SPRINGFIELD | After a bitter yearlong war of wills against the state Legislature, Gov. Rod Blagojevich's public approval rating remains dismally low, according to a new St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll.
But the Legislature's approval rating is even lower.
In an illustration of the old political adage that everyone gets dirty in a mud fight, poll respondents gave Blagojevich a "favorable" rating of 42 percent -- one of the lowest of his five years as governor. The General Assembly got a "favorable" rating of 37 percent.
Those grim numbers come after Blagojevich and his fellow Democrats who control the Legislature presided over the near-shutdown of state government last year in their protracted battle over spending priorities and other issues. The series of highly publicized showdowns held up funding to school districts across the state for a time, and earlier this month came within days of crippling public transit in Chicago.
"People are just sick of nothing getting done," said Del Ali, a pollster with Research 2000, which last week conducted the poll with telephone interviews of 800 likely Illinois voters who vote regularly in state elections. The poll has a margin for error of plus or minus 3 1/2 percentage points.
The conflicts between Blagojevich and other state leaders have been so sharp that there already has been talk in Springfield that one or more statewide Democratic elected officials may challenge him in the 2010 Democratic primary if he attempts a third term.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan and state Comptroller Dan Hynes have been openly critical of the governor and could conceivably mount in-party challenges.
The poll asked Democratic respondents to consider a hypothetical primary battle between Blagojevich and state government's other five statewide elected officials -- all Democrats -- and came up with a good news/bad news answer for Blagojevich: The good news is, none of the five would beat him; the bad news is, two-thirds of Illinois Democrats would vote for someone other than him if they could.
"If he was up (for re-election) this year, I think he would be toast," said Ali, the Research 2000 pollster. "That's the bright light for the Republicans in 2010 -- Blagojevich's numbers."
-- Kevin McDermott is a staff writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau.
