The state’s pension mess will be the biggest issue for the winner of the governor’s race.

Just another 10 days, and this dreary election year will be over. The incessant political noise will, thankfully, cease — at least for a while.

Federal races remain in doubt. The analysts are all over the place in terms of their predictions of the results.

If Fritz Kaegi needed a reminder that successfully running the Cook County assessor’s office will be one rocky road, the mutual-fund manager turned pol got it a few days ago when his name mysteriously was left off sample ballots circulated by the Cook County Democratic Party.

Though Kaegi faces only token opposition from Republican Joseph Paglia in the Nov. 6 election, the odd omission was widely viewed as a message—perhaps from incumbent Assessor Joe Berrios, whom Kaegi unseated in the March primary, or, more ominously, from County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who recently succeeded Berrios as party chief and will set Kaegi’s budget (unless she’s elected mayor of Chicago, that is).

Peoria wasn’t always a company town. It was a distillery town, a farm implement town and a river town before the Caterpillar Tractor Co. set up shop.

A bond developed between company and town that became a mutually-beneficial relationship.

The last city official to look at the books of the Illinois American Water Co. in 2005 still thinks the water company is a purchase the city should consider.

Bob Manning, a financial adviser for the Morgan Stanley office in Peoria, was a Peoria City councilman at the time who initially voted no on the city buying the water company, an option that comes up every five years in this city, dating back to a franchise agreement made in 1889.