Call It A Comeback
Dan Curry responds to virtually the same question from IlliniPundit and I.
And Zorn has the larger backstory which, regardless of any issues about Bob Morgan, is a depressing story of how the Illinois justice system failed again.
Via Capitol Fax
I’d like to know, particularly from the hardcore Blagojevich critics that comment here, what you most like/admire/respect/etc. about our governor.
Add yours over there, but I thought I’d post mine here.
Three things stick out as admirable about the Governor
1) His commitment to adding gays, lesbians and the transgendered to the human rights act.
2) His commitment to Medicaid and children’s healthcare
3) And while he needs to improve and move further on the issue, his commitment to early childhood care and education.
And I’m sure I’ll add more later about the problems that jeopardize these efforts, but in the spirit of Rich’s question I’ll stop for now.
From the perspective of Judy Baar Topinka, the more the merrier: The more candidates that run, the better are her prospects of winning the 2006 Republican primary for governor. Conversely, if she has only one opponent, she could lose.
If you have Birkett, Oberweis, Rauschenberger, Brady, and O’Malley in the race against LaHood and Topinka, one of the last two come out a winner.
Gidwitz ends up as roadkill no matter what.
I’m not sure that Roeser is that set on Uberweis yet, but this is hysterical from Pearson:
Which brings Oberweis to today, his third consecutive statewide election campaign.
And to marshal support he has diversified the contents of his dairy barnyard to include a chicken coop, or, more specifically, a guy best known for wearing a chicken suit.
New alliesJoe Wiegand, formerly a paid staffer of conservative businessman Jack Roeser, regularly donned the feathered suit in 2002 in support of Patrick O’Malley, a former state senator from Palos Park. The costume was aimed at portraying eventual GOP nominee Jim Ryan as being afraid to debate Wiegand’s candidate.
At that time, Wiegand was working for Roeser’s Carpentersville-based Family Taxpayers’ Network as its executive director, and Roeser was backing O’Malley to the tune of $400,000. The group is one of several political arms financed by Roeser aimed at promoting his version of “championing a good moral and economic climate.”
This time around, with Wiegand’s involvement, the Roeser allegiances appear to have shifted from O’Malley and, after a brief, unsuccessful dalliance with state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger (R-Elgin), toward Oberweis.
But Roeser has had his share of election losers besides O’Malley. One of them is Wiegand, who got $15,000 from Roeser in a failed primary bid for an Illinois House seat last year.
Russ Stewart has a rather good analysis piece on Jack Franks potentially running for Governor. I tend to think Franks will see the effort as ultimately futile, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see him run for the Treasurer’s spot. Perhaps using the scenario to try and get some leverage to clear the field.
The one aspect that Stewart leaves out is the Governor’s fairly strong courting of Jackson Jr. Knowing that he has a problem with the Mayor and that he’s in the tank downstate, the Mayor has forged a fairly friendly relationship with Congressman Jackson over the last few months. At the State of the State he both introduced the Congressman and supported some sort of development of a south suburban airport. The Governor isn’t going to face a serious black candidate in the primary so the courting of Jackson provides for a stronger relationship in Chicago and a base of support that is probably impossible to cobble together a primary win against.
The further problem is that not knowing who is the Republican nominee, it’s impossible to tell if the Governor can, after a strong primary challenge, win a general election. Some of the field is so poor that they’d be toast. See O’Malley and Oberweis. It probably would toss the race to LaHood and perhaps Judy and Rauschenberger depends on where he would leave a primary race.
The Governor isn’t Bob Holden, Missouri incumbent Democratic Governor in 2004 who lost to the Democratic State Auditor. G-Rod has both cash to crush an opponent and where he is weakest–outstate–is not dominant in the primary or the general election. He’s strongest where the biggest chunk of votes resides and that gives him a far strong spot to start.
Franks is ambitious so taking on a sitting Governor means he has to make sure it isn’t a fatal blow to his future and for that to happen he’ll need some party elders to support him in the race even if they don’t do it publicly. I don’t see Daley or Madigan doing that in this race with a guy who cannot win. But might they help Franks run for Treasurer? Maybe.
Via the Cross Guys
The State Auditor’s report of Central Management Services is apparently due anytime, though the Sun-Times didn’t happen to mention when it was to be released…
It doesn’t look to be pretty given past audits of other agencies—all of which identify CMS operations as problems.
The Register Star picked up on these problems more than any other sources
And the original audits are available here
Earlier problems with CMS include problems getting contracts signed
But from the most recent story, this stands out to me as the most telling part of the problem
Paul Campbell, whom Blagojevich asked to take charge of the agency when director Michael Rumman leaves in May, said the agency has made monumental strides to consolidate purchasing, cut costs and document what it’s doing.
”There’s more documentation now than ever existed before about why people buy what they buy,” Campbell said Friday.
The point of making government more efficient is to make less documentation and simply hold agencies accountable. One of the more difficult efforts undertaken by Al Gore’s very successful effort to reinvent the federal bureaucracy, was to allow many purchases to be made by individual units. So if you need a computer, you didn’t have to go through a long process, you got approval and could go to a local store and buy it–now you can go on-line and do so.
More documentation to buy is the goal only when you have such massive fraud you can’t control it any other way. Documentation should be minimal with the agency setting out rules for when acquisition is appropriate and a standard to seek out the lowest cost easily achievable. Why an agency buys something should be because it helps carry out there mission.
If this is the way this effort is going to be defended, it’s not going to be pretty.
Yep, the Good Ambassador’s site indicates that Debate #2 is unavailable. That would be the ABC debate-which ABC balked at Keyes selling. But most strangely, all three debates are offered as a package.
Like all things Keyes, how odd.
UPDATE: Hmmmm…so how does he offer all three given this statement:
(Editor?s note: Currently, the first and last debates are available under agreement with the debates? original producers–the Illinois Radio Network and C-SPAN, and the City Club of Chicago and WTTW. The producers of the second debate–the Illinois League of Women Voters and WLS–have declined to allow Dr. Keyes to publicly offer videos of that debate.)
Jeff Berkowitz offers up Roskam’s take on Pankau and others.
Most interesting is that with Biggert supporting the rule changes that stopped investigations from going forward, since Biggert is supporting Roskam, he has little room to back away from the position.
The Pankau-Roskam fight looks to be probably as entertaining as the feuds that develop in the 8th CD Republican primary.
The Trib is practically giving the Republicans advice on how to manage the DeLay scandals, and fortunately, the Republicans aren’t listening so drip, drip, drip
A charade? Not exactly. Republicans said they acted in good faith in offering to get to the bottom of allegations against DeLay concerning his dealings with lobbyists and other issues.
But this was, in effect, a GOP effort to negotiate the terms of an ethics investigation. The ethical standards and expectations of the House should not be subject to dealmaking. Republicans still haven’t come to grips with that.
The most hollow threat is Hastert’s:
On Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested that Democrats had another motive for their boycott of the Ethics Committee. He said there were “four or five cases out there dealing with top-level Democrats.”
Is that bluster, or is Hastert on to something? We’re only going to find out if the Ethics Committee has the power to investigate, under rules that don’t permit either party to stand in its way.
The question to the Speaker is then, if there is illegal activity or just unethical on the Democratic side, why don’t you pursue it? Am I to understand that Speaker is ignoring such behavior? And why? Because of a stupid truce that may have benefited Members of Congress, but done nothing for the public interest?
Rich O pretty much nails it though Cheap Trick is pretty decent and is unfortunately sharing the night of dreckmeisters REO Speedwagon.
I wonder if pontificating about music is wise for one who has to run for office….
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