Sweet on Cegelis

Lynn Sweet covers Cegelis’ effort to ramp up her campaign including

–full time fundraiser
–Hiring Adelstein/Liston for media and strategy (they worked for Bean–though Rahm did a lot of the planning for that campaign himself)
–Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for polling

I think we can all see exactly what Christine is doing and that is trying to attract Rahm with smart choices. It’s generally a good strategy, though the outflow of money has to be very controlled at this point. There is some skepticism out there to be sure, but beating down that skepticism is a pretty common barrier for many candidates.

Sweet sets the bar at the September report having to show some movement to improve on last cycle. I think that’s right though possibly a good January report could still cover for a middling September report. The key to a September report will be whether it’s low enough to attract another competitor to the race–and while a self-funder is mentioned, I wouldn’t limit that as the only possibility.

The key advantage right now is that Christine is the primary public talk in the race right now.

One minor criticism of the article is that IL-06 doesn’t appear to be heavily Republican as it once was–I’ve heard reports the Kerry numbers were around 47% in 2004. The Almanac of American Politics will have the data up in September, but while that is a leaning Republican District, it’s an open seat that will be targeted.

My understanding is that DCCC is polling the District now and that will help shape future decisions as well. More on DCCC in a bit.