Rauner Fails in Responses to Charlottesville and IPI Cartoon

Chicago, IL – Just days after Bruce Rauner refused to call attacks by white supremacists in Charlottesville terrorism, Rauner‘s allies at the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) published a flagrantly racist cartoon to advance their divisive agenda. While members of both parties rebuked the cartoon from the House floor this week, Bruce Rauner’s chief spokeswoman — who was hired directly from the IPI — said that Rauner hadn’t seen the cartoon and then flatly denied that it was racist.
Rauner’s silence comes despite close ties to the Institute, with many of his senior staff coming directly from their ranks. The IPI has since pulled down the cartoon, but refuses to apologize.

“When Bruce Rauner was asked to take a principled stand on the white supremacist rally and terrorist attack in Charlottesville, he waited for Donald Trump before giving a half-hearted response,” said Pritzker campaign communications director Galia Slayen. “Now, Rauner’s refusal to respond to an obscenely racist cartoon from the Illinois Policy Institute is on a similar plane of moral bankruptcy. This is what happens when you staff your administration with radicals from a far-right think tank and would rather divide and pit communities against each other than help this state heal. There aren’t two sides to what happened this week — there is right and there is wrong — and it is abundantly clear which side Bruce Rauner and Donald Trump are on.”

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