Can’t You At Least Find a Black Guy?
ArchPundit
The Leader has an op-ed calling on African-Americans to wake-up. By a white guy.
It’s sort of condescending. Well more than sort of, but you know.
Illinois Senate
Openly Bigoted Jack Ryan
To the fine editors of the Illinois Leader:
I would like to congratulate you on your decision to preface peoples names
with their sexual preference such as in your article on Thursday, May 06,
2004 “Hilary Raises Funds for Obama” when you refered to “Openly Gay Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney”But why stop at just one name? Go for the whole 9 yards! I give you an
example from your own article as to how you could do this:“CHICAGO — While Openly Heterosexual President George W. Bush visits
Illinois’ neighboring states and flies over the Prairie State this week,
Openly Heterosexual Former First Lady and Openly Hetrosexual now-U.S.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will return to her hometown area of
Chicago Friday night to raise funds for Openly Heterosexual State
Senator Barack Obama’s (D-Chicago) U.S. Senate race.”To ensure your not too repetative you could change your descriptions
throughout the article as here below:“The Woman-Loving Democrat Obama is opposing Alegedly Multiple Woman
Loving Republican Jack Ryan in the November 2004 election to fill the
seat being vacated by U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) – Who is
also, you know, a “Real Man” If you know what we mean. And I think you
do. ”Glenn Brown, Chicago Illinois
I have it on good sources that the only thing that threatens my marriage is my inability to find the laundry shoot.
More Gayapalooza at the Leader
On more important matters, the article mentions Michael Bauer who will be holding a fundraiser for Jeff Smith in the MO-3. More details to come. Jeff is straight, but he can be quite happy.
Chicago Report On Trib’s Coverage
Michael Van Winkle takes the Trib to task for their treatment of Jack Ryan’s position on the Davis-Bacon Act. Michael arges that the Trib is being unfair by not giving Obama the same treatment on Iraq.
The problem is Michael is creating a rather strained argument in relation to Obama’s take on Iraq. Just because one was against the Iraqi War does not automatically mean that they should be calling for an automatic pullout. It isn’t inconsistent to have been against the war, observe that regardless of what you felt about the war we are there, and then deal with that fact as the next stage in setting policy.
The Trib piece on Ryan and the Davis-Bacon Act is here.
The companion Obama piece is here.
To me, if there is a problem with the coverage it is that Obama’s covers more issues, but that makes sense given his longer record. I think the point about concealed carry for retired police officers is analogous to the argument made in the Ryan piece, but just not as indepth.
As a note–Chicago Report is a great magazine/blog-the reason it was moved to the expanded blog roll was the level of Illinois content to other content. Moving it isn’t a statement on the overall content as much as guiding readers to the most often updated blogs on Illinois. I highly recommend it. That goes for many blogs on the expanded list.
Help Restore My Faith In Democrats
With all by G-Rod bashing I need a pick me up–go to the right and donate to Barack Obama!
Racial Slippage
A topic that has come up here in the past and in comments at Political State Report are arguments over racial slippage–or a tendency in some places for support of black candidates in polls disappearing in the election. Charlie Cook made comments that suggested Obama might suffer from such an effect and Rich Miller took him to task in his weekly column.
Cook usually knows his stuff, but he should have looked at Illinois history before he predicted that Obama would need a big lead in the polls to win.
Unlike those southern states Cook described, Illinois has a history of electing African-Americans in statewide races.
Roland Burris was elected to three terms as state comptroller, beginning in 1978. In 1990, Burris was elected the state’s attorney general.
In 1992, Carol Moseley Braun won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, beating all the polls, confounding the pundits and upsetting incumbent Alan Dixon. In November of that year, Moseley Braun again beat the polls in her win against Republican Rich Williamson.
Moseley Braun lost her seat to Peter Fitzgerald in 1998, but she did better than all but one of the polls predicted.
In 2002, Secretary of State Jesse White won all of the state’s 102 counties in his re-election bid, out-performing every prediction.
This spring, Obama took on six opponents, including two-term comptroller Dan Hynes and multimillionaire Blair Hull, and won with an astounding 53 percent of the vote. No published poll even came close to predicting Obama’s final result.
Another problem with applying this racial slippage theory to Illinois is that it is based on just a few high-profile races in Republican-leaning states.
Illinois is trending more Democratic every year. While Republicans have scored major victories in Virginia and North Carolina, and they practically own Texas, Illinois is dominated by the Democrats. All but one statewide constitutional officer is a Democrat. Both chambers of the General Assembly are Democrat-controlled, and the Illinois Supreme Court has a solid Dem majority.
There is no reason to think that legitimate black candidates in Illinois suffer from the color of their skin with the electorate. While one can find some voters who might have problems with the race of an officeholder, there is no evidence that race has negatively impacted any general election race. Moseley Braun improved over the polls despite have several scandals in 1998. If there is a test case for when such an effect should have occurred, that was it. It didn’t happen.
If Obama were to lose, it wouldn’t be because of his race, it would be because of an effective Ryan campaign that can paint itself as the center and Obama to the left of Illinois. The problem with this happening come from two reasons. One, Ryan is running essentially as George Bush and Bush isn’t popular in Illinois. Two, the campaign has shown little in the way of effectively getting its message out.
And for an great column on the challenges of policing Iraq, read last week’s column on the Illinois 233rd National Guard MP Unit which just returned from duty in Iraq.
IL Presidential Poll
The earlier leaked poll from Harstad for the Obama campaign confirms one reason why I put some stock in it–the Presidential numbers are in line with other polls:
A statewide poll taken for Illinois Democratic Senate hopeful Barack Obama pegs Kerry at 51 percent compared to 37 percent for Bush.
The internals in the poll are interesting: While women generally favor Kerry over Bush (53 percent for Kerry, 34 percent for Bush), the big divide comes between married and single females. Some 60 percent of single women would vote for Kerry; 26 percent for Bush.
Bush was running only 3 points ahead of Kerry in Downstate Illinois, defined in this poll as everyplace outside the Chicago media market, with most of Kerry’s muscle found among Chicago voters, who backed Kerry 73 percent to 12 percent for Bush.
Obama’s campaign shared with me pages from its poll about the presidential race in Illinois. The poll of 653 likely Illinois voters by Harstad Strategic Research was taken March 25-31 and has a 4 percent margin of error.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it again, if Ryan ties himself to Bush he’ll lose.
Ryan’s Cheekiness Is Sloppy
From the Capitol Fax:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK ”We never really say anything negative about our opponents, we’ll keep that throughout the general. I think voters want that. They want to hear about what issues you care about. How you want to change America and Illinois for the better. They don’t want to hear negative stuff,” Jack Ryan told Peoria’s WEEK-TV yesterday.
This is the same Ryan, you will recall, whose campaign referred to Barack Obama on Friday as “to the left of Mao Tse-Tung.” It’s the same candidate who, just last Thursday, toured the state falsely claiming Obama had voted for hundreds of tax hikes that he had actually voted against (WEEK reported on this fly-around, by the way). It’s the same Ryan who criticized Obama for attending a hip-hop convention rather than show up for a Cook County Medical Society meeting. It’s the same Ryan whose spokesperson called Obama’s politics, “truly extremist liberal.”
From Schoenburg last Sunday (no link)
Springfield State Journal-Register’s Schoenburg writes ex-teacher/ex-investment banker Jack Ryan (R) “is going to have to do a better job of preparation if he wants to be a serious contender” against state Sen. Barack Obama (D). “Lesson 1: You can’t leave the details to your hired guns. You have to know what you’re talking about.” Ryan, at a presser: “What we’ve found is over the last four years Barack Obama has supported 428 tax and fee increases.”
It turned out that 146 of the fees and taxes came from one bill, SB1028, which created the IL FIRST infrastructure program in ’99. The rest — more than 280 fees and taxes — were in just one other bill, SB1903 from ’03. That was the state’s budget authorization for FY ’04, which Obama voted “No” on. Ryan spokesperson Kelli Phiel “argued when told of the snafu that Obama still supported the state budget paid for by the fees.” Phiel: “If you vote for a budget, you have to find a way to pay for that budget. If you don’t have a plan to pay for that, it’s a de facto vote.” Ryan aide Dan Proft said Obama plays the legislative game of voting for spending programs but not being “accountable for financing that spending.”
“Even if there is an argument to be made by following this path, Jack Ryan certainly didn’t put it that way at the news conference. Not only didn’t he explain that he was accusing Obama of supporting fees Obama didn’t vote for, Ryan didn’t even seem familiar with the bills involved. And if Ryan knew that Obama voted against the bill calling for most of those fees, but didn’t say so, while repeatedly saying that Obama ‘supported’ them, that’s the next thing to dishonest. This was the same press conference where Ryan misread a chart,” saying “We now have more employees working for the state than working in manufacturing companies.” The chart actually listed 841K as the number of workers in all government jobs, not just state jobs. “And, when asked, Ryan didn’t know the origin of that chart”
The first sign of the unpreparedness was at the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board meeting where he didn’t know about the Kjellander payment from the state bond deal. Overall, the undercurrent of the coverage on the guy is that he is a lightweight. Whether that is fair or not, this kind of disconnect between the charges, reality, and his awareness is going to send him down the toilet in terms of press good will—a dangerous place to be–just ask Rich Williamson and Al Salvi.
Unfortunately for Ryan, there are no longer eight Republicans in the race for U.S. Senate. It?s just him. And it?s time to do some homework.
Obama/Ryan Analysis
A site I check in on every once in a while is Russ Stewart’s. He does a weekly column on Chicago/Illinois politics–not quite a blog, not quite a regular news column. But one that caught my attention (and was mentioned in comments) was his column on the Obama/Ryan race.
The key graphs to me reflect the demographic changes that Illinois is undergoing in relation to Republican voters:
What is a detriment, however, is the stupor of Illinois’ Republican voters. Republican turnout has declined appreciably. In 1996, when conservative insurgent Salvi upset the party-endorsed “establishment” candidate, Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra, the primary turnout was 791,645. In 1998, when conservative insurgent Fitzgerald upset the “establishment” candidate, Comptroller Loleta Didrickson, the turnout was 719,522. In 2002, when “establishment” candidate Jim Durkin beat Jim Oberweis and anti-abortion conservative John Cox, the turnout was 825,231.
This year turnout in the Senate primary dropped to 638,502, which is 186,729 less than in 2002, 81,020 less than in 1998 and 153,143 less than in 1996.
Most troubling for the Republicans and Ryan is the fact that from 2002 to 2004, turnout dropped by more than 48,000 in Cook County, 45,000 in DuPage County, 27,000 in Lake County, 29,000 in Kane County, 13,000 in Will County and 146,000 Downstate. The only Collar County where Republican turnout was stable was in McHenry, where turnout declined from 30,636 to 28,758.
It is a bad thing to be a one-party state. While the Speaker is holding the Governor’s feet to the fire over the budget a realistic opposition is better at holding the ruling party from excess. This is why, as in the last post, I mention Republicans who are approaching issues seriously–Illinois needs them–not in the majority mind you, but as a serious opposition party. Right now, with the Republican lurch to the right, that is increasingly a problem. Cross is a moderate, but more and more Leader types are influencing the Party to the right in a moderate state. There is a malaise in the Republican Party and they need a renewal based on the median voter, not purity of thought.
But Most Importantly….
Contribute to Obama at the right. Justin has paid for that ad out of his own hard earned money, let’s make sure he gets bang for the buck! Or as the campaign is putting it. let’s turn Illinois Obama Blue!
Obama-Ryan by the numbers:
Illinois^^^ Post-Primary Report 2/26/04-3/31/04
1stQ 1stQ 1stQ Cash
Raised Receipts Spent PACs Debt On-Hand
Ryan (R) 889,142 889,142 1,040,441 80,500 503,427 209,353
Obama (D) 1,672,503 1,677,934 2,709,044 168,285 76,885 241,271
So we start at a tie, let’s make sure it doesn’t stay that way. As of now, I don’t believe Obama has larger contribution caps though he should have some by the end of the race.
UPDATE: No time to fix the formatting–just go slow.
Is He Conservative?
I think Oneman and I are going to have to turn this into a running gag on Ryan. I’m not singling him out as the only one who thinks this, but we seem to comment a lot on this issue back and forth. We both think the other is wrong, but not in a way that makes communicating difficult. Hopefully that will continue.
But today, Ramesh Ponnuru and I come down on the side that Jack Ryan is indeed, quite conservative.
What distinguishes the Republicans’ 2004 candidates is not only how many conservatives they are fielding. It is remarkable how many smart, idealistic, policy-oriented conservatives have a serious chance of winning this year. Here are seven such candidates: Herman Cain, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Jack Ryan, Bob Schaeffer, Pat Toomey, and David Vitter. (They are running, respectively, in Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Illinois, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana.) These candidates don’t just have good voting records. They have fought for conservative advances on Social Security reform, health savings accounts, spending cuts, and free trade.
Admittedly, I’m pretty much a staunch free trader, but the voters aren’t as much as I am. Later Ramesh compares this crop to the 2002 crop:
The 2002 Senate elections went very well for conservatives, but the potential in 2004 is in this respect greater. Norm Coleman, Elizabeth Dole, Jim Talent, and John Thune were all pretty conservative candidates. But they were, in general, not as conservative as the 2004 candidates mentioned above: Coleman was against drilling in Alaska, and Thune voted for campaign-finance reform.
And he throws Salvi in there too as comparable. All I can say is that if the GOP wants to become that conservative—–PRETTY PLEASE! And damn, I love the median voter theorem.