1. Obama. Has the poll numbers and the good press. Getting the free press and getting good free press. Probably the largest group of motivated true believers to push the campaign forward. With Hynes probably the biggest benefit of having a low turnout election. While Hynes balances it with organization, Obama gets a core group of motivated volunteers.
2. Hynes. Decent polls and strong organization. Good media coverage. Still needs a better haircut. Key thing is that he can’t seem to get a hook in his media. Lots of organization on the ground though and should slightly outperform on election day.
3. Hull. Really the wildcard at this point. Several million in ads still coming out n the next few days. Seems to have stopped the bleeding, but free media has turned on him. Probably needs to move beyond the the divorce and stay on message like a laser. Downstate isn’t nearly as harsh on the divorce as Chicago and that is a key area of support.
4. Pappas. Still in there, and has a big media buy. My sense is the ad is one ad cycle too late, but still has good name recognition and no one really dislikes her. Needs to pick up undecided women.
5. Chico. Steve Rauschenberger of the Dems, but Dems have good candidates besides him.
6. Skinner. Might be marginal enough to throw the race, but frankly the race is so strung out at this point, who knows who is helped.
7. Washington. Web site down–no one knows anything. Any tips out there? Seems like about the time to get out and throw someone some support.
I still have Hynes 3rd, with Pappas threatening to overtake him. His campaign is listless, message-less, and he doesn’t even benefit from the organization he’s had in the past. Hynes’s organizational strength — in my opinion — is being greatly over-estimated this time.
While Hynes got the AFL-CIO endorsement — it was an inside baseball play using parlimentary rules and the muscle of Ed Smith and Laborers International to mask the fact that Obama already had the support of — SEIU, IFT, and AFSCME — not coincidentally the three of the biggest money and manpower producing unions in the state.
Hynes’ organization is limited to South side irish wards, and the Southwest suburbs organization built by Madigan/Tom Hynes in the 90’s to control House races. Downstate — he’s basically got Metro East locked down. Beyond that, Hynes is relying on name ID and media. Neither are helping him much.
The big problem for Hynes — his ads suck. The Hull and Obama ads are an order of magnitude better than Hynes.
Obama gets 70% of the black vote (I don’t care what the neighbors are telling Rush’s and Stroger’s people, when they get in the booth they’re going to help a brother out). If they’re 30% of the dem primary electorate, that’s a base of 21%, and i think the 70% may be a bit conservative.
Del Valle and Colon et al. can’t do that much with Hispanic voters with the pulls from Chico and Gutierrez (Hull) (although this one isn’t too great) and the HDO (Hynes). Say 15% of 10% of the primary voters for 1.5%.
White voters, harder to categorize. The numbers i’ve heard say Obama is no. 1 among women across the board and if female Hull supporters are bailing, as i guess they will somewhat disproportionately, they move in numbers to Barack. (Part of this is based on women being more liberal than men [as a consequence of being smarter] and some is the subconscious attractiveness of who they’d rather sleep with. My informal polling gives this one to Barack, particularly in light of the not uncommon reaction to Hynes’ ad–“that was his wife?!?! i thought it was just some doctor!” the guy just ain’t sexy. His wife is sort of cute, though.)
Hull will hold onto about 20% of the electorate just because of his media campaign and the slight impact of the divorce downstate. (A big part of the vote loss will be due to people questioning his judgement in marrying and divorcing the &*%^/ twice not just from the alleged physical and verbal violence.) If that 20% is constant across all ethnic groups, that leaves 80% of the white vote for the other candidates.
If Obama can get just 15% of white voters, that’s 9 more percentage points to add to the 22.5% i counted above for 31.5%. If Hull gets about 20%, that leaves 48.5% of the votes. Skinner and Washington each get 1% for showing up, Chico gets 8% because his votes have been undercounted and Ed Burke will not be embarrassed in the 14th and Luis doesn’t really have coattails, Maria gets 15% because her vote has been overcounted, leaving 23.5% for the great white hope. (Think nobody doesn’t like Maria? Check out The General’s comments on the Illinois Leader website about her firing the blacks and Hispanics in her office and replacing them with Greeks!)
Questions with no answers:
1. As i’ve asked before, why WAS Maria wearing that in her commercial? (Hear the story about Skrebneski making her take off her top and put on his sweater to take the picture for her website? What a hoot.)
2. Why is Vallas letting himself be used in a second teevee commercial for Gery (remember last year’s? Paul was in one then, too), who, in supporting hot rod in the primary, probably cost Paul (and the people of the State of Illinois) that election?
Why i will vote against Hynes in the general if he pulls it out (and for the republican if he promises to keep this federal prosecutor in place if shrub wins):Besides a negative gut reaction to political legacies in a democracy, don’t forget what his father and others of his ilk did when Washington fairly won the nomination in 1983 and 1987. They weren’t democrats then, supporting, at various times, Epton, Vrdolyak and, yes, Tommy Hynes, for mayor as republicans and third party candidates. You may say the sins of the father shouldn’t rest on the son, but if he wasn’t the son he’d be some moderately successful young partner at some law firm and he doesn’t hesitate to capitalize on daddy’s connections, whose interests i’m sure he’ll be serving. I could vote for any of the others in the general…..
….BUT I WON’T HAVE TO!
saw the trib poll. looks like i’m way off on Pappas. i guess it’ll be closer between Obama and Hynes but Obama should still pull it out