Like Quinn, Duckworth champions veterans issues. She lost both her legs and partial use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq in 2004. She ran for Congress in 2006 and lost, but then was appointed to her state post by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.<\/p>\n
The Cohen debacle has left Democrats with the opportunity to handpick a running mate for Quinn, who squeaked out a win earlier this month after a bruising primary battle.<\/p>\n
Quinn expects to have a lot of input into the decision that ultimately must be ratified by the partys state central committee. The committee is scheduled to meet next month.<\/p>\n
The No. 2 finisher in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, state Rep. Arthur Turner of Chicago, isnt guaranteed the spot, and Quinn seems intent on broadening the search.<\/p>\n
I just think theres a lot of people out there who may be interested and I think its important not to ignore anyone, Quinn said.<\/p>\n
Turner, who has told party leaders he still wants a shot at the states No. 2 post, attended an event Friday with Quinn and said he didnt know where the governors coming from.<\/p>\n
Everybody now wants to open up the process and its amazing how the rules change as we move along, said Turner, a state legislator for nearly 30 years, and I want to say in particular, as minorities start to move up and show that theyre able and qualified.<\/p>\n
If picked, Turner would be the fourth black Democrat on the ticket from the Chicago area.
\nSome have suggested Democrats need to balance the ticket geographically because the eventual Republican nominee could be from downstate.<\/p>\n
The Feb. 2 GOP primary ended in a virtual tie with state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington leading state Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale by only a few hundred votes. The final results have not yet been certified.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Rickey Hendon of Chicago, another Democrat who also ran in the lieutenant governor primary, said he isnt upset that the governor wants to consider balancing the ticket with a woman by considering Duckworth. But Hendon said he still wants the job.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n While Democrats continue to jockey for the partys empty lieutenant governor spot on the November ballot, Gov. Pat Quinn said Friday that he has encouraged Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth to consider it. Quinn said Duckworth was considering everything because she has a job right now as an assistant secretary at the Veterans Affairs Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341292","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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