Trib Front Pages the Illinois Circular Firing Squad Team

It appears the Illinois GOP (ICFST) is concerned that they might be LaRouched. For those that don’t recall, the Illinois Democratic Party slated two guys with ethnic names in the 1986 election and two LaRouche candidates with names like Fairfield and Hart.  Fairfield and Hart won and so Adlai Stevenson formed a third party ticket to compete leaving the loons to themselves.

So now they have the inexperienced Steve Sauerberg running against two loons who they are terrified might win! Sauerberg is a doctrinaire conservative Republican and family doctor.  Nothing exciting and he has all of $67,000 in the bank.

This time, the GOP primary contest features three contenders who have never held a public office. It has been a below-the-radar race featuring a party-backed candidate against a perennial contender with a controversial past that includes making anti-Semitic remarks and a fringe candidate who has made the elimination of toll roads a top agenda item.

The state Republican Party took the unusual step of issuing a primary endorsement of Steve Sauerberg, a Willowbrook family practice physician, in part to try to marginalize his challengers. But some Republicans have expressed fears that Sauerberg’s low-volume campaign might not be enough to defeat Andy Martin and Mike Psak, a result that would cast further doubt on the GOP’s relevance in Illinois.

Andy Martin is the assclown who started the Obama is a Muslim smear.

One challenger, Martin, has been a frequent candidate in Illinois and Florida in the last three decades. His last appearance on the state’s Republican primary ballot was two years ago, when he received 6,095 votes in finishing last in a five-way race in which more than 729,000 ballots were cast.

In 1973, the Illinois Supreme Court refused to allow Martin admission to the bar, saying he lacked the fitness to be an attorney.

Federal courts have repeatedly sanctioned him for what judges said is his filing of hundreds of largely meritless legal actions.

In early January, a Cook County judge tossed a lawsuit Martin filed against the Tribune alleging the newspaper portrayed him in a false light, contending that his name was not surveyed in a poll of the GOP primary candidates for governor that showed he had less than 1 percent support.

Judge Stuart Palmer ruled Martin’s allegations about the poll appeared to be “simply wrong” in that Martin’s name was included in the survey.

Palmer also rejected the lawsuit, in part, because he said Martin had failed to adhere to a federal court injunction preventing him from initiating lawsuits in state courts without filing a document reciting his litigation history.

In his past, Martin also has expressed anti-Semitic views. When he ran for Congress in Connecticut in 1986, the name of his congressional campaign committee included the phrase “to exterminate Jew power in America,” Federal Election Commission records show.

In a 1983 personal bankruptcy case, he referred to a federal bankruptcy judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In a related court filing in the case, he also expressed sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

And there’s more.

Circle ’em up and fire.  I think after the gift of Keyes I can not ask for Martin to win this, though I’ll be delighted to watch Andy McKenna try and spin that.