Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner said his campaign went through the “normal process” between campaigns and a news outlet when the Chicago Sun-Times published a story of allegations that Rauner threatened a former fellow business associate.
Rauner, speaking Tuesday, was responding to a question about the fallout of a report in the Chicago Sun-Times. Since the report, one of the reporters, Dave McKinney, hired an investigator to look into attempts by the Rauner campaign to try and kill the story. The story ran, but the reporter was later pulled from his beat and the paper endorsed Rauner.
Rauner was asked Tuesday if his campaign’s reaction to the story was “a sign of how your office would treat reporters should you become governor?”
“I think that’s an internal dispute inside the newspaper. I personally had nothing to do with it,” Rauner said.
“Your campaign, though, reached out,” the person who originally asked Rauner the question pointed out.
“And our campaign staff followed normal process as they do with all media sources when they disagreed with a story or the facts behind a story —made their views known with the reporter and the editors involved when the story ran. Nothing unusual about that,” Rauner said.
Rauner then refused to answer any more followup questions.
McKinney’s investigator, former prosecutor Patrick Collins, said that the Rauner campaign tried to stop the story from coming out by arguing that McKinney had a conflict of interest since he’s married to a Democratic consultant. Rauner’s campaign has not denied that it strongly disagreed with the story and went to the paper to voice that disagreement. McKinney was subsequently put on leave for a short period of time before returning to the paper.
Less than a week ago McKinney, the Springfield bureau chief for the Sun-Times, resigned from the paper and wrote a damning resignation letter in which he said he was concerned that his paper “no longer has the backs of reporters like me.”
See video of Rauner’s comments, via the Sun-Times, below:
(H/t: Natasha Korecki)
Of course he had nothing “personal” to do with it. He also “personally” doesn’t clean his bathroom, fire people, or buy off South Side ministers; he has “people” to do that.
sssshhhhh … you’re spoiling his moment.
So you say that you went through the proper channels, and yet do not deny how unseemly it was for your campaign to try and stop an unfavorable story on you, or that the paper in question is owned by people who would love to see you as the next Governor.
None of your BS does anything to dispute these facts, and the question asked of you was a very pertinent one, since you seem to have already been able use your “persuasion” to see this long time, respected reporter basically be punished for doing his job. It stinks of the tactics used by the Russian government, or some other dictatorship, where the media will only report what their leaders want reported.
I don’t live in IL, so I only know what I read on the internets. Quinn doesn’t strike me as being a boy scout, but this dude screams “country club grifter.”
Rauner = Liar