I'm going to talk about one of the weirdest things that happened this campaign season.

Earlier this year, ultra-conservative activist Jack Roeser told me that his friend Bruce Rauner believed life began at conception. "I'd describe him as a guy who is a morally right-to-life guy, but not on the hustings," said Roeser, who has since passed away, about GOP gubernatorial nominee Rauner.

Roeser and many of his right-to-life allies backed Rauner every step of the way, while Rauner, who belatedly admitted that he's pro-choice, spent much of the Republican primary campaign fighting for term limits and pledging battles with the Springfield Democrats and their teacher-union allies.

The candidate has often said that he has "no social agenda" and would focus solely on cleaning up government and getting the economy running again. But in addition to those factors, he also wanted to avoid stressing the issue for fear of alienating a relatively small but still important base of Republican voters who just won't vote for a pro-choicer of any party. Every vote counts, especially if you're a Republican running in Democratic Illinois.

But the issue exploded during the campaign's final week. Local 150 of the Operating Engineers Union - one of Governor Pat Quinn's strongest supporters - spent big bucks supporting the unabashedly pro-life, pro-gun Libertarian Party candidate for governor, Chad Grimm. The idea was to siphon votes away from Rauner.

I wasn't hugely surprised when Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers earlier this month contributed $30,000 to Chad Grimm, the Illinois Libertarian Party's candidate for governor.

After all, the union's president, James M. Sweeney, was out in front of the push to beat Bruce Rauner during the Republican primary. After a stormy meeting with Rauner, who is running on a pledge to allow local areas to opt-in to "right to work" laws, Sweeney demanded that organized labor stop the candidate in his tracks. (The law would give workers the right to not join the unions that negotiated their pay, benefits and working conditions.)

Sweeney's union contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to state Senator Kirk Dillard's primary campaign, and kicked in even more to the Fund for Progress & Jobs PAC, which was the vehicle some unions used to inform Republicans that Rauner was a "closet Democrat."

A quick note to Bruce Rauner: The next time you try to claim that Governor Pat Quinn is "personally" under federal investigation - an allegation that, as far as anyone can tell, is not true - it's probably best not to say it while standing next to a different governor who actually is "personally" under federal investigation.

Rauner held a relatively brief press conference last week to talk about Chicago's violence problem, with New Jersey Goveror Chris Christie at his side. Rauner attempted to claim that Quinn was somehow responsible for the murder of a nine-year-old boy by a convict on probation - even though it appears right now that all state laws and procedures were followed. And not mentioned, of course, is that Newark, New Jersey, has a murder rate almost twice that of Chicago, which undercut Christie's contention that Quinn had "failed" to protect Illinois' public safety.

The Illinois House Democrats launched their direct-mail and TV program weeks earlier than the House Republicans in an attempt to knock GOP candidates down before they even had a chance to stand up.

The mail started going out not long after the mid-August Illinois State Fair. Four years ago, during a national Republican tidal wave, the House Republicans preemptively launched their advertising program in mid-September, catching the Democrats off-guard. The Republicans won a few seats they might not have picked off had they started at the usual time. The Democrats learned a valuable lesson, raised a ton of money, and began their mail and TV programs even earlier.

As a result, the Republicans - who don't have much money - have been buried by hundreds of thousands of dollars in early Democratic advertising.