Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2007

Chicago Fed refuses to endorse Daley re-elect *** Updated x1 ***

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

The Chicago Federation of Labor released its endorsement list in the Chicago municipal elections. No candidate for mayor, including Mayor Daley, was endorsed. Same goes for city treasurer. Daley’s hand-picked candidate for city clerk, Miguel del Valle, did receive the CFL’s nod.

Dennis Gannon, who heads the Chicago Federation of Labor, had this to say in this morning’s Tribune, which was published before the CFL made its decision.

Some labor leaders believe Daley shifted against them decisively when corporations chipped in heavily for the construction of Millennium Park. From his desk in the Prudential Building, Gannon pointed at the park below.

“All you’ve got to do is look out the window here,” he said. “We in the labor community can’t compete with building a park for half a billion dollars.”

The CFL also didn’t endorse anyone in Daley’s 11th Ward.

Non-incumbents endorsed by the CFL include Sandi Jackson (7), Carina Sanchez (12), Toni L. Foulkes (15), Joann Thompson (16), Paul Stewart (18), Leroy J. Jones, Jr. (21), Brendan Reilly (42), Michele Smith (43) and Greg Brewer (50). The CFL didn’t endorse any candidate in several races, including 2, 5, 11, 20, 25, 29, 34, 37 and 44.

Also from the Tribune story, black incumbents and their friends have thrown down the gauntlet.

In black wards, incumbents already are trying to counter the unions by alleging that labor discriminates against African-Americans, particularly in the high-paying building trades.

“They can’t influence voters,” said former 7th Ward Ald. William Beavers, whose daughter and successor faces Sandi Jackson, the congressman’s wife, at the polls next month. “How can you tell blacks how to vote when you are freezing them out of unions?”

Unions should push for more construction jobs for blacks, said Illinois Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago). “I told the unions, `Don’t come messing with me and my aldermen, but then you’re silent about breaking down the walls of discrimination’” in the trades, Jones said.

While we’re at it, the Sun-Times’ Stella Foster reports today that the other non-incumbent in the 50th Ward race, Naisy Dolar, will have some big names in for her upcoming fundraiser.

U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, coming to town Jan. 25 to attend the fund-raiser for Naisy Dolar, a former city employee and one of the candidates looking to unseat Ald. Bernard Stone (50th). The event will be held at the Singha Thai restaurant on Clark. Also lending support will be Tammy Duckworth, an Iraqi war vet recently appointed the state Veterans Affairs director.

If Dolar wins, she would be the first Asian American on the Chicago City Council.

*** UPDATE *** From the Sun-Times:

The 3rd, 12th, 16th, 25th, 42nd and 50th are viewed as â€œTier Oneâ€ challenges where the Chicago Federation of Labor will devote its heaviest resources. […]

Natarus predicted that labor opposition would have â€œzeroâ€ impact on the 42nd Ward race.

â€œThey have a lot of nerve because I provide more construction jobs and labor jobs than any other area of the city. All they have to do is ask their brothers and sisters in the Carpenters Union. They ought to be ashamed of themselves with all the jobs that I provide and all of the high-rise construction,â€ Natarus said.

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Question of the day

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

Since the Obama announcement will probably suck all the air out of today’s news coverage, we might as well jump on the bandwagon. So, instead of a Question of the Day today, scroll down a few ~~centimeters~~ meters or click here and tell us your thoughts about Obama’s potential presidential candidacy.

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Obamarama - Fritchey: Obama announcement will be in Springfield *** Updated x23 ***

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

[Updated and bumped up for discussion purposes.]

*** UPDATE *** Obama has apparently announced, although the Trib story has no details. More in a bit.

In an announcement weighted with history and moment, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who less than three years ago was serving in Illinois state senate, declared today his intention to run for president.

*** UPDATE 2 *** NBC5:

Sources close to Sen. Barak Obama have told NBC5’s Mary Ann Ahern that the senator will be filing the necessary paperwork Tuesday to begin a presidential campaign.

Ahern said Obama will file papers with the Federal Election Commission in Washington, D.C.

*** UPDATE 3 *** Press release just issued:

U.S. Senator Barack Obama today filed papers with the Federal Election Commission establishing the “Obama Exploratory Committee.” A formal announcement of his decision will occur on February 10th in Illinois.

*** UPDATE 4 *** You can watch a video announcement here.

*** UPDATE 5 *** From the announcement:

“It’s not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most, it’s the smallness of our politics.”

*** UPDATE 6 *** Full statement, in written form, can be found here.

*** UPDATE 7 *** The announcement video is now posted at YouTube.

*** UPDATE 8 *** A new campaign video is also posted at Obama’s website. The Hotline says it was produced by David Axelrod.

*** UPDATE 9 *** CBS2 has a “Special Report” video up.

*** UPDATE 10 *** Lynn Sweet had this post earlier today.

Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are being told this morning there will be an 11 a.m. Chicago time conference call. Expected to be discussed is Obama filing papers to officially launch his 2008 White House run. Obama is expected to hit the road to travel to early primary states in the coming days.

The call is being organized by Nate Tamarin, who was the political director for Obama’s Washington D.C. based political action committee the Hope Fund. He now works with Pete Giangreco, the founder of the Strategy Group in Evanston, expected to handle Obama’s direct mail in the 2008 campaign.

*** UPDATE 11 *** I’ve created a special news feed on the announcement:

*** UPDATE 12 *** Thanks to Larry, I figured out how to embed the second video I referenced above.

*** UPDATE 13 *** The Tribune has an analysis video piece up.

*** UPDATE 14 *** Marc Sandalow at the San Francisco Gate’s blog makes some good points:

For a party which lost consecutive elections to George W. Bush by promoting well-known, well-regarded, and wooden speakers, Obama’s rhetorical skills alone will be hard to resist. […]

Will Americans elect a black man president? It boggles the mind that Obama is only the third African American elected to the Senate since reconstruction. Polls suggest the country is ready, but this is the sort of question where people lie to pollsters.

At 45, Obama is roughly the same age as Bill Clinton when he sought the presidency. But Clinton had served four terms as governor and one as attorney general. George Bush had served just six years as governor. But that was before Sept. 11. Is America ready to entrust its national security to a candidate whose experience amounts to two years service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?

*** UPDATE 15 *** Crain’s:

The widely anticipated showdown between U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries next year is forcing Chicago’s top Democratic donors to choose between an old friend and a favorite son. […]

“It’s overwhelmingly going to be for Barack,” says Rep. [Rahm] Emanuel. “Overwhelmingly!”

*** UPDATE 16 *** There’s been some discussion in comments here and over at The Hotline blog about why Obama chose to announce on Saturday, Feb. 10. An aide to Obama e-mailed me the reason for a Saturday announcment is the “likelihood that US Senate would be voting” on Friday. “We’ve been told they could vote up til noon on Friday.”

I’m still kinda wondering why a Saturday and not, say, a Sunday, the usual day for stuff like this.

*** UPDATE 17 *** The Hotline blog noted that February 10th is two days before Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Rep. John Fritchey participated in this morning’s conference call and fills us in on more details, including that the announcement will be held in Springfield.

He told the group that he and his family are eager for what the future may hold. He spoke of making an announcement February 10 in Springfield, and of the desire to focus on a grassroots campaign fueled by ‘excitement’ and the ’sense of possibility’.

*** UPDATE 18 *** Daley reacts:

Mayor Daley said Tuesday heâ€™s â€œexcitedâ€ Barack Obama has taken the first official step toward the White House and left no doubt about his plan to endorse Illinoisâ€™ favorite son.

â€œHe gives a different viewpoint â€” a different voiceâ€¦to the Democratic Party. He understands, coming from the General Assembly, the issues, especially in education. That is an issue that America is not doing well with as compared to other nations â€” the quality of education weâ€™re giving to our children. He looks at it completely different than others,â€ the mayor said.

But Daley warned that once Obama takes the official plunge, the star treatment he has received in the national media will end and the scrutiny will begin.

â€œNo one has a honeymoon. You think you have a honeymoon, [but] no one has a honeymoon. He understands that,â€ the mayor said.

*** UPDATE 19 *** More from Fritchey, via e-mail, after I asked what else was discussed during the conference call:

(T)here was nothing else really other than that he would be traveling extensively around the state. More of a feel good, stay connected type thing.

*** UPDATE 20 *** Another friend who participated in this morning’s conference call said Obama gave participants phone numbers to four campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, Iowa, DC and Chicago. He said, according to the friend, that his campaign “will begin in Illinois and end in Illinois.”

*** UPDATE 21 *** Chris Bowers at MyDD totals up the number of news media mentions (via Google News) of the various Democratic candidates during the past month.

Barack Obama: 9,710
Joseph Biden: 6,475
John Edwards: 5,944
Hillary Clinton: 5,226
Chris Dodd: 3,218
Bill Richardson: 3,100
Tom Vilsack: 2,753
Dennis Kucinich: 1,862
Wesley Clark: 497
Mike Gravel: 22

*** UPDATE 22 *** I asked for a quickie quote from Governor Blagojevich’s office. Here it is: “The Governor is excited, hopes to help Sen. Obama in any way he can.”

*** UPDATE 23 *** More from CBS2.

——————————————————————–
——————————————————————–

[Original post follows…]

Apparently, Barack Obama’s people got the message. Embattled Harvey Mayor Eric Kellog was supposed to introduce Obama at a major Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event, but after it was pointed out that having Kellogg around might not do his image any good and might boost Kellogg’s reelection, the mayor was moved into the cheap seats.

Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg sat in the audience while Obama spoke, keeping a respectful distance.

Obama, never mentioning the mayor specifically, said politicians in office for personal gain fail to adhere to King’s message.

“There are a lot things Harvey needs,” Obama said. “Some folks here in city hall think that maybe the office that they possess is because they are so special, it is supposed to be a place where they can help their family and their friends instead of helping the people who elected them.

“We don’t need that kind of leadership,” he warned. “You want to make a lot of money, go start a business. Don’t run for office.”

In the past year, the Daily Southtown has published several dozen stories that call into question Kellogg’s management of city finances and his appointments to the police department.

[Emphasis added.]

Meanwhile, my syndicated newspaper column this week was about Michael Madigan and Obama, and the Speaker’s recent attempts to make nice.

You’d think that Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, who is forever being touted as one of the smartest politicians in Illinois history, would have realized long ago that Barack Obama was immensely popular and needed to be treated differently than others.

[Comments are now closed on this post. Let’s move to a fresh thread.]

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Kj won’t go *** Updated x1 ***

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

As expected, state GOP leaders urged Republican National Committeeman Bob Kjellander to resign at their Saturday meeting, and, as expected, Kj refused to step down.

Republican National Committeeman Bob Kjellander was asked to resign Saturday by his party’s 19-member state central committee - a request the Springfield lobbyist immediately refused.

The state GOP leaders approved the non-binding resolution during an executive session in their latest regular meeting, held in suburban Bolingbrook. Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna declined to release the vote tally or other details but said the signal that leadership has “lost confidence” in Kjellander follows concerns raised by a group of county GOP chairmen.

“We don’t have the ability to move beyond that,” he said of the measure.

Kjellander said the move was more about the GOP wipeout than anything else.

Kjellander said disgruntled members of the Republican Party were in search of someone to blame after the GOP’s poor performance last fall–though he declined to view himself as a scapegoat.

“They’re entitled to their opinion. I have mine,” Kjellander said, noting that the state central committee had no authority to remove him from his post. “Certainly when a party gets wiped out at every level like we did after the last election, people are going to look for scapegoats.”

But it’s not all about that. And it’s not all about corruption. The right wing has been trying to take over the state GOP for years, and Kjellander is just the latest target. As with the fight over who would replace Lee Daniels, the strategy is to oust Kj and install one of their own. Notice that the self-proclaimed reformers have never gotten behind a squeaky clean compromise candidate that disagreed with them on hot button social issues.

*** UPDATE *** Charlie makes some excellent points at Illinoize, concluding with:

The fact is if you want to get a demolition crew all you have to do is hang around any street corner and you’ll find plenty of qualified people in short order. If you want to find architects and a construction crew you’ll have to spend a little more time and be a lot more picky. We already have more than enough people on Republican demolition crews. The State Party did well in establishing that what we want is a committed construction crew

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“Buying the vote”

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

Lee Newspapers did a brief series recently entitled “Buying the vote.” Here’s a typical follow-up editorial, entitled “Itâ€™s time to return power of vote to the people.”

Last yearâ€™s races reinforced the fact that legislative elections come down to who can buy the most votes.

That’s pretty harsh, if you ask me. It basically assumes that voters are corrupt and willing to “sell” their votes. And if that’s the case, no amount of reforms will work. The title of the editorial assumes that campaign money has somehow taken away the “power of the vote” from citizens.

Most of the series’ focus was on the cash that legislative leaders dumped into campaigns.

A bulk of the funding comes from the candidateâ€™s political party. In one local legislative matchup, for example, the Democrat raised $620,000 to support his campaign — $400,000 of that came from accounts controlled by House Speaker Michael Madigan. The Republican candidate in that race received $332,000 of the $452,000 he raised from his partyâ€™s leadership.

But the premise is a bit flawed. In many, if not most, cases with hotly contested races, the leaders from each party spent about the same amount of money. And in at least one instance (Mike Boland vs. Steve Haring) the losing leader spent more money than the winning leader.

Back to the editorial for a moment.

In early 2005 Gov. Rod Blagojevich unveiled campaign finance reforms that are similar to the federal regulations. State Sen. Bill Brady, a Republican from Bloomington, also has publicly announced his support for Illinois laws that mirror the federal system.

We think this is the right direction to take. Federal regulations place an approximate $2,000 limit on individual contributions and a $5,000 limit on political action committee contributions. Illinois has no limits.

Well, those federal limits didn’t do much to quell corruption in DC, did they? Conveniently overlooked is that voters told exit pollsters last year that DC corruption was their top issue. DC is probably the last place to look up to as a role model of righteousness and good, and the contention, in my mind at least, completely undermines the point.

Do legislative leaders have too much power? Yep. No doubt about that. But the hyper-cynical attitude that money automatically buys votes ignores all else that happened last year and isn’t gonna move the ball down the field much.

Thoughts?

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Morning shorts

Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Editorial: Maybe time has arrived for tax-swap reform

* Editorial: And the bills keep piling up

* Madigan worried about spending

* Study bill, then vote, group says

* Hispanic, black battle for county party chief?

West Side ward boss Isaac Carothers said Monday he will seek to become chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, setting the stage for a power struggle between blacks and Hispanics.

Carothers acknowledged that he pledged his support to Joseph Berrios, the only other candidate in the race for a no-win job that one party elder has likened to becoming “captain of the Titanic.”

* Daley probably safe on ballot

It looks as if Mayor Daley doesn’t have to worry about waging a write-in campaign. Any chance the mayor would be knocked off the ballot essentially ended Monday when rival William “Dock” Walls announced he would abandon his challenge of Daley’s nominating petitions.

* Daley announces fundraiser for S. Side church

* Failure to bill costs Cook health system - Officials say total for unpaid services at least $250 million

* Giannoulias pledges homeownership help

* Long Giannoulias profile

* Robin Kelly gets Spirit Award

* Schoenburg: Meeks hopes infighting won’t nix more school funds

* Trice: Aspiring pols should practice perp walk too

* Editorial: Roll the credit for state film chief

* Finke: Guv dodges reporters

* Republicans out despite pledge by administration

* Signal-watcher walks out on IDOT - References never checked; data he left may be useless

* Sen. Durbin plans discussion at ECC on beetle

* Editorial: Don’t blink. Bear down.

* UI recommends noncompliance for affiliate boards on Open Meetings Act

* Law orders state vehicles to go green

* Rockford has two senators and three state representatives in Springfield. Why does it need a lobbyist?

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