I posted this over at Illinoize the other day, but I thought you’d like to see it here as well.
My intern, Paul Richardson, will be handling blog duties the rest of the day and all day tomorrow because of a prior engagement on my part. Please, be nice.
Mayor Daley’s two main challengers in the upcoming election, Dock Walls and Dorothy Brown, were more than a little peeved at Obama’s endorsement of hizzoner.
Bill “Dock” Walls called Obama’s endorsement of the mayor’s campaign a mistake and said it showed the senator’s political immaturity.
Walls called Daley the “godfather of corruption in Chicago” and said the endorsement will leave Obama on the “wrong side of history.” […]
Brown said she found it hard to believe Obama looked at Daley’s “whole record” and missed the level of corruption that has surrounded the mayor. She said she spoke to Obama just before his announcement Monday.
“I cautioned him about making such an endorsement because of how it will appear; especially given the extent of the corruption and scandals plaguing the Daley administration the past 17 years,” Brown said in a statement Monday.
Archpundit, responding to an opinion writer over at Election Central who said he was “surprised” that Obama didn’t endorse Brown, had this to say:
It took me a bit to stop laughing. I pointed out in comments Meeks called her a loser (and since apologized), but the larger thing is that no one of any import in Illinois is going to endorse someone against Daley unless someone like Jackson Jr. ran. […]
…endorsing a member of your party is hardly earth shattering behavior. […]
We have people who are pure in who they back and we call them Greens, Constitution Law Party Members and Libertarians. Good for them.
The Election Central writer in question, Eric Kleefeld, had this response to another sharp critique of his post, which claimed his commentary was the “the silliest statement I’ve ever seen on this site.”
It might not be surprising for Obama himself, but with all respect it is surprising to see a major black politician in this country endorsing a white candidate over a black one, whether we like it or not. If Jesse Jackson were running for President, do you think he’d go out of his way to endorse Daley?
To which ArchPundit sets him straight, pointing out that Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., the reverend’s son, supported Forrest Claypool (white) against John Stroger (black) and Obama was neutral in the contest.
There are two schools of thought, here. One is that by endorsing Daley, Obama will fall victim to the ol’ “smear a geographic region” game, like the “Taxachussets liberal” phrase that was so popular in two presidential campaigns. This time it will be “Obama’s that guy from the corrupt Chicago machine.” Some also argue that the Daley endorsement can’t help much, because he already has Illinois and Chicago locked up, so it will only hurt.
The other, which I haven’t seen mentioned in print or online yet, is that Daley is hugely popular among his fellow mayors throughout the country. That gives him a large national network he can tap for Obama. A call from Daley to any mayor in the nation could do wonders for Obama, regardless of Daley’s problems at home. The mayors gush all over Daley.
Then, of course, there’s Bill Daley, who ran Gore’s campaign and SBC, and therefore has plenty of national and bigtime corporate connections.
As I’ve been telling my subscribers, the behind the scenes battling between House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President Emil Jones and Gov. Rod Blagojevich is heating up in a big way, particularly between Madigan and Blagojevich.
Question: If the session devolves into a free-for-all, which of the three will you be rooting for? Or would it be none of the above? Explain.
The Chicago Reader’s new blog “Clout City” is becoming the place to go for news about aldermanic campaigns.
The major media constantly complains about the quality of aldermen and county board members, yet rarely do any of those news outlets bother to cover the campaigns beyond a few generic roundup stories near the end. The Reader is doing the city a great service. More like this, please.
Later this week the Illinois State Council of the Service Employees International Union is likely to announce its endorsements for the February municipal elections. The list won’t be radically different from the one already announced by the Chicago Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization that includes several SEIU locals, but union leaders say it won’t be exactly the same, either. For example, in the hotly contested 43rd and 50th Ward races the federation backed Michele Smith and Greg Brewer, respectively. SEIU won’t be endorsing anyone.
Winning the endorsement of particular unions or locals is probably more important than winning the federation’s. For starters, it’s the individual unions who can provide the people needed to knock on doors, hand out literature, and get people to the polls, and not all of the 300-plus CFL member organizations are going to be equally motivated to, say, push Sandi Jackson over Darcel Beavers in the Seventh Ward—a race SEIU says is a priority. In addition, some union sources are quietly saying that the federation isn’t half as interested in committing the cash to back upstart aldermanic candidates as it’s been claiming the past few months.
Maybe, maybe not. Greg Brewer’s 50th Ward campaign told me this week that the CFL has assigned a full-time staffer and cut a sizable check “for starters.” We’ll have to wait and see how much Federation chief Dennis Gannon follows through.
The post continues…
Frankly, no one’s sure what the impact of the unions will be. The amount SEIU is going to spend on the municipal elections is “still up in the air,†according to Marianne McMullen, communications director for the SEIU state council. But she said 1,000 of the 78,000 SEIU members in Chicago have enlisted to work as “lock captains in key aldermanic races, including those in the 7th, 15th, 16th, and 42nd Wards.
Burt Natarus’ 42nd is almost impossible to walk because it’s almost all high-rises. Still, if SEIU has any members in those high-rises, or if they can somehow get members access to them, it will be invaluable to challenger Brendan Reilly’s campaign. For years, Natarus counted on a handful of solidly Democratic African-American precincts in the western edge of his district to carry the day. Those precincts are gone, which is why he barely beat an unknown four years ago.
SEIU has long hoped to create a precinct organization, but until a few years ago it didn’t really have the staff or the capability to pull it off. The union gets better at this with each passing election, but this is gonna be a long, hard slog.
Word is that SEIU has hired a prominent media consultant to handle mail in several races, and I’m hearing that the union will pay for some negative mail against broken-down incumbent Bernie Stone, even though they aren’t endorsing a candidate in the 50th.
By the way, 50th Ward candidate Greg Brewer has a YouTube page that I don’t think I’ve linked to yet. You can find it here. Fellow challenger Naisy Dolar’s YouTube site is here.
On a lighter note, the third challenger in the 50th Ward race, Salman Aftab, is featured in the video below responding to Ald. Arenda Troutman’s alleged statement that “Most aldermen, most politicians are hos.”
This is a local politics open thread, and it’s definitely not limited to Chicago. Discuss your local races and the media coverage they’re getting below.
*** UPDATE *** 42nd Ward challenger Brendan Reilly has a new TV ad and it’s posted on YouTube.
*** UPDATE 2 *** 2nd Ward challenger Bob Fioretti, who is airing ads on local cable TV, has posted his mailers online.
A Post-Dispatch story today takes a look at the challenges facing the Green Party now that it has achieved major party status.
Wanted: One candidate for the U.S. Senate, 19 for the U.S. House, 118 potential state representatives, dozens more wannabe state senators, hundreds of potential county officials. And as many as 11,692 precinct committeemen, among other vacancies.
The state ballot access barriers are significantly lowered with the Greens’ new major party status, thanks to Rich Whitney’s success at doubling the minimum 5 percent vote requirement in the last election…
Whitney — as an unofficial party candidate — had to get 25,000 signatures. In 2010, Green candidates in the primary will need only 5,000. A Green candidate needs roughly 500 to run as a state representative and 1,000 for the state Senate.
But they still have a long, long way to go…
…the rolls of dues-paying [Green Party] members roughly doubled to more than 900. But that’s still far from the thousands of elected Democrats and Republicans around the state backed by thousands more volunteers.
900? That’s it?
“The Greens will need a network of bodies throughout the state,” Jackson said. “That’s a logistical accomplishment that no one since Republicans during the Civil War has really done.”
Agreed, but it’s possible they could pick off some local seats here and there and cause some Democrats trouble in maybe a couple of legislative districts.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the Green Party not only made it onto the ballot last year but also broke through the major party barrier. If nothing else, the whiners who constantly complained that Illinois law was just too restrictive to field a third party candidate were proved wrong.
It should be interesting to see what the party does next. They have to continue to score that 5 percent statewide to keep their major party status. Any bets on whether they can make it?
The House Republicans want to make it easier to bust sexual predators online and to crack down on kids who post online threats.
House Minority Leader Tom Cross is proposing, among other things, to let school districts discipline students who post threats on social networking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com – even if they do it from home and on their own time.
But that has some worried that overzealous school boards will expel children for criticism of teachers and administrators that’s protected by the First Amendment.
While poking fun at principals has happened during lunch periods for generations, the technology to make those harsh jabs internationally available is fairly new.
‘’It is not a threat to simply mock or make fun of the principal,'’ said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. ‘’I suspect we all said some things. We just didn’t have a MySpace account.'’
Cross claims he is “sensitive” to the issue of going too far with his legislation. HB 38 is summarized as follows:
Amends the School Code. Provides that a school board may, in accordance with certain administrative procedures, authorize the suspension of a student or expel a student if (i) that student has been determined to have made an explicit threat on an Internet web site against a school employee, a student, or any school-related personnel, (ii) the Internet web site through which the threat was made is a site that was accessible within the school at the time the threat was made or was available to third parties who worked or studied within the school grounds at the time the threat was made, and (iii) the threat could be reasonably interpreted as bearing a reasonable relationship to the safety and security of the threatened individual because of his or her duties or educational status inside the school.
But instead of urging her to continue an unwinnable court fight, opponents should direct their efforts at lawmakers. It is their job, not Madigan’s, to change the law if necessary.
“President Bush’s plan to address the growing health care crisis in our country is disappointing. The plan he outlined tonight would do nothing to help the 1.4 million uninsured Illinoisans finally get access to coverage they can afford. In fact, his plan would discourage employers from offering quality healthcare coverage, could increase the number of uninsured and would mostly benefit the rich. At a time when healthcare costs are rapidly increasing and millions of families across the country are struggling to afford medical insurance, the President’s plan could put healthcare even further beyond reach for millions of Americans. It’s clear that the task of finding ways to help the middle-class afford healthcare will be left up to the states.
“In Illinois, we’re already leading the way in expanding access to affordable healthcare for working families. We have expanded healthcare coverage to more than 500,000 people in just the last four years, and now every uninsured child in the State can get affordable health coverage. Soon we will announce plans for extending healthcare access to every Illinoisan. We would welcome more support for our efforts from the federal government, but not at the expense of important programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
“And while the President’s proposals to boost the use of renewable fuels and reduce reliance on petroleum are steps in the right direction, this Administration has provided little more than lip service when it comes to meaningful energy reform. Our country as a whole is no closer to energy independence now than it was a year ago when the President declared that Americans are addicted to oil.
“Here in Illinois, we’ve proposed an ambitious energy independence plan that calls for real fuel conservation and real investment in clean, renewable energy alternatives that protect consumers while significantly reducing greenhouse gases. We hope to see real leadership and investment from our federal government in technologies and strategies that will result in genuine energy independence.â€
Welcome Senator Durbin. WOOO HOOOO.
by Chamonix on Tue Jan 23, 2007 at 07:25:56 PM PST
Woo Hoo back at You.
by Dick Durbin on Tue Jan 23, 2007 at 08:02:29 PM PST
And, finally, did anyone else see Sen. Obama on TV last night? I caught him on CNN and MSNBC and his delivery seemed super-flat to me. It made me think that his attempt to move up the political ladder to the top rung has caused him to be too cautious, too hesitant to speak in his usual casual yet straightforward manner.
As I told you yesterday, a federal judge has ruled that the messages on “specialty license plates” in Illinois are covered under the 1st Amendment and can’t be regulated by government.
If this ruling stands, all it will take is 800 or so Illinoisans to sign up for the license plates and the secretary of state will have to make them.
So, what messages would you like to see on future specialty plates? Snark encouraged.
Late bonus question: Should Illinois do away with the specialty plates altogether? Explain.
*** UPDATE *** Zorn makes a good point. After quoting part of the judge’s decision…
(The state) argues that if the “Choose Life†message is permissible, than the state would also have to issue Ku Klux Klan or Nazi plates to avoid viewpoint discrimination. (But) the fact that speech or viewpoint is unpopular does not exempt it from First Amendment protection. Indeed, the First Amendment protects unpopular, even some hateful speech. The message conveyed by this proposed license plate is subject to First Amendment Protection.
…he writes:
In other words, this decision opens the door wide for what I’m calling “hate plates” — specialty license tags espousing any and all forms of bigotry or bile. More likely, though, we’ll see every manner of mainstream advocacy group on the right and the left wanting to use specialty plates to boost their causes and notions.
So, apparently, every ward boss in the city has my Social Security number. Fantastic.
Four Chicago residents filed lawsuits Monday alleging their privacy was violated because the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners accidentally released their Social Security numbers along with those of 1.3 million other city residents.
A database file containing the Social Security numbers and other personal data from registered voter files was distributed in late 2003 and early 2004 to about 100 political organizations run by the city’s aldermen and committeemen. About a half dozen copies were also released more recently.
Tom Leach, a spokesman for the board, said it was legal for the information to be released, but the Social Security information should have been deleted. He said the board plans to ask everyone who received copies of the records to return them.
Last fall the board was forced to patch a security flaw on its Web site that had made private voter information, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth for more than 780,000 registered voters, vulnerable to online theft.
They sure seem to be downplaying these idiotic mistakes.
In addition to commenting on the city election board’s blunder, let’s use this as a privacy law open thread. What penalties should be involved here? Is there any new legislation you’d like to see introduced?
Lou Lang proposes that the state take a look at Internet voting.
Internet voting has the potential to allow voters to cast their ballots from anywhere — from the office, the coffee shop or the living room in their slippers. This convenience holds the promise of attracting younger, tech-savvy voters to the polls and could also be a simpler alternative to absentee voting for citizens living abroad or serving in the military.
State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, has filed a bill calling for the state to study the idea, and possibly use Internet voting in Illinois elections as early as the 2010 gubernatorial race. […]
Michigan, as recently as 2004, allowed online voting in its Democratic presidential caucus. The result was the second-biggest caucus turnout ever of 164,000 votes, 46,000 of which were cast online. More importantly, there were no reports of security glitches, fraud or intimidation, according to Michigan Democratic Party spokesman Jason Moon.
Madison County Clerk Mark Von Nida worries about the privacy lost when voting is taken away from monitored polling places. “When you open up voting (by computer), you open up the possibility of people having to vote in front of their boss, or their union boss, just to prove that it’s done,” he said. “And of course, (the vote) would be (cast) in a way that’s how the person who coerced them wanted them to vote.”
Lang says that’s why he wants to study the issue first. Your thoughts?
AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer is not impressed with the recent report on how to fix the state pension mess.
Imagine there was an employer who sent its employees notice each month that it had electronically transferred their pay to the bank account that they designated.
Imagine further that, in fact, the full deposit had never actually been made, that the entire amount to which the employee was entitled, legally and contractually, had never been sent.
And finally, imagine the problem was discovered — that some of the pay owed had never been received.What would your remedy be?
Well, if you’re the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group of self-appointed guardians of the public trust, you’d fix it by cutting the pay of the employees who had been shortchanged.
Go read the whole thing. It’s an interesting take.
Meanwhile, Bayer also had some harsh words for Gov. Blagojevich in Bernie Schoenburg’s recent column. During his inaugural address, Blagojevich said, “Four years ago, standing before you, I looked back and what I saw was a government that was failing our people, a bloated bureaucracy, costing taxpayers millions, for no purpose, no results.”
“I think it’s highly unfortunate that the governor chooses to use that rhetoric,” Bayer said in an interview at Springfield’s AFSCME headquarters last week.
“I know that in some circles, the rhetoric plays well, but it doesn’t jibe with the reality, and I think it’s a great disservice to the thousands of state employees who come to work every day and try to keep order in our prisons and care for the mentally ill and care for veterans and try to make sure that people who are applying for unemployment benefits get the benefits that they’re entitled to in a timely fashion - all of the things that state employees do and all the services they provide.”
“To denigrate them by saying, well, they didn’t used to work and they don’t work … it’s not true and it’s really time for that rhetoric to stop.”
*Chicago Board of Elections hit with lawsuit over Social Security number flap
* City slates 25 large commercial properties for tax review:
The Daley administration contends the aggressive filings have helped prevent local taxing districts from paying up to $63 million in refunds — and shifting $10 million in tax burden from those large businesses to average taxpayers.
* Mark Brown: A look at former mayoral aide Reyes private files
Meanwhile, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) is pushing for legislation that would require non-profit hospitals to list benefits they provide to their communities. A similar measure stalled last year, but Madigan’s office is now negotiating with Illinois hospitals to try to craft an agreement.
