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* The venerated Cook Political Report changed its rating yesterday on the 14th Congressional District special election between Jim Oberweis and Bill Foster from “lean Republican” to “tossup.” Here’s part of the explanation…
Four days out, the special election to fill the seat left vacant by the resignation of former Speaker Dennis Hastert is too close to call… most agree Foster owns the late momentum.
The national GOP’s spending illustrates the party’s deep concern about where things stand in this pricey exurban Chicago district, which has a PVI score of R+5. As of the most recent FEC filings, the NRCC had spent over $1.1 million in independent expenditures – close to one fifth of its cash on hand - against Foster. By contrast, the DCCC had spent just over half that sum against Oberweis.
One Republican familiar with Illinois politics characterized the match up as a “race to the basement.” Indeed, whereas previous electoral experience is an asset for most candidates, Oberweis’s past unsuccessful bids are now coming back to haunt him. […]
Republican insiders also worry that Oberweis has not done enough to confront Foster directly on conservative base-motivating issues such as illegal immigration, and that an ad taking Foster’s debate comments out of context has backfired.
The Obama endorsement ad of Foster, the Tribune’s Foster endorsement, which included some harsh comments about Oberweis, and the Saturday voting are also cited as reasons for the switch. But they note the strong Republican tendencies of the district as Oberweis’ saving grace.
* But here’s something Cook may have missed…
Northern Illinois University, boasting more than 25,000 students, falls within the 14th Congressional District and students registered to vote in DeKalb could have a say in deciding whether Democrat Bill Foster or Republican Jim Oberweis will fill Hastert’s seat through January 2009. But, NIU’s spring break begins Friday and many students will be out of town on vacation and won’t be around to cast their vote in the special Saturday election. […]
Students did have the opportunity to vote early through Monday, but early voting numbers are way down across DeKalb County compared to the Feb. 5 primaries, according to Sharon Holmes, the county clerk. They have received only about one third of the total early and absentee votes they got for the Feb. 5 elections. [emphasis added]
I don’t know how it is now, but back in the day NIU students tended to go home to Chicago or the suburbs on the weekends anyway. Thursday was the big bar night. But spring break means the place will completely empty out.
That might make a difference if this ends up being a close race.
Thoughts?
…Adding… If this alleged ugliness is true and it somehow finds its way into the mainstream before Saturday then things could take a quick turn for the worse. Oy.
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 9:29 am
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Rich your comments on Northern voting are spot on. Very few students vote in DeKalb.
Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 9:45 am
Oberweis’s anti tax commercials are effective. He needs to hammer home the tax issue and he will win.
Comment by Garp Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 9:57 am
If a NIU student is registered to vote in that area then that means they are not the ones going home on the weekend. They actually live there. I suspect the ones going home on the weekend are still voting from their parents homes anyway. But spring break might see the registered voters leave.
Comment by Been There Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:10 am
Remember, the Feb. 5 elections broke all records for a primary in DeKalb County.
I’m an election judge at a polling place covering 4 precincts of NIU students. My precinct had fewer than 50 ballots cast in the Feb. 5 primaries and 2 others had fewer than that–yet we set a record for our polling place in a primary and Obama was the draw. The lack of NIU votes could hurt Foster only if it’s extremely close. I predict I will see about 6 students at my table on Saturday during the 14-15 hours I’m there.
As for the Oberweis anti-tax ads, here’s what a friend of mine, who’s usually not too tuned into politics, said to me the other day: “You can tell he’s exaggerating or maybe lying because he’s not even saying what period of time his figures cover.” Of course, I have very smart friends and she knows I’m volunteering for Foster, but still.
And maybe the Trib endorsement will assist as an antidote to the anti-tax ads.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:12 am
I’ll add that it seemed as if the NIU/DeKalb folks were big Laesch folks, so they may not show up for Foster.
Comment by Stuck with Sen. CPA Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:16 am
Stuck, I will add that the NIU vote at my polling place was split evenly between Foster and Laesch. Our 4 precincts are not the only NIU precincts so I leave it to you to decide if it’s representative of the school or not.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:19 am
If the report on Foster’s divorce is true, it will be out by Saturday and Oberweis will win. Nobody likes an “alleged” wife beater.
Comment by leigh Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:29 am
One local election (school board) when I was at NIU I was the only person to vote at the polling place in Lincoln Hall.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:29 am
Gee, who has millions to run ads from today until Saturday that spreads this bad news about Foster around?
Hey, it worked for Obama - twice!
Comment by VanillaMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:35 am
Rich,
Thanks for bringing Oberweis’ anti-Foster whisper campaign out in the open (that’s not intended as sarcastic).
Here’s what I wrote over at Majority Accountability Project (MAP is a quasi-partisan outfit run by former NRCC and NRSC media relations guys).
MAP has been peddling this Foster stuff for a few weeks now and I’d imagine the stellar Jim Oberweis/Bill Pascoe team — not known for being truthful — has been trying to get the dirt out there any way they can and using blogs is just as quick a route as any.
Bottom line is no matter what sorts of nastiness happened during their divorce (when are divorces ever good things?), Foster and his ex-wife are on good terms now.
(Cribbing from my comment at MAP…)
She maxed out on giving to his campaign. Would she do that if she didn’t like him?
She still works for his company. Would she do that if she didn’t like him?
She appeared in an ad for his campaign. Would she do that if she didn’t like him? On and on.
As for any comparisons to Jack Ryan that the conservative-partisans try to make, Ryan went back to court after the fact to have his previously public divorce records sealed just before he began preparing to run for Senate (or maybe as part of his preparations).
And it was Gen. Borling’s primary campaign manager — not the Trib or other papers — who tried shopping out Ryan’s divorce records ahead of that primary. Borling fired that guy, but he was the reason the newspapers went to court to find out why Ryan had their divorce records sealed after they had originally been public. (It’s not the action, it’s the cover up…)
In both divorce cases — Ryan and Foster — it was conservative partisans who are caught peddling divorce papers for public consumption. Difference is Ryan tried to hide his. Foster and his ex haven’t hidden from this trying time in their past. (No, it’s not something he’s proud of so it’s not like he’s been shouting it from rooftops either.)
Perhaps the conservative concern trolls will go after John McCain’s divorce documents next….
Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:37 am
Yinn,
I laughed at how the original Milk Dud anti-tax ads used $3914 but the most recent ones doubled that and rounded up to $8000. Eek! Scarey!
Too bad, as the Trib pointed out, that obscure Foster quote that Obie and the NRCC are twisting was actually about air traffic controllers and the need to reign in spending…..
Comment by Rob_N Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:40 am
Anon…
She also works for the company her ex partialy owns so I suspect she would say nice things…
If everything is honey and roses than why doesn’t he bring it up and pre-empt it?
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:55 am
Also annon…
Do you remember Blair Hull? I don’t think that was a right wing conspiracy…
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:56 am
NIU students vote decently in even year general elections. Turnout for this might have been more like an odd year election- with good GOTV efforts it would be like a DeKalb mayor election with a candidate students actually like (or hated in the case of Chronopolous)
The Foster stuff- if it bears out is trouble. But that’s a big if. Right now it’s something on a blog. A journalist could (and maybe has?) pursue it and find nothing. Or, the real danger is if a paper just runs an article about the rumors without delving into the facts.
Comment by Rich O. Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:57 am
VanMan, Obie just dumped another $500,000 into his campaign: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00436642/325773/
Your guess is as good as mine. BTW, you can’t pin that stuff on Obama.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:58 am
I would think that voter turnout would be very light from NIU precincts — spring break or no –as the students have had other things on their minds lately, to say the least.
Comment by Bookworm Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 10:59 am
Rich O., if you have 2,000 registered voters over 4 precincts and 200 showed up (the case in 2006 and I’m being a bit generous with that 200 number) I wouldn’t exactly call that decent, just good enough to keep me awake.
But I do believe that if Obama gets the nomination we will see a turnout like never before.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:03 am
I’m no expert on this race, but I was sure disappointed to see anti-Oberweis ads decrying his CHINESE (Gasp!) investment. I will add “sell my emerging markets mutual fund” to my to-do list prior to my congressional campaign (also on list: “pay off unlicensed driver tickets”.)
Comment by Greg Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:04 am
If Candidate A created 500 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and his company has succeeded in keeping these jobs in America for 30 years despite all temptation, it makes for a pretty good contrast with Candidate B who has been not only investing in China but promoting investment in China.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:11 am
But what if candidate A was a 24.5% owner of a company that created 500 jobs (not all in the US) and keep in mind a decent number of those folks came into the company via them buying other companies (so those were not new jobs). Also for the past 20 years or so he wasn’t active in the companies day to day operations.
BTW if you want to argue he was much more involved in the company over the last 20 years fine, then explain to me how as a taxpayer I should feel we got our moneys worth from what we paid him at Fermi lab?
It is a bit like my daughter claiming she is responsbile for Microsoft’s growth because she owns some shares of it. (a stretch I grant you)
Then again China is a good hobgoblin, go with it…
BTW does that mean any investment in any non-US company means the same thing? So I hope Foster does not have any shares in non-US companies (like BP) because theat obviously costs American jobs or is that only true of companies in China.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:19 am
Yinn,
Only if you’ve got your anti-foreign investment blinders on. Or maybe if you’re someone whose website is devoted to Foster.
Comment by Greg Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:21 am
Oh yeah one other thing, how many of those jobs were ‘created’ in the 14th?
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:23 am
Look, I’m not against foreign investment. It’s about which person has been most successfully involved in creating and keeping jobs here. That’s a concern right now, correct?
Bill Foster is only the second person ever whose campaign I’ve volunteered for. It’s no secret that I’m excited about his candidacy. He’s talented, hard-working and honest. Our district could do a lot worse–and has.
Comment by yinn Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:28 am
Rich, I’m surprised that you were willing to spread those rumors without a harder source. Usually you tamp the personal stuff down unless there’s a more concrete basis for it. Not saying there isn’t, but I’m glad Anon 10:37 has a response here, but usually if you floated something like this you would present both sides. You are as close to a MSM validator as the IL blog world has.
Comment by Prairie Sage Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:35 am
Do college kids register in the town they attend school or do they keep their registration in their home town? Most people I went to school with voted absentee back in their own district. Is Northern different?
Comment by ahoy! Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:36 am
I should have said decent for young voters.
And since only about a third to a half of the registrations in student areas of DeKalb are actually current- 200 out of 700-1000 isn’t so horrible- again, for that age group.
Comment by Rich O. Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:43 am
Yinn,
Using your logic
“It’s about which person has been most successfully involved in creating and keeping jobs here”
Then the answer would be Oberweis, a lot more jobs have been created in the 14th (and in Illinois) by the dairy, the retail operation and the investment firm.
Also at least some of the Oberweis jobs are union jobs (I think the drivers are Teamsters) I don’t think there is a single union member at the company foster is part owner of.
It’s ok to like your guy, don’t get me wrong. But using the job creation argument is a bit hollow, sort of like arguing every job created in China is one less job in the US. It’s not the way economics works.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:45 am
Oneman,
I wouldn’t bother pointing out the non-zero sum argument. I’ve had no luck so far. According to most here, the opportunity cost of a Chinese investment = American jobs, just as one man’s wealth = another’s poverty. I guess it’s kind of a political mindset thing.
Comment by Greg Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:49 am
Have to try, if for no other reason than I work for a European company.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 11:56 am
Oberweis is a loser. If he was not rich, he would never be a candidate for any office. The Illinois Republican Party has let guys like him take over as candidates. I am not suprised that he will loose the 14th. I would be suprised if he could win anything. Foster will be easy to take out with a candidate who has something to offer the voters. All Oberweis has ever done is bash his opponent. He is simply not likeable or electible.
Comment by blogman Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 2:59 pm
“you can’t pin that stuff on Obama”
I don’t have to. Everyone else has lined up to point these “coincidences” out when they review how he became a senator.
Comment by VanillaMan Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 3:47 pm
Why do people keep classifying this story as a rumor. His wife filed a pleading containing the allegation under oath and penalties of perjury (Class 3 felony and 2-5 years in the Department of Corrections). How much more source do you need?
Comment by ice phisher Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 3:55 pm
VanillaMan,
It was Gen. Borling’s primary campaign manager who was peddling the Ryan divorce papers. He had obtained a copy from before Jack Ryan had the previously public records sealed by the court.
Again, how can the actions of Gen. Borling’s Republican campaign manager be pinned on Obama?
(Also, recall that Comptroller Dan Hynes was duking it out with Blair Hull in the Dem primary before Obama soared to not just a plurality but a majority in primary voting.)
–
Ice,
Oberweis has his own nasty divorce in his past, so it’s unclear why anyone working for or supporting his campaign might be trying to dish out this stuff thru conservative blogs. It’s not a “rumor” — it’s a whisper campaign.
The point is that someone (whether just “anonymous” conservative partisans or the Milk Dud’s campaign directly) is trying to promote this Foster divorce when Obie himself had an all-out battle of a divorce also. Add to that the fact that the former Mrs. Foster is standing firm with her ex-husband, backing his campaign through maxed-out donations and an appearance in an ad, etc.
Comment by Rob_N Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 4:41 pm
Speaking of divorce look at what’s new from the our man in the Rose Garden…
McCain’s Divorce
Before John McCain’s tour of duty in Vietnam, he married Carol Shepp, a model from Philadelphia. On his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967, McCain was shot down and captured.
While he was imprisoned, Carol was in an auto wreck (1969), thrown through her car’s windshield and left seriously injured. Despite her injures, she refused to allow her POW husband to be notified about her condition, fearing that such news would not be good for him while he was being held prisoner.
When McCain returned to the United States in 1973 after more than five years as a prisoner of war, he found his wife was a different person. The accident “left her 4 inches shorter and on crutches, and she had gained a good deal of weight.”
Yearning to make the grade of admiral, McCain enrolled in the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. and underwent physical therapy in order to fly again. The Navy excused his permanent disabilities and reinstated him to flight status, effectively positioning him for promotion.
In his book, The Nightingale’s Song, Robert Timberg chronicled McCain’s post-Vietnam military assignments and some of his “adulterous” behavior leading to his divorce from Carol and marriage to Cindy Hensley….
While Executive Officer and later as Squadron Commander McCain used his authority to arrange frequent flights that allowed him to carouse with subordinates and “engage in extra-marital affairs.” Such behavior was a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice…. Timberg wrote, “Off duty, usually on routine cross-country flights to Yuma and El Centro, John started carousing and running around with women. To make matters worse, some of the women with whom he was linked by rumor were subordinates . . . At the time the rumors were so widespread that, true or not, they became part of McCain’s persona, impossible not to take note of.”
In early 1977, Admiral Jim Holloway, Chief of Naval Operations promoted McCain to captain and transferred him from his command position “to Washington as the number-two man in the Navy’s Senate liaison office. It wasn’t long before the “fun loving and irreverent” McCain had turned the liaison office into a “late-afternoon gathering spot where senators and staffers, usually from the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, would drop in for a drink and the chance to unwind.”
In 1979 at a military reception in Honolulu, McCain met Cindy Hensley, an attractive 25-year-old woman from a very wealthy politically-connected Arizona family. Cindy’s father, Jim, founded the Hensley and Company, the nation’s third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor.
McCain described their first meeting, “She was lovely, intelligent and charming, 17 years my junior but poised and confident. I monopolized her attention the entire time, taking care to prevent anyone else from intruding on our conversation. When it came time to leave the party, I persuaded her to join me for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the evening’s end, I was in love.”
While still married to Carol, McCain began an adulterous relationship with Cindy. He married Cindy in May 1980 — just a month after dumping Carol and securing a divorce.
,
Today, Cindy Hensley McCain is chairwoman of Hensley’s board of directors. Hensley and Company financial reports show assets worth a minimum of $28 million for the McCains
McCain Divorce Settlement Outlined
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - John McCain gave up his interest in two homes and agreed to pay $1,625 a month in alimony and child support when he divorced his first wife 20 years ago, court records show.
The senator and Republican presidential candidate divorced his wife Carol in 1980 when he was a Navy captain with a home of record in Orange Park, Fla., about 12 miles south of Jacksonville.
McCain, gave her his interest in homes in Alexandria, Va., and South Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., according to records of the divorce settlement obtained by The Associated Press and other newspapers.
The Arizona senator agreed to give her their furnishings, $1,325 a month in alimony, $300 in child support. He also agreed to pay an additional $500 monthly if she couldn’t find a job.
She was subsequently employed in the Reagan White House, according to George “Bud” Day, McCain’s attorney during the divorce.
McCain filed for the divorce, stating in court records that the marriage was “irretrievably broken.”
A month after the divorce, McCain married Cindy Lou Hensley, heiress to Phoenix-based Hensley & Co., the nation’s second-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor.
Comment by WackyJack Reporter Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 5:57 pm
I hope the milk man gets elected just because he’s just crazy enough to provide entertainment for the rest of us.
Comment by the ole precinct captain Wednesday, Mar 5, 08 @ 7:42 pm