Happy New Year. The year is young but already a lot's going on in the world of politics. We're 12 days into the federal government shutdown and eight weeks out from the Feb. 26 Chicago election. Outgoing Chicago Ald. Ricardo Munoz was arrested Wednesday at his Little Village ward office amid allegations he struck his wife on New Year's Eve, police said. Details are still emerging. Meanwhile, powerful Democrat and U.S. Rep.-elect Jesus "Chuy" Garcia is flexing his political muscle in the city race and backing a candidate trying to knock off embattled veteran Ald. Ed Burke. Of course the chatter around the 2020 election is picking up. One soon-to-be Illinois lawmaker made a New Year's Day announcement via social media that she'll run for U.S. Senate in two years. If incumbent Dick Durbin decides to run again, that could set the stage for a Democratic primary. And we'll see if state lawmakers revive proposals to limit solitary confinement for adult inmates after a disturbing report about an Illinois prisoner who resorted to self-mutilation and suicide attempts during his 22 years in solitary confinement. Welcome to The Spin. |
 After his Wednesday arrest, Munoz was taken to the Ogden District police station, where he was being detained as authorities investigated and determined appropriate charges, police told the Tribune's Rosemary Sobol. Read more here. Munoz, the longest-tenured Hispanic alderman who was appointed to the seat by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1993, announced in July that he would not seek re-election to another term. At the time, he said he was retiring because he was "having fun writing the next chapter of my life." He's faced other controversies over the years. The outgoing alderman previously disclosed that as a teenager he'd been affiliated with a Little Village gang and had been arrested on charges of unlawful use of weapons and controlled substances. In 2010, Munoz said he was an alcoholic, saying he drank excessively after work but not in the mornings and afternoons. He was re-elected twice after that. |   |
 From the Tribune's Gregory Pratt: "U.S. Rep.-elect Jesus 'Chuy' Garcia has endorsed civil engineer Tanya Patino in the race to unseat powerful Ald. Ed Burke, pledging his organization's support to her candidacy to become the ward's first Latina alderman. "There are five candidates vying to defeat Burke, a 50-year incumbent who represents a Latino-majority Southwest Side ward and is facing intense scrutiny amid FBI raids of his City Hall and ward offices. Burke is a major target for Garcia, whose political organization helped oust Burke's brother, state Rep. Dan Burke, in last year's Democratic primary. Dan Burke lost to political newcomer Aaron Ortiz, who is also Patino's boyfriend." Read the full story here. Speaking of Dan Burke — he's resigned from the state House more than a week before his term ends, the Tribune's Mike Riopell reports. A letter from Burke to House Speaker Michael Madigan filed with the secretary of state's office is dated Sunday and doesn't give a reason for his early retirement, saying only: "Please consider this my official notice of resignation, effective Dec. 30, 2018." Read the full story here. Vote by mail: Chicago voters, if you plan to vote by old-fashioned snail mail in the upcoming municipal election, you can sign up right here. | |
 Anne Stava-Murray, a Naperville Democrat who will be sworn in to her first term in the Illinois House next week, has announced on Facebook that she's already turning her sights to 2020 and the U.S. Senate seat Durbin currently occupies. She was a vocal critic of fellow Democrat and powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan on the campaign trail. Read my story here. "Let me be the first to say, I'm running and I hope you'll vote for me," Stava-Murray, a former consumer researcher, wrote in a New Year's Day post on Facebook, adding at one point: "No other candidates have said clearly 'I'm running,' as of this posting." That's a little sideswipe at Durbin, who has only hinted he'd run for a fifth term in 2020. During a late-December appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Chuck Todd asked Durbin about his political future: "Two years from now — you going to be on a ballot in Illinois in November of 2020? You made a final decision?" "I … tell people that I'm raising money and trying to lose some weight," the Illinois Democrat said. "That's usually the first indication that you're up for re-election." No word today from Durbin's people about whether he's all in. | |
 In one of her first big endeavors since serving as President Barack Obama's commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker launched an initiative called P33 in the fall aimed at boosting Chicago's standing among the world's tech cities, the Tribune's Ally Marotti reports. While some tech companies are expanding in Chicago, Apple and Amazon both bypassed the city for new campuses the tech behemoths plan to build. Pritzker's initiative will get rolling just as her brother J.B. — who helped found local tech incubator 1871 — takes office as governor. Read more here about how Pritzker, Portillo's CEO Michael Osanloo and others will make a mark on the city's business scene this year. Uptown Theater's guardians: They may not be well-known names, but Bob Boin, Dave Syfczak and Jimmy Wiggins are volunteers who have cared for the shuttered, once grand movie palace-turned-music venue that's about to get a big restoration. Read Tribune columnist Ryan Ori's piece here. | |
 U.S.-based Roman Catholic bishops are gathering this week in north suburban Mundelein for a retreat that organizers say will focus on prayer and spiritual reflection and not formulating policy amid the church sexual abuse scandal, The Associated Press reported. In October, Pope Francis called on Catholic bishops nationwide to gather for a historic seven-day spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary as church hierarchy grapples with the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal, the Tribune reported. The retreat, which started Wednesday, begins a day after the AP reported that the Vatican blocked U.S. bishops from taking measures last year to address the scandal because U.S. church leaders didn't discuss the legally problematic proposals with the Holy See enough beforehand. Read the latest dispatch from the AP here. In late December, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan released a report identifying hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests — and she made it clear that it was to send a message to the 300-plus U.S. bishops gathering for the conference this week. The Archdiocese of Chicago fired back, saying bishops will not discuss the report or its findings at the retreat. Read the Tribune story here. | |
 From the Tribune's Jeff Coen and Stacy St. Clair: With his mental state deteriorating as he sat in the crushing isolation of solitary confinement, a desperate inmate named Anthony Gay saw a temporary way out. He would mutilate himself in his Illinois prison cell, slicing open his neck, forearms, legs and genitals hundreds of times over two decades in solitary confinement. Each time he harmed himself, he knew that, at least for a little while, the extreme step would bring contact with other human beings. By keeping Gay in isolation, the state continued the increasingly discredited practice of segregating prisoners from others for long stretches. Recent proposals to limit solitary confinement for adults never made it out of the Illinois General Assembly. Now Gay's suing, saying his treatment amounted to torture. Read the full story here. | |
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