GALEWOOD — In May, a neighborhood tattletale contacted me to rat out Gov. Pat Quinn for neglecting his front lawn until it got choked with footlong dandelions.
After I outed the governor for creating a source of neighborhood aggravation, he quickly had that problem, well, mowed down.
In a twist of irony, Quinn's campaign on Tuesday released a political ad that uses his overgrown front lawn as a metaphor to tell voters he's a guy who knows how to solve problems.
“When I became governor, state government needed to be cut, just like my lawn," Quinn says, going on to list his budget-cutting accomplishments.
The campaign ad already has caused quite a stir.
Political pundits, or course, have pointed out the Quinn's front lawn was a debacle of his own making.
And Quinn's Republican challenger, Bruce Rauner, has issued a "fact check" of the governor's cost-cutting claims.
The tit-for-tat over Quinn's lawn didn't start out political, but it has always been controversial.
Even after the governor mowed his lawn this spring, Chicago's pro-dandelion minority defended the yellow flowering yard pests that took over Quinn's yard.
And that left Chicagoans in a quandary that has nothing to do with the November election: To mow or not to mow, that is the question.
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