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Call It A Comeback

Illinois Congressional Races
Illinois Congressional Races

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And so the drama continues in IL-14

Both men took off the gloves in the month before the primary, sending out negative mail pieces and taking out mud-slinging radio ads. Lauzen accused Oberweis of trying to buy his way into office. Oberweis questioned Lauzen’s judgment and accused him of being a “career politician,” casting Lauzen’s 15 years in the General Assembly in a negative light.

In the end, Oberweis won both the regular and special primary elections decisively. But while Lauzen has called Oberweis to concede, he has not publicly offered his support in the special election. In fact, in a letter to supporters sent last week, Lauzen criticized Oberweis for being willing to “say or do anything to get elected … no matter how personally destructive or untrue.”

Waiting for apologyIt’s ordinarily expected that the losing candidate in a primary election will come out publicly and support the winner. Lauzen said he is willing to help Oberweis, but wants an apology first.

“All I ask of Jim is to correct the record,” Lauzen said. “I’m not corrupt; I don’t buy people off. I’m happy to help as soon as he repairs the damage he’s done to my reputation.”

Lauzen mentioned a couple of specifics. During the campaign, Oberweis accused Lauzen of poor judgment for taking money from a company under investigation by the Illinois attorney general’s office. The company, International Profit Associates of Buffalo Grove, is also at the center of a massive federal sexual harassment lawsuit.

In December, Lauzen returned nearly $100,000 in contributions to International Profit Associates and its owner, John Burgess, but the Oberweis camp questioned why Lauzen took the money in the first place and compared him to several Democrats who had also taken IPA money, including Sen. Barack Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Additionally, the Oberweis camp was critical of Kane County Republican Chairman Dennis Wiggins for accepting a paid position with Lauzen’s campaign. Oberweis spokesman Bill Pascoe called for Wiggins’ resignation from the Kane Republicans, but Wiggins declined, choosing instead to take a leave of absence until after the primary election.

Pascoe accused Wiggins of “(selling) himself to the highest bidder,” a statement which upset both Lauzen and Wiggins.

“He attacked my integrity,” Wiggins said of Oberweis. “I’ve worked for the party for 45 years. He owes me a hell of an apology.”

SUE! SUE! SUE!

Illinois Congressional Races

What Happened IL-3

ArchPundit 10 Comments

The simple answer is it was a good ass kicking, but let’s look at some numbers:

2006 Cook County overall Democratic Turnout   228,418
2008 Cook County overall Democratic Turnout  439,008
Cook County Increase in Democratic Turnout 92% Increase
2006 Chicago Turnout overall Democratic Turnout 390,891
2008 Chicago overall Democratic Turnout.  637,031
Chicago Increase in Democratic Turnout 62% Increase

3rd District Numbers

2006 Cook County 3rd 35,829
2008 Cook County 3rd  59,369
Cook County 3rd Increase 66%

59,369

2006 Chicago 3rd 45,721
2008 Chicago 3rd  55,280
Chicago 3rd Increase 21%

Lipinski Numbers

2006 Cook  18,956
2008 Cook 30,080
Cook Increase  59%

2006 Chicago 25,445
2008 Chicago 31,594
Chicago Increase 24%

There aren’t any easy answers there.  Pera underperformed his Ided voters a bit, but was in the ballpark.  The problem is that you expect to hit those numbers and then exceed them.

Given the anemic description of Lipinski’s campaign, the only answer I have is that this was a case of low information voters coming out and voting for the familiar name.  The increased mobilization in the District was lower than the average overall and Lipinksi didn’t get a significant boost overall in percentages.

By those standards it doesn’t appear that Lipinski did anything amazing in terms of improving his standing, he just stayed even with past performance.

Illinois Congressional Races

Lipinski Pro-Immigrant?

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From Open Left:

In the other important primary tonight, reactionary machine hack Dan Lipinski suddenly changed tactics against progressive reformer Mark Pera.  Apparently Lipinski started handing out flyers two hours ago that say in both English and Spanish ‘Dan Lipinski is pro-immigrant’.  Before that he was just handing out standard palm cards with his name.

Lipinski votes with Sensenbrenner, so it’s really interesting to see this flip.  Immigration isn’t quite the bogeyman for the right it seemed to be, perhaps.

Please someone get one of these and scan it and send it to me at archpundit@yahoo.com

Illinois Congressional Races Obama Presidential Race

Huge Turnout

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Via Rich

Turnout Very High

Illinois board of elections officials were more willing to talk today about the weather than the voting, saying it’s too soon to get a strong bead on statewide turnout. But press them, and they say there’s little chance a light rain, mid-30s temps, and a possible freeze toward evening will keep the state from breaking a 15-year turnout record today.In Cook County, which encompasses most close-in Chicago suburbs, early ballots cast by suburban voters were, at 60,000, nearly double the county’s previous record of 32,000 cast in the 2006 gubernatorial election. The numbers featured a spike in young voter ballots and college absentee votes, said County Clerk David Orr. That bodes well for Obama, who polls indicate holds a double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton in his true-blue home state.

Cook County voter registration broke records as well, Orr said in a statement, with 1.35 million suburban Cook voters having registered before the deadline.

Turnout in Sangamon County, home of the capital city of Springfield, was also far exceeding turnout in previous years, election officials there said.

Illinois voters don’t typically turn out in huge numbers for primaries, Orr said — in the 2004 primary, barely 29% of registered voters cast ballots. But Orr predicted turnout to bust the 40 percent record set in the state in the 1992 primary, when Bill Clinton won.

High turnout helps Obama and it’ll help downballot with races like IL-3 where Mark Pera is running to beat Dan Lipinski.

Illinois Congressional Races

Fascinating IL-14 Kane County Early VotingNumbers

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Very good turnout for Dems.

Kane County only, Early Voters's
R ballots: 5409
D ballots: 4982

Kane County ballots cast in general primaries past.

2006
D:  16876
R:  45445
Total ballots cast: 66331
Total registered: 244891

2004
D: 22526
R: 35772
TB: 59328
TR: 227101

2002
D: 22572
R: 49959
TB: 75413
TR: 219721
Special Election Early Votes 

Rs 5499

Ds 4431

Not sure what this means, but it appears Republicans are pulling Democratic ballots in the Presidential and then Republican in the special. No idea what that means.

Illinois Congressional Races

Super Tuesday IL-3

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Luke Skywalker versus the Darth Vader. Well–if Darth Vader looked like death warmed over.

Seriously there are four Democratic candidates with incumbent tool Dan Lipinski, unknowing plant Jim Capparelli and two decent guys running as reformers in Mark Pera and Jerry Bennett.

Lipinski  is probably favored simply because he’s an incumbent backed by the machine and the machine will be in operation since Madigan and the elder Lipinski are relatively close.  That said, Lipinski has run an especially anemic race without even many dirty tricks and it’s almost as if the elder Lipinski isn’t trying.  The expected flyers of Pera eating babies never appeared with a lame piece showing up in two color talking about left wing extremist punks from San Francisco.

Caparelli fits the profile of a typical plant in a race. Same ethnicity as a real challenger and absolutely clueless that people might use him.

Mayor Jerry Bennett is a good candidate and a good guy.  I think the momentum of the support to Pera with Pera getting out there early hurt him quite a bit, though he does have the possibility of stringing together a number of locals to do well.

Pera has been the netroots star and a great fighting Dem.  He’s centered in the District, smart, well financed and fits the new profile of the District.  He has a great campaign team and he’s worked tirelessly to get this nomination.  All reason says don’t bet against the machine, but I think the stars might just be aligned here. He’s gotten a good reception and Barack Obama is on the ballot to increase turnout well over last cycle’s turnout. He’s reached more voters than John Sullivan and Caparelli isn’t nearly as good of a plant as last time.

The wild card is how hard Madigan goes for Lipinski.  We’ll know more tomorrow, but while it might just be based on hope, I’m thinking Pera takes this in a tight race.

On the Republican side it’s two no names against a white supremacist, Art Jones, who has supporters who will join in comments talking about the Jewish Wars.  The best thing for the Republicans is to nominate a no name with no chance.  IOW, whomever wins the Dem primary, is the next 3rd District Congressman.  Strangely, they won’t actually take office for 11 months however.

Also, if Lipinski doesn’t win, look for a machine guy to get in as an independent in the general. It cannot be Lipinski himself, but an ‘independent’ candidate register as late as June 23rd.

Illinois Congressional Races

Super Tuesday: IL-14

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This race pits national internet favorite John Laesch against Jotham Stein and likely winner and scientist Bill Foster.

Laesch is the favorite of the national netroots, but surprisingly not terribly popular with the local netroots.  Despite his supporters screams of how well he did last time, Laesch cannot raise money and it’s pretty unclear that he has any sort of effective organbzation with his loudest supporters resembling Scientologists more than activists.  (that’ll get me some commments from both groups). He has run an unabashadly progressive campaign, but seems to have a poor grasp of the issues.  When discussing the AMT he wanted to completely eliminate it instead of fixing it which would allow the extremely wealthy to avoid paying a minimum income tax.  The only hope Laesch has is that his name ID is high enough to pull him through, though early polls demonstrated his name ID was pretty low for a returning challenger.
Stein is also running an unabashedly progressive campaign, but really doesn’t seem to have caught on and has little money.  It’s hard to imagine that his name ID is high enough to get him anywhere near victory.

Foster has run a campaign that is strong and professional. He is a bit boring, but he’s also a good candidate overall and is right on big issues like the war and FISA.  He’s a bit more centrist on economics, but not a Melissa Bean even.

More than that, not only has he put his own money in the District, he has raised more than the other candidates and run a professional campaign. It would be a shock if Foster doesn’t pull this out with a decent margin.

On the Republican side, loons everywhere.  Chris Lauzen is a thin skinned whiner who loses his temper if anyone dares challenge his holiness. The weird thing, he’s a State Senator and he has that high of an opinion of himself.  Promoting him would only make it worse.  He also has greater wingnuttia behind him with Jack Roeser and the Family Taxpayer Network supporting him (not like those are different entities).  This means even if he were to win the primary, he’d lose the general.

He’s running against serial candidate Jim Oberweis who even though he’s a serial candidate appears to be the favorite.  That’s how bad this field is.  He’s tried buying elections, he’s tried immigrant bashing, joining with wingnuttia and fighting against wingnuttia and nothing works.  He does have Denny Hastert behind him, but the general sense is that this a choice that should only be labeled:

AND REMEMBER DEATH IS NOT AN OPTION!

It’s hard to imagine two more worthless candidates and the winner is likely to have lots of hard feelings by supporters of the other camp.  I’m going out on a limb here and I think Lauzen pulls it off in the end.  Oberweis just has the stink of loser over the Lauzen’s stink of looniness.

This also has the special feature of being a primary with both a special primary election and a general primary election all on the same day.  This might affect the Republican race as some Republican leaners take Democratic ballots for Obama and depending on how things shake out, if we get really lucky, the Republican will have a split decision.

Illinois Congressional Races Uncategorized

Super Tuesday IL-10

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This pits two good candidates against each other for a chance to take on Mark Kirk in the fall.  You know, Mark Kirk, the guy supporting a guy for President who suggests we stay in Iraq for 100 years.  That guy.

Jay Footlik has gotten a bit of a bum rap from a lot of the activists in the area and is a decent guy. I’d love to see him stick around and run for another office after this cycle as I see a great guy with good political skills and experience.

He’s been doing decently with endorsements including a very nice one from the Lake Sun News.

That said, Dan Seals has put everything into this race and ran a very tough race with very little support from DCCC last cycle.  Whomever the winner is of this primary will be running for a top tier seat targeted by DCCC while the RNCC goes broke.  He’s smart, has great relationships within the District, and good name recognition for a challenger. On top of additional support, all indications are this year should be an even stronger year for Democrats as we add a bad economy to an unpopular war.  Add death and disease and the Democrats will be running against the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

This race also features two the most problematic named candidates in a while with Footlik being obviously a bit fun to poke at, but Seals shares the name of a crappy country singer.

Policy wise there isn’t much difference and both are incredibly strong on Israel, a key issue in the District.  Seals has a lot of loyalty amongst primary voters for running a strong campaign last cycle and I expect he’ll win Tuesday and by a decent margin.  Jay has worked his butt off, but there isn’t a compelling reason for most primary voters to switch.

I’ll reiterate, I like Jay and I hope he runs for something in the area again, but I don’t see it happening Tuesday.

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