Lots of people are having trouble getting their heads around the fact that Republican state Senator Bill Brady may well be our next governor. This is, after all, a Democratic state.

But it's way past time to consider Brady a very real probability. Governor Pat Quinn's poll numbers, along with the economy and the state budget, are in the dumper. Scott Lee Cohen will likely target African-American voters and badly damage Quinn's chances. The Green Party's candidate won't help, either. And almost $2 million spent on TV ads attacking Brady on abortion, health care, and the minimum wage haven't yet worked.

I've told you this before, but I think it's even clearer now: This campaign looks more and more every day like the 1980 presidential campaign between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. We have the decent, honest person who can't seem to run a government up against a conservative guy who all the liberals love to hate.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Republicans in this state have every reason to cheer, and Democrats have all the reasons in the world to grumble.

Republicans have a fired-up, angry base that can't wait to vote. The Democratic base is morose, embarrassed at its party's failures, and in no mood to even think about voting.

Numerous pollsters and prognosticators have pointed to the eerie similarities between the public's mood now and at the same point in the huge Republican year of 1994 -- the last time we had a Democratic president facing his first midterm election.

Rich MillerDemocrats throughout the country, and right here in Illinois, are pushing a two-pronged negative strategy to retain their hold on power in these uncertain times.

Governor Pat Quinn was in rare form last week as he attacked state Senator Bill Brady before his Republican opponent had a chance to get his own licks in.

Quinn was put in an extremely awkward position by his budget director, who indicated to an out-of-state reporter that the state's income-tax rate would be increased to 5 percent from its current 3 percent come January. Democrats were predictably stunned by the political stupidity of such a thing, and Republicans were predictably foaming at the mouth with outrage. The virulently anti-tax Brady quickly scheduled a press conference and we all knew what was coming: unadulterated vitriol.

I was looking through Governor Pat Quinn's campaign-finance reports the other day and saw that he went way out of his way to list even the tiniest in-kind contributions.

"In-kind donations" means that instead of giving cash, somebody contributed goods or services to a campaign.

Reading through the report, I saw the $8.28 spent by a retired Chicago woman for food at Treasure Island. The $17.67 that a Springfield homemaker paid for Mel-O-Cream doughnuts. The $5.56 shelled out by a DuQuoin High School teacher for food at Kroger.

So it's quite remarkable that the governor will not admit that he ought to reimburse taxpayers for at least part of the state plane flight he took to southern Illinois the other day. Quinn flew down from Chicago to tour a facility with Southern Illinois University honchos. He also took a group of parents who had lost sons or daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan to a minor-league baseball game.

So why did Governor Pat Quinn close the gap with Republican state Senator Bill Brady in Rasmussen Reports' latest poll? There's a one-word answer: women.

Rasmussen's newest poll had Brady ahead of Quinn 43-40. That's a pretty hefty swing from the firm's June poll, which had Brady with an 11-point lead, 47-36.

I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and just as I was about to hang up, she stopped me short and insisted that we talk about Governor Pat Quinn's big-time raises to his top staff.

If you've missed the story, Quinn gave out raises of as much as 20 percent to his senior staff while those same people were busily cutting everybody else's budgets and devising tax-increase strategies.

Unlike the state's mind-boggling $13-billion budget deficit, this is a very easy issue to understand for people who don't pay close attention to politics.

My mother does follow Illinois politics quite a bit, however, and she appears to be just as incensed about the immorality of handing out selective pay raises during one of the worst fiscal crises in history as she is about the abject political stupidity of Quinn's decision.

During the long, excruciating overtime state-legislative session of 2007, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan complained that Governor Rod Blagojevich had a habit of diverting high-level discussions from the budget and toward Madigan's ties.

Madigan, it should be said, does wear some eye-catching ties. He takes no credit for his taste in clothing, however. His wife, he says, picks his ties for him.

Speaker Madigan confided to me one day back then that whenever Blagojevich would compliment Madigan on his choice of ties, he would always complain that, as governor, he couldn't afford such fashion gems. Madigan has a lucrative law practice that brings in a pretty penny. Blagojevich couldn't do side jobs as governor, he would repeatedly explain to Madigan and everyone else in the room, so he couldn't afford to dress like Madigan.

The House speaker seemed quite frustrated at the time with Blagojevich's fixation on his fetching ties, rather than dealing with the budget deadlock and general political gridlock. After all, it wasn't like Blagojevich dressed poorly. He always wore sharp clothes. He even showed up at the State Fair once dressed in designer blue jeans.

Thanks to his federal corruption trial, we now know that it was taste, not money, that caused Blagojevich to wax envious whenever he saw Madigan wearing a pretty tie.

Lon MonkTo many Illinois-politics insiders, one of the more surprising aspects of this Rod Blagojevich saga is not that the former governor was arrested. Most of them knew for years that he was heading for big trouble.

The late Chris Kelly's alleged misdeeds as one of Blagojevich's top fundraisers didn't stir all that much surprise. He was a high-pressure fundraiser who wouldn't take "no" for an answer. The conviction of wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko also wasn't that far from expectations. The man was obviously up to his eyeballs in corruption.

But the name of the fourth person who prosecutors say was in on the alleged schemes to skim as much money as possible during the Blagojevich era has taken quite a few insiders aback.

Back in 2003, Rod Blagojevich's former congressional chief of staff Dave Stricklin was asked by Chicago magazine to recall an example of his former boss' "goal-oriented approach to his congressional work."

"Having X amount of dollars raised by X date," was Stricklin's response.

The U.S. attorney's office has now posted several audio recordings online related to Lon Monk's testimony against Rod Blagojevich. I listened to them all last week, some of them twice, and it was beyond obvious that nothing changed for Blagojevich from the time he was a congressman right up until he was arrested.

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