All right, now that I've cooled down after completely losing my temper upon hearing that Lisa Madigan intends to run for Attorney General instead of running for Governor in 2014, I'll be the first one to admit that having to choose between Pat Quinn and Bill Daley for a Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois feels like having to choose between the lesser of two evils.
You'd figure that someone with a "reformer" image like our current governor, Pat Quinn, would be very popular in Illinois, given how many of our past governors have been blatantly corrupt. However, Quinn has never been popular in Illinois for many reasons. Republicans have no use for Quinn, because he's a Democrat and he raised the state income tax a couple of years ago, among other things. Many Democrats dislike Quinn because he signed into law special tax breaks for Sears and CME Group, two of Illinois's largest corporations, among other things.
Bill Daley, currently the only declared primary challenger to Quinn, is a full-blown corporate Democrat who is someone who could tow the line of this guy.
To be honest with you, if Lisa Madigan ran for governor, I don't think she'd win her own party's nomination for a couple of reasons. One, her dad, Mike Madigan, is the state house speaker, and, unlike Lisa, who is a VERY popular incumbent Attorney General, Mike is someone who is politically toxic outside of his state house district. Two, she was involved in a backdoor deal regarding legislation that opened up Southern Illinois to fracking operations, and Lisa would have probably gotten more of the criticism from anti-fracking activists than Quinn would, and Quinn was the one who signed the fracking legislation into law.
Now would be the best time for someone who is actually a progressive champion to announce his or her intention to run for Governor of Illinois in 2014. However, the bench of progressive-minded Democrats in Illinois is virtually non-existent, as there is a strong Democratic machine here in Illinois that can provide considerable financial support for centrist Democrats. Someone like Jan Schakowsky or David Gill would be more electable than Pat Quinn or Bill Daley.