Watch Senator Kwame Raoul beat up on Squeezy. “Where is Governor Quinn?”

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The Gang of Ten, the committee that was charged with coming up with a compromise pension bill, is made up of legislators with big ambitions.

Senator Dan Biss wants to be Congressman when Jan Schakowsky retires or gets a federal appointment in the remaining Obama or future Clinton administration.

Representative Elaine Nekritz is waiting for The Madman to hang it up so she can become Speaker.

Senator Bill Brady, the Tea Party Republican, has announced again as a candidate for Governor.

And the Chair of the committee, Senator Kwame Raoul is a favorite to get the Democratic nomination for Attorney General should Lisa Madigan throw her hat into the governor’s race.

Senator Raoul is a powerful and generally progressive voice in the Illinois Senate.

He was a leading voice against the death penalty. An advocate for marriage equality. He has a 100% rating from the AFL-CIO and a 0% rating from the NRA.

He voted in favor of the We Are One/Cullerton proposal, SB2404, and opposed the more draconian SB1 offered by The Madman.

While I opposed SB2404, I couldn’t be more impressed at the way Raoul has taken control on the Gang of Ten.

At the first hearing which I attended, Raoul blasted the lobbyist from the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and was dismissive of Squeezy’s budget director, Jerry Stermer.

He pointedly told Stermer that the committee has no intention of being bullied by Squeezy into meeting some arbitrary July 9th deadline.

He also repeatedly questioned those testifying before the committee about the impact of any so-called pension reform on those who have been made promises and who have constitutional pension guarantees.

Yesterday, he blasted Stermer again for Squeezy’s failure to appear before the committee.

While Nekritz is chair of the House committee on pensions, Senator Raoul clearly is running things.

Now I’m not naive about Illinois politics where the policy of my enemy’s friend is my friend is tatooed on every politicians arm.

And Raoul is nothing if not an ambitious politician.

But an important take-away from all this is that Raoul has done the calculations. He doesn’t see the need to campaign as a pension-buster. Quite the opposite. He has positioned himself as one who is sympathetic to public employees and constitutional promises.

He wouldn’t do that unless he saw it as a political plus. Other politician’s with political ambitions might take notice.