* Finke…

“It’s not Madigan’s fault that they lost the two seats in southern Illinois because just what’s been happening. There’s no Democratic Party down there anymore,” Redfield said. “What the Democrats have been successfully doing is trading suburban seats for downstate seats.”

The problem for Madigan, Redfield said, is that the Democrats were expected to do a lot better in the suburbs than they did.

“It’s the expectations game and the money game,” Redfield said. “They spent an ungodly amount of money to not win seats.”

It looks like the House Democrats are going to come out of the suburbs with a wash. The HDems appear to have lost two seats. With some counting to go, Rep. Mary Edly-Allen of Libertyville is trailing by almost 1,600 votes (down from more than 4,000) and Rep. Diane Pappas of Itasca is losing badly. But they’re also picking up two seats. GOP Reps. Grant Wehrli and Allen Skillicorn both lost.

And, of course, the HDems lost two southern Illinois seats when Reps. Monica Bristow and Nathan Reitz both were defeated by Republicans. Reitz was expected. Bristow was given a shot at winning.

* The Downstate race that isn’t getting much, if any media attention is in the Rockford area, where Rep. John Cabello (R-Machesney Park) is currently ahead of Democrat Dave Vella by just 315 votes with a lot of votes yet to count (including “disinformation” about the tallying).

Rep. Cabello was the first Illinois elected official to endorse Donald Trump for president in the 2016 campaign and now it’s possible that he may not be reelected even though Trump was on the ballot.

Unions were once a Cabello ally, but they went all-out to defeat him in 2018 and again this year because he flipped on organized labor over an important prevailing wage bill. Their candidate this year is the grandson of the father of Rockford Democratic politics, the late Rep. Zeke Giorgi, a mentor to embattled House Speaker Michael Madigan. The state even has a Rockford building named after Zeke. And Madigan was a huge issue in the campaign.

At one point, a video of Cabello went semi-viral. The video showed him saying to Vella during a televised debate: “I call bullsh*t. I cannot believe that you sit here and tell the people of the 68th District that you will not vote for Mike Madigan.” The video (click here to watch it) then played a clip of a Snoop Dogg song as “Thug Life” flashed on the screen and a white ballcap bearing that phrase was superimposed on Cabello’s head along with sunglasses on his face and a gold chain around his neck.

How are y’all missing this?

Cabello was also an early and outspoken opponent of the Democratic governor’s stay at home order, even filing his own lawsuit (which he eventually withdrew). He has been the most vocal critic of the governor’s decision to release inmates early to avoid prison virus outbreaks. Heck, he even held an in-person campaign event right before election day. As mentioned elsewhere on the blog today, Winnebago County’s 7-day average positivity rate is 18.4 percent and its overwhelmed local public health department has requested hospital bed sets from the state.

And to wrap it all up in a nice bow, Rockford has been the scene of several Black Lives Matter protests and Cabello is a city cop who lives in a blue-collar suburb that is less than three percent Black.

It really could be a great news story, perhaps even nationally, but it’s mostly being ignored. Ballot counting will end next Tuesday, so maybe they’ll pay attention then.

* In the meantime, check out what one of Cabello’s supporters made…

I rest my case.