Call It A Comeback
As reported in comments, by the Squire, University of Illinois Champaign Urbana students voted to keep Chief Illiniwek by a 2-1 margin.
As someone who supports students making choices for themselves, this presents a quandary that I hope can be solved through further education.
For all of the bloggers popping up covering Illinois Politics, our ambassador to the regular world is Eric Zorn who appeared on WBEZ’s 848 last Friday. He gave Polis, Oneman, me, and others some great press which is very much appreciated. While I don’t mention it often, 848 is one of the better news sources for political junkies taking political reporters from around the state and getting them to chat about the news of the day.
One minor thing about Eric’s discussion–I was blogging the 2002 General Election so this is my second big election. But his point is correct that overall this is the first major Illinois election with significant blogger attention.
Of course, my projections for that one were nearly as bad as this one.
The Trib has a great article detailing the issues Blair Hull faced in the primary. My argument about potential scandals or any information that may be detrimental is release it about two weeks after the formal announcement. Get the story on the radar of the news media, address it, and move on. If you wait it will kill you later. In Hull’s case it took him off message and killed the good momentum he had–ceding it to a very charismatic candidate (who I happened to favor). Like all news stories, I think the insiders would say it was more complicated, but the big issues are covered well.
But politicians running for high offices are kidding themselves if they think that a negative information will not come out. Sometimes that fact is unfair, most of the time given the past abuses by candidates, the voters should be able to judge someone in their entirety. That said, the problem of not controlling the release means that a candidate is judged on their worst days and not on their life as a whole often. Releasing on the candidate’s timetable allows he or she to put it into the context of their life. Allowing the press to do it gives them juiciness and makes them salivate at eating you alive.
I’ll note this is the first sympathetic article in the last month for Hull–after he lost.
Rich Miller covers some of the patterns that emerged on Tuesday:
Barack Obama’s victory looks a lot like Glenn Poshard’s 1998 gubernatorial primary win, only upside down.
Poshard won a bunch of small southern Illinois counties with 70, 80, 90, even 95 percent. Obama did the same on Tuesday, only he won a bunch of population-rich Chicagoland townships, wards and counties with Elvis-like margins.
I’ve already told you that Obama took 61 percent in suburban Cook County, but look at some of these township numbers. Obama hit 87 percent in Oak Park Township, scoring 10,315 votes to Dan Hynes’ 616. Yes, you read that right.
In comments is the conversation I tried to spur in asking about Daley’s defense of Jack Ryan.
There are two schools of thoughts about what Daley is thinking.
1. John Kass and Rich Miller argue that Daley wants to send the surprisingly popular Obama to D.C. to get him out of the way and keep him from being a threat locally. You can’t run for Mayor from D.C.
2. Joshua in comments and others in private conversations are suggesting that Daley was signalling to white ethnics (etnics to youse natives) that they were free to defect to Ryan. The thinking is that Da Mare for Life is paranoid and wants to sink any possible challenge to his rule. He has coopted everyone he can (see faith based initiatives to African-American churches—also good practices in many ways, but lets face it–political pork) and anyone who might make inroads is a threat so they must be destroyed.
The rebuttal to 2 is that Obama would be far away. The rebuttal to the rebuttal is that may make logical sense, but Da Mare is a paranoid man.
Daley has to be somewhat subtle here because an outright destruction of Obama if he does see him as a threat would incur the wrath of a many African-Americans he has assiduously courted over the years. But there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Discuss.
I promise this will not become a site on Missouri politics or Jeff’s campaign blog, but I did want to pass along this invite to his Chicago event. If you want more details on Jeff, visit this earlier post.
Jeff Riley and Pete D’Alessandro for a
Spring Wine Tasting & Meet the Candidate Night
Featuring:
Jeff Smith
Candidate for Congress in Missouri
Jeff Smith is running for the vacant congressional seat formerly held by Dick Gephardt. He has raised over $100,000 and has changed the dynamics of the race with his fresh ideas and perspective. He’s also a good friend and we hope you can support him and attend this exciting event.
Saturday, March 27th, 2004
6:00 to 8:00pm
The House of Glunz
1206 N. Wells St., Chicago
$45 Taster
$100 Connoisseur
$250 Wine Master
Please pay in advance or at the door.
Make checks payable to:
Friends of Jeff Smith
Or RSVP online at:
www.jeffsmith2004.com
Special thanks to: Christopher Donovan, Louis Glunz Wines , Heather Schoenfeld, Brad McCracken, Scott Neninger, Stephanie Valier, Matt Smith, John Lawrence, Janey Miller, Bradley Serot, Steve Sadin, and Grant Christman Design.
Printed in-house, Labor donated
Berkowitz describes why so many missed the Obama surge. I certainly fit within his description.
The key line is:
“Mencken was wrong: somebody did go broke underestimating the taste of the Illinois people.”
Some of us who watch politics become somewhat cynical and jaded about the public. I very much fit in that category and I think the one thing that most people sense about Barack whether they agree with him or not on ideology or policy, is that he is decent and smart. I believe Rauschenberger had the same mojo going, though in a much more lowkey way.
While much of the big story has been the defeat of the remnants of the white machine, there is another significant story in the burbs where the machine of the Shaw brothers took another hit and Robert Shaw was defeated by Larry Rogers.
In this case it isn’t so much being replaced by the more modern versions of politics, but by the Jacksons who, say what you will, are better than the Shaws. Most importantly, the kind of static patronage driven operations aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be.
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