I actually figured Pat Hughes would get about 1/3 of the primary vote kind of like Jim Edgar’s conservative opponents when he was running for Governor–including Jack Roeser himself.
It appears I was giving Hughes too much credit as he’s sitting on 8 percent in the Trib poll.
Even with Andy Martin running commercials calling Kirk gay, Kirk still has a commanding lead and appears set for a big primary win. Pat Hughes has slightly higher name recognition than Andy Martin.
Red State thinks Mark Kirk and Pat Brady ought to be afraid….
Pat Brady, the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, says the anti-Mark Kirk element within the GOP is ‘fringe.’
That’s actually not quite true and is precisely why so many conservatives in Illinois don’t like Brady or Kirk — they feel repeated disrespected and treated as fringe.
In fact, considering how active the Illinois Tea Party movement is in opposing Kirk, Brady is, in effect, calling all of those activists fringe. He might want to be careful.
Conservatives across the country are seriously considering a last minute air-drop of support into Illinois for Pat Hughes. The thinking goes that the last minute effort to help Scott Brown put him over the finish line and the same could be done in these last eleven days before the Illinois GOP primary.
If conservatives come out early next week in an organized fashion, throw a pile of targeted money into Illinois, and rapidly drive up Pat Hughes’ name identification, the polling in Illinois suggests Hughes will win.
He is not polling well against Kirk right now, but then he has significantly lower name identification. All the polling suggests Kirk’s support is very week and once people find out about Hughes, they break overwhelmingly for Hughes.
It’ll be interesting to see if it is game on for Hughes in Illinois. We’ll see what conservatives do come Monday or Tuesday of this week.
Two weeks out is a bit late to decide to throw a pile of targeted money at the race. But, by all means do so and then consider helping out the Constitution Party in the general…..