It didn't take long for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner to drop the word "unions" from his vocabulary.

After bashing public-employee-union leaders for months as corrupt bosses who buy votes to control Springfield, Rauner and his campaign have assiduously avoided the use of the U word since his victory last Tuesday. Instead, he's switched to a line about how "our government is run by lobbyists, for special interests, and the career politicians in both parties let it happen."

Rauner's campaign manager said on primary night that his boss is "pro-union." Rauner himself insisted last week that he's not anti-union and never has been.

The candidate's record clearly shows otherwise, however. Rauner kicked off his campaign with a widely published op-ed in which he called for legislation to allow individual counties to approve their own "right to work" laws. Rauner has also repeatedly demanded that Illinois follow the lead of states such as Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin, all of which have all passed anti-union laws.

There are lots of different angles to Governor Pat Quinn's highly controversial decision to unilaterally refuse to pay scheduled, contractual pay raises to unionized state employees, so let's take them one at a time.

• This is Not "New" News. Chicago reporters are the only ones with access to the governor these days. (Quinn has held just one Springfield press conference in months.) The city's reporters probably don't know that the House Republicans - and even some House Democrats - have been agitating since at least April to somehow stop AFSCME's scheduled pay raises.