Posted by Rick Pearson at 4:44 p.m.
Democratic President Barack Obama today spoke to U.S. House Republicans in Baltimore and took note of how bipartisanship can cause some sticky issues by citing the current Republican governor’s contest in Illinois.
The issue came up as Obama fielded a question from U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton, a former Illinois Senate colleague of Obama. The president noted how he and Roskam “did work together effectively on a whole host of issues.”
Then Obama said to Roskam that “one of our former colleagues is right now running for governor on the Republican side in Illinois” — a reference to state Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale.
“In the Republican primary, of course, they’re running ads of him saying nice things about me,” Obama said. “Poor guy.”
The president was referring to TV attack ads being aired by former state Republican Chairman Andy McKenna of Chicago. McKenna cites Dillard’s appearance in a 2007 TV ad on behalf of Obama’s presidential candidacy during the Iowa caucuses. The McKenna ad asks if Dillard “is really who he thought he was.”
Dillard, a former DuPage County GOP chairman, has run into frequent criticism for the ads, which he said he did as a friend to speak to Obama’s bipartisanship in the state legislature. But Dillard also was elected as a 2008 delegate for unsuccessful Republican presidential contender, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and has criticized the president’s social agenda.