If you thought you could go one summer without political ads interrupting your Judge Judy or your Big Bang Theory reruns -- there's some bad news for you.
Federal records show that Illinois television stations will begin to air ads tomorrow, paid for by Governor Bruce Rauner's political action committee.
“Since we won the election, there have been many donors both in Illinois and around the United States who believe strongly in the vision that we have for turning Illinois around,” Rauner said while explaining the political group behind the ads last month.
When the depths of the dispute between Republican Gov. Rauner and the General Assembly's Democratic leaders really became public at the end of last month, Senate President John Cullerton said the governor had warned a media blitz was on the way.
"He made it clear that in the next few weeks he's going to launch a multi-million dollar negative ad campaign," Cullerton said then.
That prediction appears to be coming true.
Illinois TV stations are reporting that Rauner's Turnaround Illinois PAC has purchased thousands of dollars of commercial time. Heading into Monday evening, television stations in Bloomington, Champaign, Peoria, Rockford and the Quad Cities filed paperwork showing news media buys from the Turnaround PAC, but the media buy is expected to go statewide.
Former GOP Gov. Jim Edgar says the strategy could prolong the budget impasse.
"I fear that they could … cause the Democrats not to come to the table, maybe to dig in more," Edgar said.
There's been no public release of the ads yet, but some news media reports say they'll attack House Speaker Michael Madigan. That’s something Rauner has been doing in public appearances for weeks.
So far the group has disclosed two high end donors: Real estate mogul Sam Zell gave it $4 million, and Bruce Rauner gave it $250,000.
- Amanda Vinicky and Tony Arnold contributed to this report.