Seriously? Of all the casualties of this election season he was the one to survive?
I believe it was Dan Patrick who used to say about Chris Carter–All he does is catch touchdowns.
All Quinn does is wins elections.
Credit to the Democratic Governors’ Association which did an incredible job keeping Quinn afloat. They pointed out Brady’s conservatism and beat it into enough heads to pull this out. Others like Personal PAC and the Sierra Club also came in, but the money from DGA helped Quinn survive the RGA onslaught.
Not really surprised–Brady tracked Kirk’s performance basically everywhere, only he slightly underperformed Kirk, probably for the reasons you mention. To paraphrase a friend: “who could have predicted that reducing access to birth control wouldn’t be popular among women?”
My guess: Hoffman would have beaten Kirk, Dillard would have beaten Quinn. Oops.
Yes I voted for Hoffman. He would have been better but it seems the insider primary voting activist democrats wanted to go more liberal than moderate. I talk to a few of them who said Giannoulias was better because he was against free trade and wanted to raise taxes faster. I guess there is no room in today’s world for the middle.
NPR interviewed a couple liberal democrats today that sounded like they were influenced by the negative adds. The bogus claim about loaning money to mafia members in Florida and loosing money on the education savings account seemed to stick. If people hate the negative adds why to they give them so much credence. The Brightstar funds declined. Well the stock market tanked and that’s what happens. One loan was to someone with mafia ties. How he is supposed to do anything about that? Why trust an add from the Crossroad group a know ‘criminal’ syndicate flaunting the tax code as not for profit organization. I call them criminal because they knowingly break the tax laws with the knowledge that the IRS has no enforcement mechanism. If you can get away with murder doesn’t mean its still not murder.
As for Governor it is sad we are still stuck with Quinn being hedged in with Madigan as speaker again. This election seems to be about all the change we don’t need. The only decent candidate for Governor was Rich Whitney. But for some reason the Green party can’t get anywhere near enough support from the electorate as the ingrained parties. Now our only hope is if someone tries to take Madigan out as speaker.
I really just think too many Democrats stayed home outside of Cook County. Pure and simple. There is no way Bean or Seals should have lost. Cook County just came out to eek this thing for Quinn but it appears that LeAlan Jones was the spoiler for Alexi.
I generally agree with Aaron except as much as I’d like to blame Jones, Labno countered it enough that it didn’t matter much. Pretty much, in swing districts, Dems who are marginal voters stayed home and it was just enough statewide.
Hoffman would have won, but it wasn’t just that he was less liberal–on most issues they were close. What infuriated me was the attacking of SEIU apparently to make the Trib happy or something. I can handle policy trade-offs, but I don’t like scapegoating allies.
At the time, I didn’t know the bank was collapsing as well which while I like Alexi a lot and think he’ll be back as a good candidate, just was a little too much. It’s true he wasn’t personally responsible and such, but it killed him on fundraising and earned media for a few months.
Quinn–well, he’s better than Brady. I would have been happy with Hynes who I think could have handled Brady much easier, but I lost that argument. And Madigan isn’t going anywhere. That’s not a good thing, but it’s the reality for this cycle. Hopefully someone decides to man up and decide to increase revenue somehow or we are going to be replaying this over and over again.
The Green Party’s primary problem is they seem to reject raising money. Obviously it would be tough for them to do, but they don’t employ any of the tools progressives have created for grassroots fundraising. Until they get serious about raising money to get their message out there, they are not much besides an afterthought. I also think they would be smarter to run for some well targeted legislative races first in relatively safe Dem districts. There they can get votes without hurting an incumbent and build up a base.
Elections are the sum of the parts. In Illinois at least, the Senate seat was lost because there was never a message about why Kirk should be defeated. You really cannot win an election when all you do is play defense.
Pat Quinn is a miraculous guy but he has lost his share. In this election it was simple, Brady never sealed the deal. It helps quite a bit to remind us all about what a crook Blagojevich was, but crooks in Illinois is truly bi-partisan. Even now, I have no idea what a Brady administration would have meant for Illinois. On the other hand many knew that Pat Quinn will give running the state his best shot, and is willing to make tough choices. Perhaps that is all we can expect.
One final note, showing again that there are many pieces in a victory. The losers shared a trait. Both were wealthy men who paid no U.S. income tax. There are voters out there who used that fact alone to vote against Alexi and Brady. These little things add up to big things. Elections are often won by candidates but they are also lost. Last night may have been an example of two different ways to lose.
Chicago area voters don`t go for downstate conservatives.
In a sense, the Senate race was the Seinfeld race–it was about nothing most of the time. I think that’s a good point Stuart.
Great. Now the Democrats get to eat shit in the White House and the governor’s mansion for two years, while the Republicans get to hang around in the state and national legislatures taking potshots.