They sure do like planting things…
Trib on probably new plant in the 3rd Congressional District Democratic Primary (as a bonus, the Trib ran the wrong photograph, again.
The bullshit line from Kelly is that Sullivan is too liberal for that District. It’s a 59% Democratic District in the Kerry-Bush numbers–that’s as Democratic as any Republican District in the entire state is Republican. It’s one message from the Lipinski organization trying to paint themselves as the real alternative.
The problem? Someone needs to ask Dan who he voted for in the 2000 election. By accounts as I understand them he was a Buchanan guy. Dandy, and now he’s running as a Democrat.
Sullivan, who announced last summer, doesn’t like the way Dan Lipinski was anointed by his dad. And doesn’t agree with most of his positions on issues. Sullivan is pro-choice. Lipinski is pro-life. Sullivan opposes the Patriot Act that Lipinski voted to extend. Sullivan wants the United States to get out of Iraq now while Lipinski, though unhappy with the war, believes we can’t do that.
Fine.
The two men offer voters a clear-cut choice.
But a late entry into the race raised Sullivan’s suspicions.
In December, just before the filing deadline, a new candidate emerged. John T. Kelly is his name.
Hmmm, let’s see:
Another candidate named John who has a middle initial “T” that rhymes with Sullivan’s middle initial “P.”
And whaddya know? An Irish last name.
Is John T. Kelly a “ringer”?
Absolutely not, Kelly told me Thursday. What about the charge that some Lipinski loyalists were circulating his petitions? “First of all,” said Kelly, that charge “kind of irritates me.”
Well, then, what about this: Two years ago, weren’t you running in the Republican primary but bailed out, leaving the “ringer” Chlada there to guarantee Dan Lipinski’s victory?
Kelly said he quit the race in 2004 because of family reasons. “I had to drop out,” he told me. “What pissed me off, had I stayed, I would have blown Ryan Chlada away.”
But he didn’t stay. And now that he’s back, Kelly, a 35-year-old financial planner, is running as a Democrat, which he says he really is. He only ran as a Republican in 2004, he contends, because he thought it would give him a clearer shot.
Well, then, you have to wonder why he wouldn’t enlist the same strategy this time around. His Republican opposition now would be two goofy perennial losers, Ray “Spanky the Clown” Wardingley and Art “The Neo-Nazi” Jones.
Good move, Mr. Kelly.
But let’s take this back to Dan Lipinski. He’s really the issue.
Until his dad crowned him a congressman, he spent 15 years out of town working at universities in North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. Somehow, while being a resident of other states, he managed to vote here, not by absentee ballot but in person. Election judges in his father’s 23rd Ward marked him present in every Chicago election since at least 1990, according to official records.
Oddly, Lipinski, can’t recall casting those votes. “I’m trying to think back to that time,” he told me. “I honestly cannot remember.”
Such are the mysteries of the 3rd Congressional District.
I can’t explain Dan Lipinski’s voting record any better than he can. And I don’t know if John T. Kelly is a ringer to neutralize John P. Sullivan.
What I do know is that there’s always a game in the land of Lipinski, always a dirty trick or two, even when victory is assured without them.
It’s sad. And it’s stupid. And it plays voters for suckers.
I don’t play the real Democrat card very often because I tend to think the Party is big enough for differences on most issues. However, in this case, Lipinski isn’t a real Democrat, he’s a machine hack who has no business in Congress.
Next effort—find out when Lipinski was teaching on election day–out of state. If so, that’s vote fraud. Many times over.