Sangamon County Democratic Chairman Bill Houlihan, who also sits on the State Democratic Central Committee and the Democratic National Committee, joined Patrick to talk about the Blagojevich pardon, the Democratic approach to Trump 2.0, and his vote for DNC Chairman.
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Bill Houlihan is one of those people. He's the chairman of the Sangamon Democratic Party, Sangamon County Democratic Party, member of the Illinois Democratic State Central Committee, and the Democratic National Committee. Bill, good morning. How are you? Good morning, Patrick. How are you? We're doing well. Thanks for taking a few minutes. So I want to start with the Blagojevich pardon. You know, I have a lot of people, especially Republicans, and you should see my inbox some days who think that I'm just some woke liberal because I'm an anti-Trump conservative. But as I

As critical as I've been, I think there's one thing that you and I certainly don't have in common is that I never voted for Rod Blagojevich. What's your take on just, I mean, first of all, it's been a circus. I forgot all the circus stuff, like the reality shows and I'm a celebrity, get me out of here that his wife had to go to and just all that completely embarrassing stuff. What's the reaction to a pardon for him from a Democrat perspective?

Well, you know, the Democrats have sort of put that behind them. They know that, you know, Rod was Rod and especially in his later years. But, you know, everyone that remembers when he was given the sentence of 14 years, two months said, wow, that's excessive. But, you know, he did the crime. So you had to do the time.

His wife was just one of those people that just would not give up and continued, whether it was Obama president or George Bush president. She was out there and she did it very much with Donald Trump and so did he. And for some reason, those two guys hit it off and people in his administration were willing to help him and

You know, we just put that behind us. Everybody knows who he is today, and he's not somebody that's going to be running for public office or really be demanding any sort of time or public outcry of saying, boy, this guy got mistreated really badly. It's interesting you say that the Democrats put him behind you because it was really interesting how in 2010, you know, Quinn never mentioned him. And the Democrat...

messaging was essentially we don't know who that guy is he might have been the governor we elected four years ago and kicked out of office a year ago but who's that we've never heard of him it was it was really like it was it was a really amazing messaging strategy because i saw the how the polling at that point stacked up too that the voters just didn't care a year later it was unbelievable no he was gone and they just figured it and it really sort of worked out well and

You know, had the Democrats, you know, not acted the way they did and impeached them, you know, it would probably been a different story. But, you know, every Democrat but one in the General Assembly voted to impeach him. So that's, you know, really putting your mouth where, you know, the action is. And they did it. Yeah. And of course, the unanimous vote to remove him from office in the Senate back in November.

What was that early 2009? So Bill Hoolan joins us, Sangamon County Democratic chairman and member of the Democratic National Committee. What should I was wondering how Pritzker approaches this today? Because he's obviously, you know, the the phone calls are out there, right, where where he was on the phone with with Blagojevich on the wiretaps.

trying to sort of position himself for an appointment or to get something for himself. And then Blagojevich tried to shake him down for a campaign contribution. And Pritzker said, I don't think we can talk about that right now. And it was kind of interesting how it may come back again into the news, heck, more than 15 years after it happened.

Yeah. I don't think, you know, if I was Pritzker, I would just go about my normal business. I wouldn't even worry about responding to that stuff. It's really, it's water under the bridge. You know, Trump did what he thought was the right thing to do, and he did it. And, you know, Pritzker was...

never really taken the task other than being involved in some conversations. The voters knew it in 2018 and knew it again in 2022 and didn't feel that it was enough to say, we're not going to support him for governor of the state of Illinois. Bill Houlihan joins us on WMAY. So, um,

How have how how do you rate the Democratic response to Trump 2.0 at this point, whether it's on the the national level or the Senate or however, however you want to phrase this open forum for you, because I've got some some beef.

Yeah, I mean, it's been, you know, different people doing different things, others not doing anything. I mean, the question is, is, you know, what can we succeed at and what we have to do to keep our government moving and operating? I don't think, you know, Democrats know, as voters know, that Donald Trump won the 2024 election, but we didn't elect Elon Musk. And, you know, the

the free fetter he's getting to be able to do things in the federal government are really scary. And, you know, we may have elected Donald Trump president again, but we shouldn't have elected Elon Musk king. And I think that's where the focus needs to be is that, you know, you can't do an audit in just a couple of days and figure out that there's billions of waste in a government agency. Most audits take anyone from eight to 10 a year.

Even at the state of Illinois, you know, when they're doing audits, it's every other year at an agency because they can't get them all done in one year because it's just the cost and everything that they have to do. Well, and that's the thing. Like, I mean, I'm all for cutting federal spending. I'm a hundred percent for that, but I'm also for doing it the correct way, which is through Congress, right?

which is reducing spending in the federal budget, which is not necessarily just turning off the spigot to everything that has been budgeted and passed by Congress at this point. I mean, you look at Head Start, you look at Medicaid, et cetera. I mean, there are still Head Start organizations in the state. They're having a hard time getting money. I mean, it's chaos, man. And these are services that have to be provided each and every day.

And, you know, that's what I think some of these folks forget that are in government and that there's a lot of federal employees I've heard from personally that, you know, are nervous about, you know, going to work and what they're doing and what they're asked to do.

And that's normally not, I mean, the administration has their political appointees, Patrick, as you know, and they're out there and they try to get the message to the folks on what their plan is for whether it's the Department of Justice or Department of Education. In this instance, you know, they're trying to do it from the top down. And I just don't think that's going to work in the long run. And I think that's why people are nervous.

Um, even though they, they're given Trump good marks right now, uh, they're not given his, his administration. And of course, Elon Musk good marks. Bill, I assume you were in the room when, uh, the new DNC chairman was elected a couple of weeks ago, Ken Martin, who's the, uh, chairman in, in Minnesota. Um, we had talked about Ben Wickler a couple of weeks ago. And when you and I last chatted and kind of a, a goofy, you know, use all the adjectives and, and, and weird stuff in a tweet, um,

what direction did you go for and why was, why, why do you think Democrats made the right move? Well, I went, you know, went behind Ken Martin and under Lisa, you know, under chair Lisa Hernandez leadership. And, you know, Ken's been involved for quite a while. He's been part of the Midwest caucus.

I've been able to work with him on different things. And I really think it's the right message. I think the best governing gets done when we really govern from the middle. And I think that's the kind of person you're going to see from Ken and the kind of things that the party is going to try to do. And I think if you go too far to the right or too far to the left, that's when you get yourself in trouble. That's when the public starts to say, wait a second. And in this case, I think he's going to be helpful

because he's a Midwesterner. He's got those middle class roots that really are helpful to understand what needs to be done to move our country forward. So I'm very excited about his leadership. Sangamon County Democratic Chairman, member of the Illinois State Central Committee and the Democratic National Committee, Bill Houlihan joins us here on 92.7 WMAY. Bill, as always, a pleasure. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks, Patrick. Have a good one.