Prairie State Wire

Gov. Bruce Rauner’s last-minute campaign ads linking his primary opponent Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) to House Speaker Michael Madigan were so “egregiously dishonest” that Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) hopes they lead to changes in voter behavior in the general election and beyond.

“It’s imperative that voters do a little digging and not just rely on what the candidates tell them about their opponents,” Morrison told Prairie State Wire. “I talked to hundreds of people after the ads came out. I managed to flip some of them but others stayed convinced that Jeanne was actually a supporter of Madigan’s.”

He added in the past they could overcome “Rauner’s millions and his lies” when the truth had time to come out. He said if they had another week before election day they, he thinks would have overcome these late attacks as well, and Ives would have won the primary.

Rep. Tom Morrison

The lack of anything resembling the truth in the Rauner ads wasn’t something noticed just by Ives supporters. In a March 13 column, liberal Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote: “Even in a nation where the president himself is reported to utter an average of six false or misleading statements every single day, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s relentlessly dishonest attack ads against his Republican challenger, Jeanne Ives, are startling.”

Rauner took remarks Ives made about Madigan during a Jan. 29 sit-down before the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, twisted them and made it appear as though Ives was actually an ally of Madigan.

To demonstrate how easy it is to take words out of context, Morrison took a YouTube video of a Rauner press conference and refashioned it to appear as though Rauner were asking voters to vote for Ives.

In a March 30 column titled “There’s no debate: Debates don’t matter in gubernatorial races” Rich Miller, publisher of Capitol Fax, wrote that the sit-down before Tribune Editorial Board was a “complete thumping” of Rauner by Ives. Yet by using Ives’s words against her Rauner got more out of the debate.

Similarly, Miller wrote almost everyone who watched the final primary debate on the Democratic side believed that Chris Kennedy won.

“He skewered both (J.B.) Pritzker and state Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) while managing to look ‘gubernatorial’ and finally lived up to his famous family name," Miller wrote. "But come election night, Kennedy finished in third place, 21 points behind Pritzker and 2 points behind Biss.”

Rauner limps into the general elections after resorting to dishonest ads to defeat a state representative largely unknown outside her district just a few months before.

When asked how Rauner recovers from the ads he used, Morrison said that’s a question only he can answer.