March 2006

A Very Fair Column, Stroger Needs to Release His Medical Records

ArchPundit March 17, 2006 5 Comments

Lynn Sweet argues he should release his records to demonstrate whether he can actually serve or not.

Let me add, given this news, so does Lane Evans. I thought it was a cheap shot to go after his health as long as he was making meetings and votes. If he is starting to miss them, he should allow the voters to judge. Most likely, it is time to step down–if he does it now, the Party can choose a candidate to run in his place. While not ideal, it isn’t exactly a Lipinski switch either.

Claypool Rejoinder

ArchPundit March 14, 2006 0 Comment

One of the big questions on any poll is what the likely voter model is. In essence to get a fair idea of who is likely to vote you screen respondents for their past behavior, interest in the election, and even self-report likelihood in some cases. Claypool sent out a rejoinder to the Trib poll stating:

For those who work closely with election stats, the poll published in this morning?s Chicago Tribune raises more questions than it answers. But, when you put it together with our own tracking data from this past week, it begins to paint a picture of how Forrest will win this race.

Our poll, a more extensive and in-depth survey of those who actually have a history of primary voting, shows Forrest just one point ahead of John Stroger. And, among the subset of voters who say they?re ?paying close attention to the race,? and are likely to vote on Tuesday, he enjoys a 7 point lead. With a sample of 700 voters conducted by the Bennenson Strategy Group, we feel very confident in these numbers.

When we re-weight the Tribune poll to more accurately reflect the turnout numbers from past primary elections, the newspaper?s numbers come out looking a lot like ours:

46 Stroger/40 Claypool (with a 5% margin of error).

Meanwhile, what do we make of the newest voice to weigh in on the race, that of former President Bill Clinton? Clearly, President Clinton is repaying an old political debt with his radio ad for John Stroger. And as someone who doesn’t live in Cook County or pay taxes here, he couldn’t be expected to know the facts of Stroger’s record.

Ultimately, it?s the people of Cook County who will decide this election. And Forrest has the support of those who care about improving health care for our neediest residents, about stopping the beating of young men and women at the Juvenile Detention Center, who care about the ever-rising tax bills that burden working folks throughout Cook County.

With one week to go, we are more confident than ever that Forrest will prevail, winning the opportunity to fix what?s wrong with Cook County.

Obviously, I’m biased, but without examining the entire poll I cannot and wouldn’t vouch for the above without seeing the full polling results. It’s not implausible, but it’s also highly dependent upon how strong and successful the GOTV effort for Stroger is–if SEIU and Madigan are working hard for him, he’s likely to get a good turnout. If not, it’s hard to imagine that John Stroger has the sort of passionate following to bring out voters not dependent upon his position without help.

This year’s election seems especially dependent upon turnout. That’s a cliche in talking about elections, but there doesn’t appear to be a strong sense of voter excitement about this years primary election. If there are two groups excited, it’s probably Democrats at the left end of the Party and Republicans at the Right end of their Party. For the Republicans that means an advantage for Oberweis, for Democrats I sense that might help Claypool with white liberal voters, but it’s hard to tell. The biggest benefactor of such a turnout would likely be Giannoulis in the Dem Treasurer race (I have no real horse in that race).

Gubernatorial Poll

ArchPundit March 14, 2006 0 Comment

Same numbers for Judy as in the Post-Dispatch poll and Oberweis is at 21–which is within the margin of error with the P-D poll. The key difference comes in Gidwitz being down at 9 points and Brady at 15. Taking Judy as an established person in people’s minds, she’s unlikely to get much of the undecideds. The way this poll looks, Oberweis would need nearly all of the undecideds.

Brady’s improvement is interesting with being close enough to Oberweis to legitimately say there isn’t much difference between them so it’s not reasonable to ask him to drop out. That helps Topinka by keeping two social conservatives splitting that block of votes. Gidwitz shows no movement in this one so it’s unclear if his commercials are having an impact, but it can’t help Topinka with the undecideds.

That said, the real question to me is whether or not there is going to be a decent turnout. A few commenters have mentioned this over at Rich’s and I’m just not sure that the moderate Republicans are fired up for this race and if they stay home just by a few percentages, it could give Oberweis enough of a boost with a very hardcore passionate support base to pull out a victory. Not only is it possible, but we’ve seen conservative candidates in Illinois Republican primaries pull this off fairly often. The big challenge here is whether Brady will pull enough conservative votes from Oberweis. Even without that Oberweis may just be toxic enough in his own party that there is a hard cap he can’t get beyond, but the poll indicates a 44 % approval amongst Republicans which is a problem in a general election, but in a primary, it’s probably high enough given he needs people who would think enough of him to vote for him.

A Great Take On Claypool

ArchPundit March 14, 2006 0 Comment

Really, this was in the works before this mornings news. While I don’t want to take away from the seriousness of Stroger’s health, I think discussing the race in general is fair.

Dan Johnson-Weinberger gives his reason for voting for Claypool and Shore as well as others. It’s a very thoughtful take.

Busy Day and busier news

ArchPundit March 14, 2006 0 Comment

Stroger Results, Stroger in Hospital. I wish him a full recovery.

For today, if not longer, I’d prefer not to discuss the health issue on the race since the entire situation is in a bit of limbo and that would be distasteful, so let’s keep comments more on the general race.

The Trib poll shows a 10 point lead for Stroger at 47 and Claypool at 37. Not great news for Claypool, but also not out of what I’d expect with a week out. Claypool isn’t going to win with a wide margin, but he needs to catch fire and cross the finish line by a strong media campaign and decent turnout in areas he does best.

Claypool has AKP doing his media as the article notes (that’s Axelrod) and Wilhelm and Emanuel backing him, but Stroger has the Speaker, SEIU and less important folks like the Governor (the Gov doesn’t have the ground troops the Speaker has–let’s face it. I don’t know the level of commitment Madigan has to this race, but it could be a key factor. Claypool really needs a good turnout in the suburbs and good media to make the final case for his candidacy.

The reason I’m strongly behind Claypool is that the County Government is responsible for several issues that are essential to progressive constituencies. First and foremost is that the County is stuck as the health care provider of last resort and given skyrocketing medical costs, providing that in the most efficient means possible under the system as it stands is the best way to ensure health care for the poor in Cook County. Stroger is not committed to basic cost savings that involve sharing administrative functions and rigorous screening of employees for qualifications. Like much of County Government, it’s a dumping ground for patronage, patronage the health care system cannot afford.

A second reason is Claypool’s committment to the environment and the Forest Preserves in Particular. While I only lived in Cook County for a short time, I always found those to be a wonderful resource. The Sierra Club goes into details specific proposals Claypool would initiate that Stroger has been absolutely resistant to for his entire time in office. Using the Forest Preserve as a dumping ground for patronage employees treats the local environment as a political tool and not a conservation tool and the shape of the preserves demonstrates that well.

When working with relatively small portions of land, maintaining the ecosystem is especially delicate work because a little damage goes a long way. The current moratorium is a long term money loser because by ignoring that maintenance the areas become more difficult to repair over the long run and the costs don’t just increase, but increase at an increasing rate.

Often times when people propose cost cutting, people take that as a conservative position–and often it is. In this case, just as Dean argued, spending on unsustainable items in a manner that cannot be maintained only makes the provision of the most vital services more at risk. The progressive thing to do is to prioritize spending and focus on what best serves the constituents.