CHICAGO – Scott Brown is not on the ballot, but definitely in the minds of Illinois voters as they go to the polls today in the nation’s first regularly scheduled 2010 primary election.
“It’s not the Kennedy seat. It’s the people’s seat,” said Brown before his special election miracle in Massachusetts earlier this month.
Republicans here have modified Brown’s rally cry to “It’s not Obama’s seat, it’s the people’s seat!”
Interim Illinois U.S. Senator Roland Burris is done in DC come November. The seat once occupied by then senator Obama- and allegedly offered to the highest bidder by Illinois indicted former Governor Rod Blagojevich – is open again this year.
Democrats hold all the major elected offices state wide, they outnumber Republicans more than 2-1 in the state legislature, and 7 of the last 9 US senators have been Democrats. Those kind of numbers would be daunting, were they not so clearly blamable for the corruption and incompetence plaguing Illinois government in recent years.
And this time, as GOP comeback-poster boy-Brown said, “If it can happen in Massachusetts it can happen anywhere.” The GOP can taste it.
The Republican primary frontrunner is 5 term republican representative Mark Kirk of Illinois’ 10th congressional district. Kirk is a fiscal conservative and a social moderate, similar in many ways to Brown. He has a commanding lead in GOP polls over 4 other Republican rivals.
The Democratic race is less clear. The frontrunner is little known state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. He is one of the President’s basketball buddies from Chicago and a former executive in Broadway Bank, his family’s business. It lost $75 million dollars last year and federal regulators have ordered it to bolster it’s capitalization by tens of millions in a matter of weeks. Broadway Bank is now a political football.
There are 2 other Democrats in the race: Cheryle Jackson, who led the Chicago Urban League and David Hoffman, an ex-inspector general for the City of Chicago who’s running an attack ad against Giannoulias pointing out that Broadway Bank lent millions to convicted felon Tony Rezko..an Obama fundraiser who got the Obamas a sweet and controversial deal on a house in Chicago. Chicago-style politics?!?
Republicans are rooting for Giannoulias and the myriad ways they might defeat him in the fall. They have more to look forward too.
Blagojevich’s trial begins in June…many here expect White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senior Adviser to the President Valerie Jarrett will both be required to testify since their voices are reportedly on some of the FBI’s blago-wiretaps. Among the more colorful charges (and wiretaps) against the ex-gov: that he tried to auction the senate seat after Obama won the presidency.
There are more than 40 candidates for 7 offices on the ballot today, it is the earliest primary ever in Illinois and the first since Blago got busted.
When Barack Obama ran for US senate, the GOP in Illinois was in such disarray they could not even recruit an in-state candidate. At the very last minute they had to bring in radio host and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes…who got crushed.
There are 39 weeks before the general election and this time Illinois Republicans are already competitive. Yet, Democrats are not to be counted out in Illinois, they don’t call it Chicago style politics for nothing.