{"id":256032,"date":"2010-01-31T16:57:38","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T21:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0128773b025b970c"},"modified":"2010-01-31T16:57:38","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T21:57:38","slug":"democratic-senate-candidates-warn-of-gop-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/256032","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Senate candidates warn of GOP tide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by John Chase<\/em> at 3:55 p.m.<\/p>\n

Trying to stem any Republican tide from hitting Illinois, Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate rallied supporters today with a similar battle cry that voters need to nominate the best candidate on Tuesday or risk losing the seat once held by Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

<\/br>At events for both David Hoffman and rival Alexi Giannoulias, the recent GOP Senate victory in Massachusetts was cited as a cautionary tale for why Democrats can\u2019t be complacent in picking a nominee for the fall campaign.
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<\/br>\u201cIllinois is not Massachusetts, right?\u201d U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., called out to roughly 200 Giannoulias supporters at a union hall in Chicago. \u201cHere in the heartland\u2026working families understand the difference between people and administrations and elected officials who want to create jobs and those who don\u2019t.\u201d
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<\/br>Hoffman, meanwhile, said Senator-elect Scott Brown\u2019s victory for the seat long held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy shows candidates need to answer all questions about their background and be fully vetted by voters before taking on the Republican nominee, which is expected to be veteran U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk.
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<\/br>Hoffman made his comments as part of a repeated effort to question Giannoulias\u2019 history of work at Broadway Bank, the struggling Chicago financial institution that Giannoulias\u2019 father founded.
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<\/br>Hoffman said Giannoulias continues to avoid accepting any responsibility for decisions he made as senior loan officer at the bank between 2002 and 2006. Last week, the struggling Broadway Bank, which is still run by one of Giannoulias\u2019 brothers, agreed to a consent order with banking regulators that requires the bank to raise capital and receive more oversight.
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<\/br>\u201cThis is going to be a difficult year for Democrats and\u2026this is our president\u2019s Senate seat,\u201d Hoffman said. \u201cAnd we know the Republicans are going to throw everything they can into this general election. And so it is of critical importance that we have the strongest possible nominee.\u201d
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<\/br>Giannoulias, the first-term state treasurer, left the bank in 2006. He said less than 9 percent of bank\u2019s nonperforming loans originated during his time at Broadway.
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<\/br>\u201cThe numbers speak for themselves and you can always reevaluate, but when I left we were very well capitalized, we were very high-performing,\u201d Giannoulias said. \u201cIt\u2019s very tough out there and (Hoffman has) no feel for that. My family\u2019s business is like thousands of businesses in Illinois that are dealing with horrible financial times.\u201d
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<\/br>Giannoulias made his comments following a campaign event in Chicago before embarking on a two-day tour across the state. At the Chicago event, Giannoulias was endorsed by Jacob Meister, a lawyer who had been running for the nomination but dropped out of the race today to endorse Giannoulias.
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<\/br>Meister, who had been having trouble garnering much interest in his campaign and had recently received only 1 percent support in a Tribune poll, said he felt dropping out would give Giannoulias a better shot at winning the nomination. He also said Giannoulias agreed to support his positions on jobs and gay rights.
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<\/br>Meister, who is gay, had campaigned for months mostly about bringing more jobs to Illinois and didn\u2019t make his stances on gay issues a central theme of his campaign until recently. Although Mesiter\u2019s poll numbers weren\u2019t very high, Giannoulias excitedly accepted his support.
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<\/br>\u201cI\u2019m humbled that someone who just yesterday was a competitor is now endorsing my campaign and as he mentioned in his comments, he wants to make sure we win this race on Tuesday and November,\u201d Giannoulias said. \u201cHe understands I\u2019s the candidate who is talking about jobs and the economy.\u201d
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<\/br>Hoffman\u2019s campaign dismissed the endorsement, saying questions had been raised about whether Meister and Giannoulias were aligned for months.
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<\/br>\u201cI\u2019m not sure it has a great deal of impact,\u201d Hoffman said.
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<\/br>Former Chicago Urban League chief Cheryle Jackson was also campaigning today and expected to attend a rally at a South Side church tonight.
<\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by John Chase at 3:55 p.m. Trying to stem any Republican tide from hitting Illinois, Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate rallied supporters today with a similar battle cry that voters need to nominate the best candidate on Tuesday or risk losing the seat once held by Barack Obama. At events for both David Hoffman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}