CLINTON — “I don’t know what he’s doing.  He’s in a navy-blue suit and looks like one of the Kennedy’s.”

Such was the reaction to a young man in the ADM training program, who showed up to work at one of ADM’s central Illinois grain elevators.

As it turned out, he was a Kennedy, eighth of Bobby’s and Ethel’s 11 children.  That was in the 1980s.

Today, he wants to be governor of Illinois. He announced earlier this year his candidacy as a Democrat in the 2018 election.

Chris Kennedy was in his 20s, some 30 years ago, during his ADM experience.  He later went to Chicago, learned about commodities trading and managed the Merchandise Mart and was president of the University of Illinois board of trustees along the way.

In 2012, he founded Top Box Foods, a Chicago-based nonprofit company that provides discounted groceries to families living in areas that lack grocery stores or have an excessive number of fast food restaurants.

He was in Clinton on Saturday to talk to residents and answer some of their questions.  About 25 people attended the meet-and-greet, held at the Clinton American Legion hall.

People are leaving Illinois in record numbers, and Kennedy  aimed at two of the major reasons it’s happening.

He said the clients he serves through his Top Box Foods, “are the people this economy has left behind.”

“They are the people our government isn’t thinking about any more,” he said.  “They’re like castoffs; they’ve been forgotten about.”

Kennedy said poor people are being pushed out of the cities because of ever increasing commercial development catering to the wealthy, a phenomenon common to more and more U.S. cities.

“Once they get out of the city, they aren’t doing much better in the state,” he said.

In 2016, average household income in Illinois increased by 10 percent.

“But, it’s not because we’re all making more money, it’s because we’re pushing the poor out of our state.”

He said the disabled, the elderly and those needing home health care are leaving Illinois.

“They know they won’t get that in the state anymore,” Kennedy said.  “It’s immoral, and it should be stopped.”

Those groups aren’t the only ones leaving Illinois.  Kennedy also said Illinois has the largest exodus of new college graduates of any state, and that, “Illinois is under-educating our kids.”

“Seventy-five percent of high school kids graduate unable to go to a place like the University of Illinois without remedial education,” he said.

Community colleges were always a good option for many students, Kennedy said.

“But there still are lots of places in the state where that’s not available.  We dooming those kids to a life of economic servitude.

“That’s not the way it is in any other state,” Kennedy told his audience.

Kennedy favors a move from reliance on property taxes to fund public education to use of a progressive income tax.  Under such a system, the tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases.

“You’ll never see this with Gov. Rauner because he doesn’t believe in it.”

He cited Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota as three states that have “outstanding outcomes for their students.

Kennedy said too many state legislators in Illinois have conflicts of interest.

“An elected official shouldn’t have an outside job that’s adverse to the interest to which they were elected to serve.”

“The reason we rely on property taxes and haven’t moved to a progressive income tax is because our elected officials …they’re making money on this system,” Kennedy said.  “They’re making money on a system that’s damning our children.”