnosis for the key problem: "We don't start enough new businesses. We rely on old (dying) businesses."
Even if he doesn't win, Mr. McKenna may be in a position to determine who does. With millions of dollars available to him for TV, he has the ability to go negative against any front-runner(s), dragging them back to the pack.
But Mr. McKenna insists his goal is to win, not to block someone else.
"I'm not from Springfield," he says. "Springfield has shown they can't make decisions. (But) my business experience shows we can't keep doing what we've been doing."
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