By Benjamin Yount   Illinois Statehouse News

SPRINGFIELD  –  The first debate between Illinois’ two candidates for governor was little more than a condensed version of the nine-month, meandering campaign Bill Brady and Pat Quinn have waged against each other.

Brady, the Republican challenger and state senator from Bloomington, met Quinn at Chicago’s Union League Club for a Wednesday morning debate.  But the two covered very little new ground, and at times sounded as if they were just reciting the same old campaign speeches voters have been hearing since the February primaries.

The audience asked questions ranging from how Quinn and Brady would fully fund public schools and the state’s pensions to their plans for Asian Carp.  But the two candidates spent most of their time talking about the main issues of the campaign and the debate: jobs and each other.

Quinn found the message that critics say has been lacking for most of the campaign, and pointed to numbers that show Illinois is starting to crawl back from the recession.

“Our state has grown jobs this year, more than any other state in the Midwest.  We’ve had eight straight months of consistently declining unemployment…We’ve put together ‘Put Illinois to Work,’ the most successful program of its kind.  Since early May we’ve gotten 25,990 people jobs.”

Brady, though, said “Put Illinois to Work” is little more than using money Illinois doesn’t have to put people to work in jobs that the government shouldn’t be creating.  The GOP candidate said Illinois needs to let businesses create jobs.

“We have a problem in Illinois.  In the last decade we’ve lost the opportunity to create nearly 800,000 jobs.  In the last 15 months of the Quinn administration we’ve net lost over 200,000 jobs, and in the last two months we’ve net lost over 26,000 jobs.  That’s not a national problem, over 35 states have created more jobs with fewer assets and opportunities than Illinois.”

Brady placed blame for those lost jobs, and Illinois’ sluggish recovery from the recession, at the feet of Quinn and other Democrats at the statehouse.  He once again dusted off his campaign pitch that smaller government, fewer taxes, and a more business friendly state is the solution to Illinois’ unemployment.

“We need to define what we’re going to look like, not just next year but in the next 20 years…Businesses walk out of Illinois and turn to other states because of the fiscal crisis they see in this state.  We have to have the fiscal discipline to live within out means,” said Brady.

Quinn also reached into his bag of past stump speeches to shoot down Brady’s claim that Democrats are driving jobs out of the state.

“I think you’d better tell that to Ford…they decided to stay in Illinois and grow in Illinois.  They didn’t go to another state.  They created 1,200 new manufacturing jobs right now, and that will magnify into 12,000 supply, contracting, and distributing and servicing jobs,” stated the governor.

None of the claims, or counter-claims, about jobs and unemployment are new for Brady and Quinn.  Most of the debate sounded re-hashed and neither candidate offered any details as to how they’d create jobs, pay for schools, or deal with Illinois’ massive $13 billion deficit.

The only off-script moments came when Quinn and Brady jabbed at each other.  Brady tried to sting the governor for the no-layoff agreement with AFSCME that came very close to the massive union’s election endorsement, saying the deal is “wrong and you know it.”

But it was Quinn who had the most stinging words, saying repeatedly that Brady and his plans for the state are little more than a fantasy.

“We’ve got to have people with common sense, not with nonsense.  This is a pretend world that you’re hearing of from Senator Brady. A world that doesn’t exist.”

Wednesday’s debate in Chicago is the first among the two candidates, but as fitting with the campaign, they blame each other for the short list of future debates.  Voters will have their final say on Nov. 2.