I had the pleasure of meeting several Democratic women candidates from Lake County during the Illinois State Fair last summer. Senator Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) was showing them around town and brought them to a reception I was attending. We chatted for a while before they went on their merry way.

“Merry” is actually an understatement. Those candidates were positively joyful. They seemed genuinely thrilled to be running for office. Only one had ever run for something before. The rest felt compelled to get involved after the 2016 election.

The last column I write before an election day is always the toughest because some papers will publish this before election day and others will publish it after. So today you get a yard-sign story.

The more I read it, the more skeptical I became of the racial discrimination lawsuit filed against the JB Pritzker campaign by 10 current and former field-level workers last week.

JB Pritzker was recently endorsed by Crain’s Chicago Business. Yes, you read that right. The state’s premiere business magazine endorsed a candidate whose biggest promise is to raise taxes on the publication’s well-off subscriber base.