Treasurer Dan Rutherford delivered a forceful, even believable defense of himself last week during a suburban press conference hours after he was hit with a federal lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and coerced campaign work.

Gubernatorial candidate Rutherford made a strong case that at least some of the accusations are untrue. There were some holes in his argument - some bigger than others - but it seems obvious that some of the charges are overblown.

For instance, accuser Ed Michalowski claims in his lawsuit that all the campaign and sexual pressure from Rutherford directly resulted in "leakage of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain," which seems more than a bit of a stretch. Michalowski also takes a joking text message between himself and Rutherford's campaign manager completely out of context. And Rutherford laid out Michalowski's numerous financial troubles in an attempt to demonstrate that the plaintiff's need for money was driving much of the lawsuit.

That said, I've had some real worries about Rutherford's so-called "independent" internal investigation of these allegations. Rutherford announced the investigation weeks ago when he let the media know about the potential lawsuit.

Without a doubt, the most overlooked aspect of Bruce Rauner's multi-million-dollar TV-ad buy has been his advertising campaign's repeated attacks on Governor Pat Quinn.

"Career politicians are running our state into the ground, and Pat Quinn, he's at the top of the heap," Rauner says in one of his ads that have permeated the airwaves since November. "Pat Quinn, a career politician who failed to deliver term limits," a Rauner TV announcer declares in another spot.

The millions of dollars worth of ads are supposedly aimed at Republican-primary voters, but obviously everybody else in the state is seeing them, as well. And Quinn, who doesn't have a well-funded primary opponent, hasn't bothered to rebut any of Rauner's multiple attacks. Considering Illinois' persistently high unemployment rates, the hostile national climate, the never-ending negative stories about the state's finances, and Quinn's four-year history of low job-performance scores, the governor's silence seems like a big mistake.

And if a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll is accurate, Rauner's months-long, unrebutted attacks have indeed helped knock Quinn into a shockingly deep hole.

A solid week of horribly negative media coverage of Bruce Rauner was apparently outweighed by lots and lots of television ads, because his numbers are still rising.

A new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll found that Rauner's lead increased since late November in the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

The poll of 1,139 likely Republican-primary voters taken January 14 found Rauner getting 34 percent of the vote, with state Senator Bill Brady at 17 percent, Treasurer Dan Rutherford at 15 percent, and state Senator Kirk Dillard bringing up the rear at 9 percent.

A We Ask America poll taken November 26 - after Rauner launched his holiday-season TV-ad blitz - showed Rauner with 26 percent, Brady with 18 percent, Rutherford with 17 percent, and Dillard with 10 percent. Those numbers echoed a Public Policy Polling survey taken just days before, which had Rauner leading with 24 percent.

So, essentially, the rest of the pack hasn't moved at all, while Rauner has added eight points to his lead. Last week's poll had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

It's no secret that Republican-primary voters in Illinois have been almost rigidly hierarchical when it comes to choosing gubernatorial candidates. They pretty much always choose the candidate who can best demonstrate that it's his or her "turn."

In 1990, after eight years as secretary of state, Jim Edgar was the clear choice. Indeed, he barely had opposition. The same went for two-term Secretary of State George Ryan eight years later. In 2002, it was clearly Attorney General Jim Ryan's turn, and he bested two other high-profile candidates in the primary. In 2006, Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka beat three lesser-known opponents to win her primary race, although it wasn't as easy.