Pre-Primary Seals D-IL-10
ArchPundit
Good job–may start getting some attention if he keeps it up.
Raised: 111398.83
Spent: 31919.86
COH: 132687.39
Debt: 16608.60
Other good news, Patrick Mogge is working for him (keep the spending under control guys)
Illinois Congressional Races
Roskam pulls in about $36,000 last few days
Similar to Pavich in PACs and such putting last minute money in as a primary contribution
Pavich Takes home $11,100 Last Few Days
Reason this is key is it is two PACs with significant donations that count for the primary–so they can donate again in the General Election. Since he doesn’t have a primary opponent, he can spend it later and still get more if need be. AFT and the Sheet Metal Workers both went in for $5,000 each.
Also, if you read the story about Weller from the City News–DCCC spokesperson labels this a targeted race. Good for them.
Sullivan Endorsement
Southtown Backs Sullivan over Lipper the Lessor and the mysterious John Kelly. It’s perhaps possible that Kelly isn’t a plant, but it’s somewhat interesting that a supposedly serious candidate hasn’t filed any campaign finance documents with the FEC meaning he’s either not raising enough to go over the limit of $5000, or he’s not filing (he has a statement of candidacy so..). Either way—it’s not a serious candidacy. John still has a challenge raising money, but he’s at least done something.
The 3rd is a 59% Kerry vote District–it’s a progressive district—let’s get a progressive for it.
Donate or volunteer here
Google Rocks: Markey’s 11th District work
I was running into all sorts of problems tracking this info down, and it turns out Google was my solution. It’s only as useful as the guy searching it.
Markey’s site contains about all of his correspondence to agencies so his 11th District correspondence was there for the finding.
February 18, 2005
Rep. Markey?s letter to the NRC was motivated by the ordeals of the Sauer family, former residents of Minooka, IL, which is located close to the Dresden nuclear power plant. The family has recently relocated because of concerns about the health impacts associated with living near the Dresden plant, which were heightened because of their daughter?s brain cancer. In June 2003, the NRC was presented with data obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) that indicate that in Grundy County, IL between 1995-99, the infant mortality rate has doubled, there has been a nearly 400% increase in pediatric cancer and a 38% increase in cancer among those aged 28-44 years old (while the same statistic for all of IL decreased by 8%). Moreover, other statistics show that the incidence of leukemia was 50% higher in men and 100% higher in women in Grundy County than it was in the rest of the State. In its responses to the Sauers, NRC personnel have ignored these statistics and have instead cited a 1990
June 29, 2005–commments on a reease by the National Academy of Sciences regarding the safety of nuclear plants—and offers an amendment to at least study the impact of more plants.
Jerry Weller’s response:
Co sponsor a bill with Obama in March of 2006. and yelling about how Exelon should be responsible. I wonder if he was helping out in Massachusetts 7 or if he just counts on others to do his constituent work.
Fine Moments in Congressional Representation
From the Kankakee City News by Taylor Publications (African-American paper), a poll was run that found that 68% of those polled over a 3 week period felt Weller should not be reelected with an N of 600 people (obviously not the most scientific of polls).
The full story is in a pdf above and a good run down on Weller’s connections to Abramoff and the Cunningham scandal principles as well as his mediocre work in the district, but the great response is below
When our reporter contacted Congressional Representative Jerry Weller’s office to discuss the poll, we were told the campaign did not believe the opinion of African-American voters would affect their candidate’s chances of victory in November.
So kiss off…
Cegelis: On CAFTA
Christine indicated she was strongly against CAFTA. The question I then asked was what sort of trade policy would she pursue. Agreements should contain environmental and labor standards most of all ensuring trade that protects workers in all involved countries.
More in a bit
Cegelis Intervew: War in Iraq
Specific benchmarks, timetables and goals must be met with a goal towards removal of troops. One common way to challenge this view is that it lets insurgents wait for us to leave, but I pressed on a different end of the issue. If the Bush Administration continues its pattern of incompetence, what good does it do if you have benchmarks that are not met? In theory, the problem is that incompetence means there is no way out of Iraq.
Christine responded that Congressional oversight was the key and essentially that using that oversight tool to bring attention should eventually result in meeting benchmarks, but also that an intractable problem of incompetence may not be easy to solve with this administration.