* A quick note before I sign off. FiveThirtyEight has slightly adjusted its congressional odds. Just about every Democrat’s chances increased a bit.
Debbie Halvorson’s district went from an 88 percent chance of a Republican takeover to 83 percent. Not much, but I suppose it’s something.
Bill Foster, however, moved enough that his district was switched from “Lean Takeover” to “Even Chance of Takeover.” The percentage chance of a GOP takeover dropped from 63 last week to 55 now. He’s still on the wrong side, but there’s movement.
Democratic candidate Dan Seals edged up two points from 53 percent chance of a D takeover to 55 percent.
“The prosecution has concluded, I assume, that what I have to say doesn’t contribute to their case,” Jackson said. “I assume they have no evidence or else they would have brought a charge.
“If I’m a conspirator — bring it on.”
Probably not a good move. The last time somebody in power said “Bring it on,” they did. And they still are.
* Jackson also said he had no idea that the people sitting at his table were plotting to contribute $1 million to Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund to get Jackson appointed to the US Senate. Why? Because they were speaking Hindi…
“How about this? ‘Congressman meets with director of economic development and trade for the State of Illinois . . . met with him for 30 minutes in the presence of other people and discussed the third airport. Then another gentleman showed up and started having another conversation practically in Hindu, because I don’t speak Hindu . . . and I didn’t participate in any of that part of the conversation, nor do I even remember hearing it. And I have witnesses present.’”
One of the witnesses, Rajinder Bedi, testified at Blagojevich’s trial that Jackson was sitting with him and another fund-raiser, Raghuveer Nayak, when the $1 million was discussed. Bedi, a government witness, did not say he was speaking in Hindu. Bedi then testified he paid a visit later that same day to Rod Blagojevich’s brother, Robert, and passed along a message that the then-governor would receive campaign money if Jackson were appointed.
The brother of former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas said Friday he will run the mayoral campaign of Gery Chico, who has served Mayor Richard M. Daley in several high-profile posts.
Dean Vallas said Chico, 54, will begin circulating nominating petitions Saturday to get on the ballot for the Feb. 22 election to replace the retiring mayor.
Chico told the Chicago News Cooperative on Sunday that he would only enter the race if he could raise $4 million in campaign donations. Dean Vallas said donors already have pledged “at least half” that amount to Chico’s bid for mayor.
Vallas told Chicago Magazine this week that he was behind a “Democrats for Brady” organization. I wonder what Chico thinks about that.
* Did you know that Pamela Abdy, the producer of Garden State and some other bigtime movies, once allegedly lived with a Jersey mobster?
Heck, I didn’t even know who Abdy was until today, let alone anything about her history. But, it turns out, a mobster was busted three years ago while Ms. Abdy was allegedly cohabitating with him. Abdy’s uncle was also apparently busted in the same sweep. And, as it happens, Ms. Abdy just co-hosted a fundraiser for Alexi Giannouias out in Hollywood. Fox News gives us the fair and balanced story…
Giannoulias aides told FOX News that Abdy was not arrested for anything and was never even investigated. Those same aides point out that Abdy is an award-winning executive at Paramount Pictures, no longer romantically linked with Perna and that it’s not fair to lump her in with her mobster uncle.
Communications director for Giannoulias, Kathleen Strand, called the story, “another ridiculous lie being pushed by Congressman Kirk’s desperate campaign. His earlier attacks have been called out as false by independent fact check organizations, and this one will find the same resting place.”
Uh, Kathleen, when defending one’s involvement with an alleged mob niece/moll, it’s probably best to avoid the use of phrases like “resting place.” Just sayin’.
I challenge all commenters to come up with a snarky mob-talk response that we can substitute for Ms. Strand’s quote. Have fun, but let’s not get sued.
* House Republican Leader Tom Cross is accusing House Speaker Michael Madigan of calling Cross’ big donors and intimidating them. Madigan, in return, accuses Cross of helping elect the new chairman of the RTA in exchange for a contribution, and of accepting “laundered” money through a little-known political committee.
Trouble is, nobody but the two sides are speaking on the record to the press so far, except to issue denials and no comments.
Madigan has, indeed, been calling bigtime Republican donors since at least early August, and the House GOPs have been trying to push the story. The contributors were certainly surprised to get the calls, some said they were angry, but nobody I talked to said they were threatened. Cross tells Greg Hinz something different, however…
“A dozen or so of my donors have been called by [Madigan],” Mr. Cross said. “Some of them never had talked to him before.”
Mr. Madigan asked questions like, “Why are you helping (Cross),” Mr. Cross said. And some — including Mr. Gates — faced “accusations” by the speaker.
And check out this quote by Madigan’s spokesman…
“Usually, when people support political candidates, they support candidates. They don’t go through some side process and launder money.”
You mean, like, well, sending money to the Democratic Party of Illinois instead of directly to candidates? Oh, wait. Nevermind. That’s totally different, I’m sure.
* Joe Berrios and Forrest Claypool were apparently supposed to be at the Tribune editorial board today for a debate. Claypool’s campaign manager says Berrios didn’t show up and taunted the candidate via Twitter…
joeberrios doesn’t show up to the Trib Debate. Baauck, buck, buck, buck. Baaaauuck, Buck, buck. BECAAK!
I got not words for that.
*** UPDATE *** The Berrios campaign responds by sending me a copy of the letter they sent the Tribune on September 2nd…
I will not be attending the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement session scheduled for September 13, 2010.
The Tribune has shown time and again that it has already selected its candidate to endorse, and that it cannot be fair and unbiased as a media outlet should be. I need to look no further than your editorials over the past few months to know that you have long been backing my opponent, former Democrat Forrest Claypool.
Republican congressional candidate Adam Kinzinger is upset over protesters’ pictures that portray him and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin with Hitler-style mustaches.
Kinzinger, a veteran and member of the Wisconsin National Guard, and Palin were both shown in the pictures with rectangular black mustaches sandwiched in between the caption, “Naz-Tea Party” and their last names, according to pictures supplied by Kinzinger’s campaign.
The protest occurred outside an Americans for Prosperity rally Wednesday night in Joliet, Kinzinger spokesman Brad Hahn said.
“I saw the picture and I just almost have no words. It’s unbelievable. I’m the grandson of a man who fought the Nazis and I fought to protect our country too,” Kinzinger said in a telephone interview. “It’s beyond any political satire. It’s terrible.”
The conservative group held a rally with about 500 people, including Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher as a keynote speaker, said Joe Calomino, state director for the Illinois chapter of Americans for Prosperity. The protest with the anti-Kinzinger and anti-Palin pictures occurred across the street from the rally, Calomino said.
The Kinzinger campaign sent over a video taken of the counter-protest. It looked to me like the two guys carrying the Hitler signs stood separately from the other ralliers. The video also shows some of the protesters going into the coordinated campaign’s nearby office, but neither of the morons with the Hitler mustache signs appeared to be with them.
The Halvorson campaign flatly denied any involvement. From a statement they sent me yesterday…
Some of the protesters stopped by the Illinois Victory office after the protest to say hello and get some water. In fact, some folks who were there in support of the AFP rally stopped by and dropped off some of their literature on the fair tax and negative lit on Debbie.
Our campaign had nothing to do with anyone holding signs linking Adam Kinzinger to Nazis. Those signs are not only offensive, they distract voters from the real issues in this race, like protecting jobs and seniors. Congresswoman Halvorson condemns these offensive tactics and would never condone such actions.
Verdict: Not totally clear, but not guilty yet, either.
This week on WBEZ’s political podcast: It is all about campaigns and corned beef. We broadcast from the legendary Manny’s Deli on Chicago’s near South Side.
Chicago City Clerk Miguel De Valle and State Senator Ricky Hendon join Steve Edwards to discuss their candidacies for Chicago mayor. They lay out their plans and talk about the prospect of running campaigns against Rahm Emanuel.
Right Nation rumbles into Hoffman Estates this weekend and we gather GOP analysts and operatives to talk about the Tea Party and its impact on Illinois.
Our panel includes: John McGovern, Christine Dudley and Ryan McLaughlin.
And don’t forget to subscribe to their free iTunes podcast.
* The people working with the Democrats’ coordinated campaign have been saying for weeks that they hope to convince people who didn’t vote in 2006, but voted in 2008 for Barack Obama to come out on November 2nd. The coordinated campaign has a staffer overseeing this effort.
According to [Jerry Morrison, the political director of SEIU’s state council], there are around 875,000 voters in Cook County who voted in the 2008 presidential contest but not in the 2006 governor’s election; many, but not all, are newly registered voters. SEIU will target about 500,000 of them, beginning with a $1 million advertising blitz it will roll out in a couple of weeks. The goal is increasing the likelihood that at least 100,000 of those folks head to the polls.
Off-year elections are tough. Lots of folks just don’t vote unless the presidency is on the ballot. The union has commissioned a poll to see what will motivate this targeted audience. Most plan on sitting out the election…
However, 41 percent of respondents told BNP that three messages made it “extremely likely” they would vote: One focused on Republicans attacking Obama and possibly trying to repeal the 14th Amendment, which guarantees all citizens equal legal protections. Another ties Obama with other Democratic candidates, saying Obama and the Democrats want to restore the economy and clean up the mess President George Bush left behind. The last focuses on “Sarah Palin and the Tea Party crowd” wanting Democrats to stay home on Election Day.
References to the ex-Alaska governor and the Republicans proved the most motivating, according to the memo, trumping issues like crime, state budget cuts, or student loan issues. “Two of the three top testing messages also have to do with Republicans, including Sarah Palin, taking the country backwards,” a summation of the poll reads. “The best motivating messages are dominated by evoking negative images of what could happen, more from an ideological perspective than one focused on issues.”
“It is a very partisan message, which is that Sarah Palin and the Republican Party want to take power so they can stop the Obama agenda,” Morrison said. Final decisions about the messaging strategy are still being made.
The union won’t do phone-banking or direct mail, but it’s planning to buy ads on websites, place banners on buses and trains and in the Trib’s Red Eye. It will also use mass text messages…
The point is to deploy the message where the Obama voters actually are. Fifty-six percent of respondents in BNP’s poll reported sending a text message every day, 42 percent search Google every day, and 30 percent use Facebook every day (all the rates are higher for weekly usage). Nearly one in four respondents rides a CTA bus at least once a week while almost one in five rides the train weekly. Just 15 percent reported getting most of their news by reading a local newspaper. Thirty-one percent said they got their news from local television broadcasts.
Thoughts?
*** UPDATE 1 *** Republican consultant Smart Media Group just claimed on Twitter that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has “just placed a broadcast buy in Chicago to start on 9/20.” We’ll see soon enough.
*** UPDATE 2 *** CQPolitics has the buy amount. Smallish…
The DSCC placed a quarter million dollar independent expenditure broadcast buy in the Chicago media market on Friday, according to a Republican source who tracks Democratic ad buys. […]
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has yet to spend any IE money on the race, but it has announced plans to move $3.4 million to Kirk in the form of coordinated funds. Unlike independent expenditures, coordinated funds are limited and $3.4 million is the maximum that the Senate committees can spend in Illinois this cycle.
* Independent gubernatorial candidate Scott Lee Cohen was endorsed by National Taxpayers United yesterday. Jim Tobin runs the NTU, of course. He’s best known in recent years for his demand that the Illinois State Police be abolished.
“Scott Lee Cohen signed our Taxpayer Protection Pledge, in which he declared: ‘I, Scott Lee Cohen, pledge to the taxpayers of Illinois, that I will oppose any and all efforts to increase state or local taxes.’ […]
“The Democratic candidate, Gov. Patrick Quinn, and the Republican Candidate, Bill Brady, have refused to sign our Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” said Tobin. “Quinn, if elected, would make good on his promise to raise the state income tax a staggering 67 percent to pay for the lavish, gold-plated pensions that have made Illinois’ retired government employees millionaires. Brady, the Republican candidate, would continue the tax-and-spend policies of Springfield Republicans, who have been responsible for the largest state tax increases in Illinois history.”
“Scott Lee Cohen is not a career politician. As a father of four, a lifelong Illinois resident and a small business owner, he understands the challenges that Illinois residents face. He has hosted job fairs, putting thousands of Illinois residents back to work. He knows how losing one’s job can devastate a whole family. As Governor, Scott will continue to use his experience as an entrepreneur to ensure that the people of our state have good paying jobs to support their families.”
Cohen put “thousands of Illinois residents back to work”? Really? I’d like to see some evidence.
Still, no matter what you think of either man, that endorsement will look pretty darned good in Cohen’s ads.
* In other third party news, Steve Rhodes writes about Green Party gubernatorial nominee Rich Whitney…
I’ve never met [Whitney] and for all I know he’s a royal goofball.
Then writes…
It will be no surprise to regular readers that the Beachwood will, in all likelihood, offer its institutional endorsement of Whitney in our annual voters’ guide, just as it has in the past.
Oh, yeah. Now I’m really comfortable with that “voter guide.”
* Perhaps Steve could look through this site for clues. Here are just a few of the stories we’ve published and posted…
Yes, I’ve knocked Whitney for his inept campaign and lack of fundraising skills, but when someone has been running for governor for four years and has no money or even a decent network, I tend to get frustrated with him.
You won’t see as much coverage here of independent and third party candidates as the two major parties, but you’ll still find more here than anywhere else. It certainly beats mindlessly republishing a candidate’s press release and calling it a day.
The wide open Chicago mayor’s race could have some unintended consequences for the Illinois Senate contest — most of them negative for Democratic nominee Alexi Giannoulias. […]
“The Chicago media is wall-to-wall mayor’s race,” said Thomas Bowen, a Chicago Democratic operative. “It’s like a solar eclipse that is blacking out opportunities for free media up and especially down the ballot.” […]
The front-page citywide race could also have a deleterious effect on fundraising for Giannoulias, who reported having just a quarter of Kirk’s $4 million bank account at the end of June. That’s no small concern, because Chicago is one of the most expensive media markets in the country, and now Giannoulias will have to compete for funds with the myriad candidates assembling campaigns for mayor before the Nov. 22 filing deadline — less than three weeks after the general election.
On the other hand…
Some Democrats argue that the mayor’s race won’t have much impact on Giannoulias’s ability to raise cash, because he has already scoured his hometown — typically, the first place candidates for office go to raise money — and has moved on to a national donor network. […]
“There are going to be a lot of people who want to demonstrate [get out the vote], whether or not they give a crap about this midterm election,” said John Michael Gonzalez, a Democratic strategist from Illinois. “I don’t know how that can help Kirk. I do know how it can help Alexi.”
* The Question: Which hand is right? Does the focus on Daley’s retirement hurt Giannoulias or help him? Explain. And if you think it’s somewhere in between, then tell us which way the argument tips and why.
And let’s just stick to the Kirk-Giannoulias contest, please.
* The big Right Nation 2010 to-do featuring Glenn Beck is tomorrow at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates. It’s been getting quite a bit of press lately, but let’s focus for a moment on one aspect. From the RN2010 website…
Right Nation 2010 is a joint venture of Republican, conservative, libertarian, free market, and Tea Party independent organizations and individuals, facilitated by the 75 year-old United Republican Fund.
…the event doesn’t endorse any specific candidates, because it’s meant to appeal to a broad audience. What unifies them, according to the Right Nation Web site, is that the left has “destroyed our states and nation.”
But notice how the word “libertarian” is not capitalized on the RN2010 website. That’s because the conference is only involving small “l” libertarians. The Libertarian Party candidates weren’t invited…
[Libertarian US Senate candidate Mike Labno] is not scheduled to appear at Right Nation 2010. He told me he was not invited to speak, not surprising since the sponsors include GOP organizations.
Yes, totally not surprising. Much of the statewide Republican Party ticket and several GOP congressional candidates are on the list of participants. The state GOP has been promoting the event on its website and via e-mails and its chairman and several other GOP bigwigs and campaign contributors are listed as hosts.
Constitution Party candidates weren’t invited, either. The party was kicked off the ballot by the Republicans (who also challenged the Libertarian Party’s petitions), but they’re appealing that ruling. The party’s US Senate candidate and chairman Randy Stufflebeam sent out a press release this week about the convention…
“I wholeheartedly support the Right Nation event and applaud Glenn Beck who has done much to unify and educate conservatives across our nation,” said Randy Stufflebeam, Constitution Party candidate for U.S. Senate.
“However,” added Stufflebeam, “a principled man like Glenn Beck should not be sharing the stage with Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady. Mr. Brady has proven by his actions this summer that he has very little in common with 9/12’ers, tea partiers, conservatives, and libertarians. Pat Brady’s co-sponsorship of Right Nation 2010 makes a mockery of the event’s very admirable goals.”
In other words, this convention looks a whole lot like the Illinois Republicans are feeding some timely pre-election red meat to their base while claiming they’re just engaging in good, old fashioned, non-partisan fun.
* The Republicans are also trying to do this without dirtying their hands by sidling up too closely to those unwashed tea partiers…
A prominent suburban Republican has made a promotional YouTube video encouraging attendance at a conservative conference in Hoffman Estates later this month.
But state Sen. Matt Murphy insists he isn’t aligning himself with everything the featured speakers stand for. That’s the same approach that event hosts and General Assembly Republican leaders Tom Cross and Christine Radogno have taken on the event.
Many of Illinois’ top Republicans are not attending, including Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running for the U.S. Senate, and Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno. State Sen. Bill Brady, running for governor, is a maybe.
Translation: “We want you to get fired up and ready to vote for us, but we’d rather not hang out with you, so we’ll send a few of our conservatives, but not the big boys and girls.”
* Meanwhile, Alexi Giannoulias’kind words on behalf of the Libertarian Labno has been getting some coverage…
* Giannoulias Endorses Libertarian Candidate: he Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate is getting a ringing endorsement. In the wake of the defeat of a moderate Republican at the hands of a conservative activist in the Senate primary in Delaware, an e-mail Wednesday touts Mike Labno, the Libertarian, as the alternative for conservatives to moderate U.S. Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Highland Park) for Senate. That e-mail comes from the campaign of Democrat Alexi Giannoulias.
* Kirk ally rips Giannoulias vote ploy: Alexi Giannoulias’ Democratic Illinois Senate campaign is talking up a marginal Senate candidate — Libertarian Mike Labno — to try to drain conservative votes from his Republican rival, Mark Kirk.
* A U of I economist claimed yesterday that almost half of Illinois’ $13 billion budget deficit is due to lost jobs over the past decade, with another decade of slow growth ahead of us…
“Before the current recession, it has never taken us more than eight years to recover from a recession. We’re now in our 10th year, with few prospects to get out soon,” economic analyst Geoffrey Hewings warned local government leaders Thursday. “We’re now essentially looking at the prospect of a lost two decades.”
Hewings is the director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He continued…
One factor in the problem is that Illinois’ taxes are outdated, based on a 1970s-era economy when there were far more manufacturing jobs, he said. That sector still is important, and job-heavy, as current workers retire. But it has shrunk, which links to a related factor in Illinois’ changing demographics. The state is not losing population. But the people moving in make far less money than the people moving out. Illinois has dropped from fourth to 15th in per capita income.
Oof. More…
According to Hewings’ figures, Illinois is about 600,000 spots lower than the employment peak in November 2000. The state made up some ground after a recession in the following year but never completely recovered, and another 386,000 jobs were lost in the current recession. Some people have stopped looking for work. Illinois has been slower than other states to recover, but in the 2000s, there was only one high-growth year when more than 50,000 jobs were added.
“This is not a pretty picture,” he said. “Even at twice the high-growth, it will take us five years to get back to November 2000.
People too often forget that the current “Great Recession” is only the latest hammer to hit Illinois. The decline began in the 1970s, then we were hit badly in the early 1980s. After some real growth in the 1990s, the post 9/11 recession never fully abated. We were totally unprepared and in the worst possible position when this current recession took hold. The surplus generated by Jim Edgar was spent, and then some, by George Ryan. And it just kept getting worse and worse under the clueless Rod Blagojevich. As we sank like a rock beginning in 2007 and 2008, the Democrats were too busy fighting each other to do anything about it.
* Now, let’s dig into the newly released unemployment numbers, shall we? Click the pick for a larger image…
The Illinois Department of Employment Security says August represents the eighth consecutive month the rate was steady or declined. It was down slightly from July’s rate of 10.3 percent.
IDES Director Maureen O’Donnell says the long-term trend of falling unemployment may not be felt yet in local neighborhoods. But she says creating jobs, retaining workers and encouraging investment will help Illinois recover from the recession.
There were 671,400 people unemployed in August, about 12,000 fewer than in the previous month. The Illinois economy lost about 4,200 jobs in August due to declines in government-related jobs and Census 2010 positions.
Actually, as you can see from the above chart, it wasn’t just lost government jobs which led to the decline. Another 16,000 jobs were lost in various sectors. And I checked with IDES and was told that Illinois lost 5,900 federal jobs in August, mainly due to Census layoffs. But it gained a bunch of jobs at schools as they began to reopen, and another 500 local government positions. The “Educational” line in the report is mainly for private schools and colleges.
The biggest gain was in construction, due in large part to the state’s capital spending and the federal stimulus program. The Chicago Tribune and others regularly attack those two programs, but they’re the only thing keeping us from the abyss right now.
* IDES is right about the encouraging trend, however. Progress Illinois’ chart…
We seem to be improving much better than the nation as a whole since December, but we were in a much deeper hole to start with.
On the same day Illinois got some better job news, Gov. Pat Quinn got another chance to talk about the state’s improving economy. But it remains to be seen if voters will ever hear the good news.
The Quinn campaign is quick to point to its economic selling points. Campaign officials say Illinois led the Midwest in new jobs in the first half of 2010. That one in every 10 new jobs in the US was in Illinois in the first half of the year. Illinois is outpacing the growth of the nation (0.07 to 0.05), and that the state [grew] 43,000 new jobs this year.
These are some of the very same points I made in yesterday’s Capitol Fax. It’s good to see that the faction within the campaign pushing for a jobs-focused message is starting to make progress, but Quinn needs to run some ads on this stuff for crying out loud. Enough with the decades-old wedge issues, already. It’s about the jobs, not the guns.
Mark Denzler, vice president of the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association, said after many months of idled production, companies are ordering once again.
“Manufacturing has picked-up slightly this year, we’ve added about 13,400 jobs since February. Companies are filling those shelves again, they got low on goods and manufacturing orders are up.” […]
But Denzler is quick to point out that while Illinois has added more than 13,000 manufacturing jobs in 2010, other Midwestern states have added more.
“All of our neighboring states, in the last year, have added more manufacturing jobs than Illinois. So we generally trail other states when it comes to manufacturing recovery.”
The manufacturing uptick is heartening, but there’s still obviously a long way to go. And the fact that we have 7,200 fewer jobs in the economy than a year ago may seem like we’ve hit bottom, but that also means there’s been no overall growth at all. We need more darned jobs, man. Businesses are starving for customers, and they definitely need help as well.
“I’ll be very frank. We need money in America,” he said. “I will take money around the world, if we can reinvest it in the city of Chicago and put people to work and rebuild our city.”
Lame duck Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s administration rang up a $13,000 tab for new furniture in recent months, according to county documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
All of the furniture — including four chairs that cost $736 apiece — were delivered to the offices of Stroger’s childhood friend and chief spokesman Eugene Mullins at 118 N. Clark, according to sources at the county and owner of the company that handled the order.
Marcel Bright, 54, a retired Chicago cop, started Monday as an $89,000-a-year deputy director of communications for Stroger. He replaces Sean Howard, now working for a county-run youth job-training program.
You might have missed it in the hubbub surrounding Mayor Richard M. Daley’s retirement announcement, but the Chicago City Council just placed a billion-dollar bet on the city’s economic future.
The Illinois Attorney General’s Office has determined further investigation is warranted into possible violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act by an advisory committee created to make building recommendations in the Midland School District.
The case, first reported by the Journal Star, involved a vote by secret written ballot by the nine-member facility committee on the controversy-charged issue of whether to repair, rebuild or eliminate an aging elementary school in Lacon, the Marshall County seat and the district’s population center.
