Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2007

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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.

Go Bears.

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Obamarama - More on Daley, corruption and racial solidarity

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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.

Thoughts?

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Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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Question of the day

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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.

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Local elections open thread *** Updated x2 ***

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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 wonâ€™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 wonâ€™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 wonâ€™t be endorsing anyone.

Winning the endorsement of particular unions or locals is probably more important than winning the federationâ€™s. For starters, itâ€™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 Wardâ€”a race SEIU says is a priority. In addition, some union sources are quietly saying that the federation isnâ€™t half as interested in committing the cash to back upstart aldermanic candidates as itâ€™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 oneâ€™s sure what the impact of the unions will be. The amount SEIU is going to spend on the municipal elections is â€œstill up in the air,â€ 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 â€œlock 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 â€œMost aldermen, most politicians are hos.”

I’m starting to build a Chicago politics page at my YouTube site, which you can find here.

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.

* And 43rd Ward Alderman Vi Daley (who was endorsed by IVI-IPO members Monday night) has put her mail online as well.

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The Green Party’s challenges

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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 â€” as an unofficial party candidate â€” 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?

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Cross pushes Internet crackdown

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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 â€“ 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.

Here’s the rest of the packagage:

* HB 37 - Indecent solicitation

* HB 39 - Eavesdropping exemption

* HB 40 - Sex offender law applies to distributing “harmful material” to a child

* HB 41 - Increase penalties for harassing and obscene communications

* HB 42 - Requires police to notify interested parties by e-mail when a sex offender changes residence, employment, etc.

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Morning Shorts

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson

* Guv submits lottery proposal to bidders; a closer look at the RFQ

* FOP wonâ€™t back Daley

* Jesse White seeks 10-point legislative plan to tighten restrictions on teen drivers

* Sun-Times Editorial: Madigan takes proper stance

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.

* Another Madigan supporter, urges passage of Fritchey bill

* Stroger finalizes budget cuts that axes many in courtrooms, sheriffs office and healthcare; hundreds protest

* Commissioner asks to delay Cook County smoking ban until July â€˜08

* PATH award winner rails against county healthcare system

* Smoking statistics overrated

* Editorial: State ethics exam absurd

* Reapportionment is coming

* HIV test as part of school physicals?

* Excerpts from recent Illinois editorials

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