Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, Mike Zaleski. Thanks to everyone who listened to part one of the perfunctory podcast. Part two now, we finish up our conversation with Christian Mitchell. a little bit Illinois, a little bit Pritzker 1 versus Pritzker 2, a little bit his origin story, and a little bit about his decision to join the Air Force National Guard, which is my favorite part of this podcast.
Speaker: And I hope you enjoyed as well. Christian Mitchell, part two, the perfunctory podcast. Like, subscribe, tell your neighbors. Thanks to everybody for listening. You had a lot to do with Pritzker One, cannabis legalization, um the the reformation of the Illinois Capitol, the state of Illinois, roads and bridges, any number of issues related to criminal justice reform.
Speaker: A little bit of connective tissue to the first part of the conversation. Do voters these days care about accomplishment or do voters mostly care about the prospective future? Because I think there is going to have to be a little protection of...
Speaker: the president's accomplishments. You talked about a little bit easier vis-a-vis, you know, what he's not going, what Trump's not going to be able to take down and stuff. But in Illinois specifically, you know, the the governor has built an incredible portfolio in Prisker I and now to be behalf of Prisker two And I'm interested in your thoughts of how much that...
Speaker: it's it's How much of air matters? Yeah. It's a weird question, but but it's an honest one, quite frankly. i think um I think it matters a lot, but I think that um you know something – I think it maybe was David Axelrod who said that campaigns are vehicles for persuasion, right? And so I think you've got to do this. stuff This is actually something – maybe you experienced this in law school that I did.
Speaker: ah In legal writing, they would always say after they woke you up because you were so bored in class, they would say, tell me what you're going to tell me. Tell me. Then tell me you told me. And I actually think that's a really good way to look at political campaigns. And so, you know, in Pritzker one I, was fortunate to be a part of some really some really great work. We did...
Speaker: Cannabis legalization, we did ah Roads and Bridges in the Rebuild Illinois program. We passed a balanced budget, which shouldn't be an accomplishment, but the bar was so low we could trip over it at that point.
Speaker: um We passed a gaming bill. like There was a lot of good stuff. um And then we were able to remind people that we did that and remind people where we started, where we are now.
Speaker: I think that in part, that's the trick, right? You've got to actually have the goods, but then you have to have the kind of campaign, the kind of persuasion vehicle that reminds people of that and says, Don't look at past as prologue, but I've shown you that I can get stuff done.
Speaker: So here's what I want to do next. Here's what the future needs to look like for our kids. Here are the jobs of the future. Here's how we avoid the entanglements of the future. Here is how we open up new vistas of opportunity. And oh, by the way, remember the last time I told you I was going to do stuff, it got done. I think that's kind of the magic.
Speaker: You got to do the work and then you got to remind people that you did the work and say, and remember, there's more to do here. But I, the candidate, the campaign, have proven to you that we can get this done. I think that's kind of how it mixes well. And and I think our governor has had his mettle tested in the in the way in which people perceived him as a billionaire who was, you know, at the beginning perceived him as a billionaire who was doing this maybe as a hobby horse and, you know, a vanity exercise. And he died right in and did the blocking and tackling of state government.
Speaker: And then he realized he had a budget deficit and he would have to exercise fiscal stability and get our bond rating and get up to speed and get the things done. And he we needed a capital bill to get people back to work. And he knew we needed an energy plan that Transition does to clean energy, which you were also a part of.
Speaker: and Can i just say one thing? Go ahead. Which is I think is interesting. It it also, a lot of people say that campaigns are about ideas. And they are. But I would argue that campaigns are more than anything about candidates. And as somebody who, as you mentioned at the beginning, like, OK, we had an almost billionaire governor, Republican, Bruce Rauner, who screwed up absolutely everything.
Speaker: Here was this other billionaire who's like, hey, well, I want to run for governor now. So when I sat down with him, I was kind of like, mm. Oh, no, I'm not really into this. I was really um shout out to to Sean Repelier, who still works in his office.
Speaker: Because I knew Sean, that's the reason I went to have the meeting in the first place. because I was like, I think I'm good here. What was what was interesting about JB is that um i had had a contrast meeting with another candidate who shall not be named.
Speaker: who it was an hour long meeting, and this candidate spoke for probably 55 minutes of it, right? Didn't really ask many questions, was like, this is what I'm going to do. This is who I am.
Speaker: Get on the wagon while there's still room, basically. Whereas JB was like, hey, I know you you were just downstate with Senator Menar working on education funding. Like, what do you think? Like, did we do enough? Do we need to go further? What does it look like? Here's what I'm thinking about on early childhood. What do you think about that? How can we add to it?
Speaker: And it's there's a difference between people who are listening, waiting for their turn to speak. and who are actually listening for content have the humility to say, i maybe I'm worth a billion dollars, or JV's case, many more than that, but I don't know everything, and I know I'm going to need partners, and and I'm interested in what you think and how you can be a partner with me.
Speaker: And that, to me, was the difference for him and the really strong contrast with Bruce Rauner. Bruce Ranner walked in a room. You were like, this guy's going to be a rich, never mind, I can say that word.
Speaker: Turns out that's exactly what he was. You walk into a room with JB. Okay, well, this guy's been super privileged. You leave and you're like, I really like that guy. And that personal quality matters quite a bit.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the media right now in illinois in this state is super obsessed, rightly so, with the president's long you know list or long list of VP opportunities for her to choose from and what you just hit on there you know she may you know the people may believe this is a ah Hyatt Skyon who doesn't really know much about anything and there may be a real opportunity for their for that surprise factor to win over some voters
Speaker: No, I think that's right. I mean, look, I don't know what conversations have or haven't been had relative to Governor Pritzker and and the the Harris campaign. But I will say, you know, he just announced a billion dollar quantum campus yesterday that's going to bring 20 plus billion dollars in investment that's going to transform the southeast side.
Speaker: This is ah a a site that I, as the former state rep for the area, saw many fits and starts over a number of years. And with a really, really strong Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, shout out to Kristen Richards and Deputy Governor Menard.
Speaker: um They put together lindbergh Claire Lindbergh, first Assistant Deputy Governor John Atkinson with Intersect Illinois, my boss paul avasados the university of chicago and robert jones from uic they put together the coalition they created not just blind tax incentives but targeted tax incentives shout out to you by the way former revenue chairman mike zaleski for your work and oversight of things like edge and said we're going to put together the plan we're going to give you a white glove service to figure out the right site. We're going to make sure that we understand your business model and how we can not get taken as taxpayers. We're not going to give you more than you need, but we are going to understand where those sorts of tax incentives can be used.
Speaker: That sort of mentality of how can government work with business and, to your point, the industries of the future, that is a really interesting, exciting thing for the state of Illinois, which I'll just note has the same demographics as the nation. We are urban and rural. We are white and black and Latino and Asian, gay and straight. in the same way the country is.
Speaker: If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere. I'll put it this way, and then we'll move on. This administration goes and gets things. For 25 years in economic development, we played defense. We were worried about someone coming and getting our stuff, eating our lunch.
Speaker: We have totally switched that dynamic in a really positive way, and I think that's a testament to the governor and his team. Let's talk about you a little bit. And going into Pritzker One, we talked about the things you had worked on.
Speaker: Is there anything, looking back now, since you've been gone, that you're very proud of? Is there anything that you look back on now and you're like, man, I wish I had a mulligan on that? um i'm i many of The things we did that I was involved in, I'm probably most proud CJET, the Climate Equitable Jobs Act. It was...
Speaker: The biggest project that I think I was ever a part of, I was chief strategist for it. We had an ah an amazing team that worked on the governor's office, Anna Crane, Jessica Himes, Anne Spillane and her team, Bria Scudder, who is now deputy governor.
Speaker: um But it was incredibly hard. And um as you know, for for many, many years, um the energy companies have, for the most part, written that energy bill. um In fact, the last one before it was literally written in the conference room of Exelon Generation. And so um to be able to step back and say, how do we protect consumers?
Speaker: How can we make sure that people who have historically been locked out of the energy space as we build up you know thousands of megawatts of renewable energy have a chance not just to build it but to own some of it? um How can we make sure that we are protecting energy security you know by making sure that You know, if I could go 100% renewable energy tomorrow, I would do it, but it doesn't make sense for the grid. So like, what's the right pace? How do you build in safeguards? How do you empower the Illinois Commerce Commission? So it was politically very difficult.
Speaker: I know you'll be shocked, even though we're sitting on the campus of University of Chicago, I'm a gigantic dork. um So just technically, it was really, really interesting. um And um I just had a blast. But it was incredibly hard. It was a year, basically an 18-month process. lot of fits and starts, a lot of moments. I actually, right at the beginning, you'll appreciate this, I went into the governor's office and I said, no, governor.
Speaker: This bill is going to die 50 times before it passes. It will be declared dead. You will be declared dead. i will be declared dead in the Capital Facts blog. It will be talked about at the Butternut Hut. And that is the only way it's going to stand a chance to pass. So that was probably the biggest one.
Speaker: um Things I would take a mulligan on. You know, I am really proud of what we did on cannabis. We just had a study come out that says it's the most equitable industry in the nation. I think 59% of the licenses are owned by social equity applicants.
Speaker: um And we we were creating something out of whole cloth. Again, super interesting. All we really had in terms of of of law was um you know some some case law in Ohio to say, OK, well, how do we avoid this sort of challenge?
Speaker: The one thing that I did not foresee um was um how the point system and the lottery could lead to these really interesting kind of jam ups where all of a sudden, like, you know, the veteran points became super, super important. And there were folks who were like very close who um didn't necessarily get a license and some folks who who did who maybe shouldn't have. So it was a good idea.
Speaker: If we had just had a little bit more time to play with a little bit more, I think we could have maybe done that a bit better. But I will say this, like hindsight's We did the best we could. I'm very proud of it. That's one where I'm like, oh, I didn't see that. I didn't see that coming.
Speaker: I think one note on that is what we've lost in that building over the last five years is the idea. And that it's that's it's it comes from a lot of different sources, but that laws are living, breathing things. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: We have, you know, putting aside trailer bills and all that other stuff of the legalese of Springfield, we we sort of have developed an ideological adherence to, well, this is the way it's supposed to work because that's the way we wrote it the first time in first drafts.
Speaker: Bills should be laws can be should be almost must be first drafts. I feel that way. I feel that way strongly. Totally agree. um Let's talk a little origin story. We usually do it at the beginning of the podcast, but we sort of had a lot to talk about. And, you know, you sat next to me on the floor and I knew and I knew your origin story as I watched you grow into a ah really good lawmaker and then an excellent deputy governor.
Speaker: Tell us a little bit about your beginnings growing up and how it shaped you up until this point to become, you know, sitting at the University of Chicago campus overseeing any number of massive projects. Yeah.
Speaker: um Well, look, this was, I'd love to tell you that this was always the plan, but I would be lying and I don't want to do on your podcast because I don't want Carrie and others to fight me. But so look, I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, about 15 miles west. My mother still lives in the house we grew up in in Westchester, Illinois.
Speaker: And, you know, I had a pretty normal kind of life until I was about nine years old. and That's when I think my my life changed a bit. So um ah my dad left when I was six months old. I don't know him well. Actually starting to to try to to meet ah that side of my family now. It's one of the the things that I'm i'm working through. um But my mother a brother and sister.
Speaker: And my mother's sister was a a nurse, home health care worker out in DuPage County. He was taking care of a a kid during the night. Sudden infant infant death syndrome kid passed away tragically.
Speaker: um But my aunt was accused of murder and was then exonerated four years later, but not before it turned our lives completely upside down. It was the the first time I saw, you know, the justice system that so many had talked about, the two tracks of it that people had talked about directly affect my family. and it was around the same time um that both my grandparents got very sick, my grandmother with Alzheimer's and my my grandfather going into third stage congestive heart failure.
Speaker: Uh, and my mother actually, uh, now a 20 plus year survivor of of breast cancer, uh, had her first round of of chemo and surgery. So kind of happened in about a three year span. wow Um, and so that, um, really changed my trajectory, I think a bit. And so I actually, University of Chicago is the only place that I applied to because,
Speaker: My aunt had had just gotten out of the legal system and mom was still recovering. Grandpa had moved back to Tennessee. He was declining and wanted to spend his last years near his his ancestral home. So I wanted to be close enough that, like, um I could get home if I needed to, but far enough a away that, like, mom couldn't just, like, spring up on the dormitory. Right. um And so ah when I came here, I had a plan.
Speaker: And it's a very solid plan. I was going to major in economics. was going to get my JD MBA from Harvard or Michigan. I was going to marry Alicia Keys. ah And i was going to become a sports attorney because what I had seen growing up was basically that um the kids who had resources seemed to not have some of the challenges we did.
Speaker: I wanted to make sure that we didn't have them again. What happened instead is I ended up meeting a resident head here named John and who had a very similar story to me. There was an incident here on on campus where some kids threw what they called themselves a little ghetto party where they all kind of dressed up as what I think they stereotypically thought you know some black folks do on the weekends. And i had a very interesting kind of naive conception when I came here, which is going to sound crazy now, but but was me then.
Speaker: ah Racism is stupid. Therefore, stupid people are racist. Therefore, if I come to this place with all these smart people, I should see less racism. So when I saw that here, it became very clear if I want to create the kind of world that I want to see, if I want to create a place where a kind of misfit, nerdy black kid like me can exist and thrive and grow and be who he is, going have to get my hands dirty. i have to get in it.
Speaker: And so from that point, rest is history. John introduced me to our our old mutual friend, Will Burns, at the time was Deputy Chief of Staff to Emil Jones, the Illinois Senate. ah Will took me under his wing. And so my senior year of college, I spent you know half my time doing schoolwork, sorry guys, and the other half following Will ryan around, um um you know picking up yard signs, putting down yard signs, doing field work. Funny story about my first time in a field office, if you want to hear it, but I worked with Will, throughout his first race, ended up going to community organizing for a few years and then political organizing. Lisa Madigan was my first ah political employer. I was deputy – no, I was regional field director ah in 2010 for her reelection campaign. Am i remembering why Will ran and lost and then got appointed? No. will So Will won his state rep seat. That's He was in it from 2008 to 2008.
Speaker: 11 or 12. I actually ran his, so finished Lisa's campaign. He asked me to come be his campaign manager and he ran for alderman of the fourth ward. That's right. So then Kim Dubu Clay, who's now a state rep again. She's back. Yep, was appointed.
Speaker: um Decided not to run and I threw my hat in the ring and rest is kind of history. And that, I mean, there's, you know, pedigree is the right word for that lineage. You know, you've got you've got President Obama, Attorney General Kwame Raul, yourself, Will Burns, you know, Cam Buckner's making waves. Terrific. yeah And the way he's handling transportation and a lot of issues in Springfield.
Speaker: So it really is... What's in the water? It's a good question. um What... do you feel like was your biggest accomplishment as a lawmaker?
Speaker: um i'll give you ah I'll give you two, one of which I think I worked on with you. I think it was a Zaleski-Raul bill for universal background checks. That sounds that I was a chief co-sponsor of. So that was a one I was very, very proud of.
Speaker: um One of the things that, and then then two more, I will say, both on education. So, um I was one of the chief co-sponsors of what was Senate Bill 1 that became Senate Bill 16 that I remember, don't remember what final bill number was, which education funding reform.
Speaker: Traveled all around the state with with my dear friend, former state senator and deputy governor, Andy Menard. um I thought it was the biggest thing that we could possibly do to help not just CPS but kids around the state.
Speaker: um So being a part of that, being part of the negotiations, being part of the campaign to get it passed, I was incredibly proud of. um In 2016, I chaired a committee for the first time. It's a committee on economic opportunity.
Speaker: um I named it after Lyndon Johnson's camp um committee from the war on poverty. And I did my first hearing at s SIU Carbondale. and And the thesis, having looked at all of the um the the economic development nodes around the states, was that you know For Charleston, for Macomb, for Carbondale, these state universities were kind of in the new steel mills. And so I did a series of hearings um to raise the profile of higher education and the fact that we had lost 70 plus thousand students.
Speaker: um And so that was actually really what got me to a place of wanting to go out, try to find you know who's the next governor going to be, how can I work with them, how can I change this? Because the people getting most hurt by this are kids who use MAP grants, and those are disproportionately poor kids, kids of color.
Speaker: So those two education issues that I was able to raise the profile of, I think, in concert with a bunch of other people, were two big ones. And the final one I'll list, I know I said two, but, you know, lawyers. You have more. There's no rules here.
Speaker: I was the first African-American co-sponsor on marriage equality. Yeah. Yeah. And I took a lot of heat for that. It it along with um ah the first pension reform bill was the reason i got a lot of heat in my first reelect.
Speaker: um And I would I would co-sponsor that bill again. I was very proud to do it. Are you surprised it would would young Christian, mit a younger Christian Mitchell, you're still young, be surprised at how easy it was to get minimum, how accepted minimum wage is in 2024? Like you were around it then you're around it now. Are you surprised?
Speaker: We're not even having the same conversations about what a living wage is anymore. Yeah, I am surprised. i mean, I remember i think the minimum wage is was, what, $7.25 when we first started something like that. And so even like raising it to like $9 was considered like some you know called wild wild-eyed Bolshevik plot.
Speaker: um So I think that um you know not just the politicians, but frankly, community organizers, unions like SEIU and UFCW and others deserve tremendous credit for you know, the campaign they've been on, not just locally but nationally, to make that accepted to the point where it's something that the presidential candidates openly talk about. So it the world has changed in, I think, really good and interesting ways despite all of the difficulty and sometimes darkness of the last 10 years.
Speaker: Have you tracked how evidence-based funding is being viewed vis-a-vis the current CPS budget deficit? I read the paper. Let's put it that way.
Speaker: I will only say, someone around it, that evidence-based funding is a success story. Yes, it is. It's working correctly. Yes, it is. And that's not a criticism of the need for CPS to be fully funded.
Speaker: you I think you have to have the cognitive dissonance there to understand that we need to fully fund CPS. um But evidence-based funding, I think, is an achievement. And the fact that we have maintained the $300 million dollars or $350, I don't remember what it is right now, over the course of the time is something, i think, to be celebrated given the state's historical budget habits.
Speaker: And, you know, i'm I hate to keep saying what are your thoughts on that, but im I'm interested if you have any finer points to put on that. Yeah, I mean, I will say i think one thing that i am that i worry about a bit for our –
Speaker: Our civil discourse and our political consciousness across the spectrum is the ability to something you just said to hold two truths in tension. We don't do it well anymore. And it's like actually kind of the reality of politics in the world.
Speaker: Evidence-based funding is a success story. It is a generational win and a generational investment that is going to uplift generations of Illinois' children. It's going to matter most to poor kids downstate, black and brown kids in cities like Chicago. It is a generational achievement we ought to be proud of.
Speaker: and we still need to do more, right? But it was incredibly politically difficult to get accomplished, right? It was it was incredibly, because no one, the hardest thing to do in politics, as you know, is to take away something from someone that they have had.
Speaker: No matter how rich the school district is, if money, future money, current money is gonna be taken from them to do something more based on equity, all of the ugly things you see around Race, poverty, blame always come up.
Speaker: And it makes it difficult to do that stuff. So when you get some version of that done, it has to be celebrated. Now the question becomes, how do we make the next case to get the next revenue or make the next reinvestments to get us to where we need to go? But like calling this somehow the problem um is extremely disingenuous. And some of the by the way, some of the forces that are currently criticizing evidence-based funding didn't really support it. right And so now you're like, this was good, but we want more, but we wouldn't have had this if you'd had your way.
Speaker: Yeah. hey I think <unk> I'll leave it there and we'll go on to how you decided, and if I misstate this, correct me, to enter military service.
Speaker: I'm interested in what happened there. had left the governor's office and arrived here. And then, you know, you did something that I would never have been able to do.
Speaker: And i don't know that people in 2024 have any desire to serve in the military anymore. So um i want to hear more about that. Yeah. um For people who know me, they they will often hear me say, um i do everything my grandfather did. I just do it slower.
Speaker: And ah my my grandfather really stepped into the void for me. He was, you can never replace a father who's gone, but as as close as you can get is what he was to me. So my grandfather served in the Army. he was a sergeant in the Korean War from 51 53.
Speaker: um He's also a boxer in the Army. So my love of boxing and all comes from him. and And he would always joke, you know, you know, boy, Sugar Ray Robbins is lucky he didn't run into me. And I'm like, OK, I love you, but you're probably lucky you didn't run into the greatest boxer of all time. Grandpa, like, go sit down.
Speaker: um And so I'd always it was always kind of in my blood. um The photo that I have of of my grandfather on my wall in my office that you might have seen is is is of him in his uniform. So proud of it. um So that's that's one piece, and I'll come back to that.
Speaker: The second, though, is that the visible part of my portfolio was in the governor's office was infrastructure, was energy, was the legislative work on everything from election reform to the assault weapons ban. um But I also had a suite of agencies, and you know in those were Department of Corrections and Department of Innovation Technology, but I also had the public safety portfolio. So I had emergency management, the National Guard, the Illinois State Police.
Speaker: um Now retired ah two-star general Richard Neely was the head of the National Guard at the time and and became very close friend. um He also selected the first African-American deputy adjutant general, who is now the adjutant general, General Rodney Boyd from the Army National Guard.
Speaker: um I was part of that interview process. And one thing that the um the then adjutant general, and General Neely, said was, I really want to see the Guard and its composition reflective of the diversity of the state of Illinois.
Speaker: This is a thing that allowed me to go to college. It's why i joined the National Guard. I want to create that kind of opportunity. I want to make sure we reinvigorate the General Jones Army, which is right up the street here on the south side. So I, General Neely and I just became very close. I have a deep level of personal admiration for him. He's an honorable man who always answered the call.
Speaker: ah The National Guard, by the way, everyone thinks of it as a military unit. It absolutely is. But also the historic flooding we had in 2019, they were helpful with. The riots after the murder of George Floyd, they were helpful in setting parameters, keeping the peace, allowing for peaceful protest.
Speaker: um It is this incredible group of men and women who on a regular basis just pick up at a moment's notice, leave their civilian jobs, leave their families, and go to do whatever the state or the country needs.
Speaker: So a high level of admiration. So I'm on my way out of of government. I knew I was was kind of burnt out. I knew I was looking to leave, not because I didn't have a fantastic time working with the best team in politics, just it was time. It had been 10 years between the legislature and deputy governor.
Speaker: So talking to General Neely, who We'd always been talking about my grandfather, how much I admired him, how much his service meant to me. And he said, Christian, you're a lawyer, right? I said, yeah. He said, I just want you to talk to then Colonel Marty Green.
Speaker: So Marty Green, yeah Republican. hit Illinois CPA Society. Illinois CPA Society. had worked for the attorney general. He joined the National Guard while he was in the attorney general's office as a lawyer, was at the time the head lawyer for the Illinois National Guard. said, hey.
Speaker: Why don't you just apply? And I was like, I'm too old. I'm too political. They're not going to take me. But i I wanted to give it a shot. So I applied. I assessed. I was at officer training school for five weeks at Maxwell Air Force Base. Just graduated earlier this year.
Speaker: And I enjoy it very much. and um General Neely is one of his last official acts, came to my graduation at Maxwell. and Nice. it was It was very cool. And um I missed my grandfather a lot that day. Did you do basic training stuff?
Speaker: i mean Yeah. I mean, we I wouldn't say it wasn't as intense as BMT. Sure, sure. But we did. I mean, we were waking up at 4.30 in the morning. We were singing the Air Force song and Space Force song and doing the Airman's Creed. We were doing PT every morning, the the final...
Speaker: event we did for our prop and wings i don't want to you know give it away for folks but i'll say it was very very physically intense it was a four mile stretch carrying a lot of weight um we did you know basic marksmanship i'm probably going to be a foyd card owner soon because i have to qualify on a pistol um so it was it was everything and you're making your bed you're eating in the cafeteria learning to march i was not a good marcher by the way uh pretty good saluter though but um it's it's it's not uh it's not gi jane and it's not um Full metal jacket, but it's intense. Are you still doing JAG stuff?
Speaker: I am, yes. so So not this weekend, but next weekend, I will be down in Peoria, 182nd Airlift Wing. ah we will be I'm a deputy staff judge advocate, so JAG for that unit. We do wills and trusts for people who are getting ready to deploy, basic legal assistance, and we advise the command.
Speaker: Fantastic. and I'm probably too old for that. now you got Now you put it back. Do you have to be a certain age? Technically, the cutoff is 40, but there are waivers and always looking for lawyers. would love to do that.
Speaker: you know I need the same realignment you needed. General Green would love to talk to you about that. i might There's a couple women in your life I might have a conversation with. Kerry would love it because he would whip me into shape. It's interesting. Marty Green is a wonderful guy. He wrote me a note after I lost, and he wrote me a note, and in in the note he wrote a quote from Ike that said, true successes are never cheaply won.
Speaker: I'll never forget that quote. I'll never forget the note he wrote me, and he's he's a wonderful guy. Yeah. Last thing before we let you go, you've been very gracious with your time, University of Chicago.
Speaker: We talked a little bit about it before the podcast. Tell me what you're doing. Tell me about the 2024 University of Chicago versus what we think we know about the University university of Chicago.
Speaker: um Do a little commercial. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm now the vice president for civic engagement at the University of Chicago. ah That means that I cover all of our outreach programs. We a lot of educational enrichment, like our collegiate scholars program to get first generation CPS students onto our campus taking college classes.
Speaker: either coming here or going off to other great universities. Our Neighborhood Schools Program, which puts students in schools to help teachers with whatever they need. Our Maroon Tutor Match Program, which locates homework help in the community where you know parents can come in for a couple hours and get their students help, often raises their grades by a letter grade. And then we also cover everything from commercial real estate to business diversity, state and local government relations.
Speaker: The thing I'm most excited about that we're doing right now is a joint partnership with the city colleges of Chicago in Washington Park. We're going to move our pathology labs over, um create a couple hundred new jobs, and also train people right here in this community to do the kind of clinical lab tech and nursing jobs that create jobs and allow people to help in the community.
Speaker: University of Chicago, when I went here, was where fun came to die. It's not quite that anymore. We're still the nerd capital of the world. Our places still look like Hogwarts, but the students, you know, they party now and they seem to be social and they they talk to each other, which is way different than it was when I was here. um So it's.
Speaker: It's still the nerd capital of the world, but it seems a little bit more normal. And most importantly, students still love to come here, and it's still a place where you can learn how to change the world. Would you tell me it's now where dorks come to thrive?
Speaker: It is where dorks come to thrive. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm working on getting that on a T-shirt, but I was hoping not to give it away, here we are. Sorry. Apologies. I can cut it. Well, I do think that going from where fun comes to die to where dorks come to thrive is a meaningful improvement. too.
Speaker: I do too. I think that's – I mean I am sitting here with a mug that says Galaxy's Best Commander from my favorite video game. So we are who we are. ah You've been very kind with your time. I think people are going be excited about this episode. I think we – the feedback I get on the podcast, which I'm around political people all the time and they ask me when I'm doing the next podcast. The answer usually is when I can find someone that is – when I can find a guest that's topical – And i really want to speak to on a given issue, and I really wanted to hear your thoughts on this particular
Speaker: era in politics. So I can't I can't leave without saying one thank you. And to your listeners, if you don't know, ah you are listening to one of the most respected voices in Illinois politics who taught me a whole lot when I was there, who ran an incredibly effective and incredibly difficult committee. So if you're ever trying to figure out where should I go, what should I be listening to and understand what's actually happening in Springfield,
Speaker: You've come to the right place. And he did not actually pay me to say that. I did not. I did not. And you should know um Reese is an incoming freshman. I can't deal with that.
Speaker: For context listeners, Reese and I watched Frozen on the floor of the Illinois house while Mike was off doing something important. So I can't deal with that. It makes me old. Christian Mitchell, thank you. Good luck to you. Take care. Thank you.
