Who do you think would be the best Republican candidate against Democratic US Sen. Dick Durbin in 2008? Explain why.
Bonus question: Despite all the vitriol from many Republicans about Durbin, does the GOP have a chance at this race in what is becoming an overwhelmingly Democratic state?
As the feds continue to close in, Mayor Daley continues to defend himself and his administration against claims of corruption.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley on Tuesday defended his administration’s efforts to reform hiring after a court-appointed monitor said there remained “pockets of resistance†at city hall, but there also were improvements.
“We have done a very good job,†said Daley, who has had to deal with fallout from a federal investigation into illegal political patronage at city hall. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Daley was responding to a new report from attorney Noelle Brennan, who was appointed last year by a federal judge to make sure the city complied with a court-ordered ban on political patronage hiring. […]
Some “pockets of resistance,†the report said, are city employees and a small group of aldermen who “have openly expressed a preference for a patronage system,†where jobs are doled out based on political party loyalty.
Frankly, the National Guard should have been called out a whole lot sooner than yesterday. Imagine if 100,000 Chicagoans had been without power for 5 days in the freezing cold. Still, at least they’re out there now.
As hundreds of National Guard troops fanned out across iced-over central Illinois Tuesday offering help, residents shivering without power for a fifth straight day demanded to know why it is taking so long to restore electricity.
Thousands of angry and frustrated customers flooded utilities, state regulators and municipal halls with complaints. The Citizens Utility Board asked state regulators to investigate the response to storm-related outages that by late Tuesday still left about 100,000 Illinois customers in the dark.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday declared 49 Illinois counties disaster areas. At least two deaths in the metro East St. Louis region were attributed to the storm, but state officials say they have not received any reports of deaths associated with post-storm power failures.
But many were enduring severe conditions in their frigid homes.
People are frustrated, and they have a right to be. Power won’t be restored to most of Decatur until Friday. Still, people who take out their frustrations on Ameren linemen should be ashamed of themselves (and, yes, I’m including all those idiots in the SJ-R’s comment section for the past few days).
“God’s going to whup you!” she yelled at Steckel as he worked on the alleyway pole that would soon feed the home with power again. “Terrible, terrible service. I am very frustrated, and I’m not the only one frustrated. They are not concerned about the public, they’re not concerned about poor people. People are afraid to leave their homes, afraid someone’s going to break in. That man living over there has cancer.”
Steckel and Jim Pohlman, another Ameren lineman from the Carrollton area, remained silent as Chatman berated them and their employer. They had their own frustrations to deal with.
As darkness fell, they were trying to fix a power line that had been jury-rigged in the first place. Without the right-sized metal sleeves to connect two different-sized lines in the alley behind this house, they were forced to use universal connectors that required extra work. It was akin to having to tie a fish hook onto a line instead of simply snapping one into place with a clip. And they were doing it in freezing temperatures with gloves that were made for work, not comfort.
They’d spent all day in a slow house-to-house slog. They were making good money, but the criticism was tough to ignore.
*** UPDATE *** After initially approving all those nasty comments about Ameren linemen under its Sunday story, the SJ-R has finally hidden them from view.
* Post-Dispatch: In their roughly six months of legislating this year, state lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement on how to ease the impact of skyrocketing electricity rates, rein in the state’s campaign laws, nor put the state budget on sound long-term footing. But before adjourning for the year last week, they did manage to significantly raise their own pay, maintaining one of the highest legislative salaries in America - and the very highest among similar part-time legislatures.
The Chicago Tribune editorial board, which has not endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1872, says Barack Obama should run for president in 2008.
There are the polarizing figures: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. There are the candidates who’ve been here before, such as Sens. Joe Biden, John McCain and John Kerry. There are the little-known politicians whose best hope may be the second spot on the ticket, like Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and former New York Gov. George Pataki. There are the capital veterans, including Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), whose importance inside the Beltway may make them imagine they have electoral strength beyond it.
And then there is Barack Obama. It’s safe to say that when he decided to run for the Senate in 2004, he didn’t imagine there would be lots of people now urging him to seek the highest office in the land. But ever since his electrifying address to the last Democratic convention, he has been marked for greater things.
To run for president would be a big leap for someone who just a couple of years ago was commuting to Springfield as a state senator. There is a plausible case why Obama should bide his time and burnish his credentials for the future–plausible, but not persuasive. When a leader evokes the enthusiasm that Obama does, he should recognize that he has something special to offer, not in 2012 or 2016, but right now. […]
No one else has shown a comparable talent for appealing to the centrist instincts of the American people–instincts that often go unsatisfied as each party labors to rally its most uncompromising factions. After the divisive events of the last decade, the nation may be ready for a voice that celebrates our common values instead of exaggerating our differences.
Is this Gov. Blagojevich’s mini version of the midnight raid on Meigs Field?
At the height of the season’s first major snowstorm Friday, a contractor began demolishing houses the state had acquired in the pathway of a proposed airport near Peotone, sparking charges Monday from area residents of a sneaky double-cross.
The residents and two officials from eastern Will County accused the Illinois Department of Transportation of reneging on its August agreement with two state legislators that no more demolitions would occur unless the vacant homes were found to be unsalvageable for future renting.
The IDOT contractor razed three houses Friday morning and Saturday in Will Township, crossing over private property without permission to reach one of the houses, said Township Trustee Rocky Batterman. Up to 11 other properties are slated for teardown.
“We believe that this was all planned to be done during the snowstorm where they would not be able to get any [media] coverage,” Batterman said.
State Rep. Lisa Dugan (D-Bradley) said she and state Sen. Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete) were led to believe the homes would remain untouched until IDOT provided a cost analysis of each property. IDOT officials had said some of the homes were vandalized and would be too costly to repair, but Dugan said she wanted to see the actual figures.
If the storm had hit a few weeks ago, there might have been more votes on the rate freeze bill.
Four days after snow and ice shut down much of Decatur, many residents remained in the cold Monday as Mayor Paul Osborne raised the heat on the power company.
“We need to know the true story,” he said, lashing out at Ameren Corp., which reported 243,000 customers in Illinois and Missouri, including 40,000 in Decatur, without electricity Monday evening.
“You can issue a news release saying you are working on it, but there needs to be a more visible sign,” Osborne said. “I understand there are hundreds of crews working, but people don’t see them.”
Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris called the mayor’s statements “erroneous.” The company has enlisted about 7,000 workers, including 300 in Decatur, to restore power in the 300-mile area hit by the storm, but completing the job could still take several days in some areas, Morris said.
Ameren claims that continuing the decade-old rate freeze could hurt its ability to offer services, but there are a lot of unhappy downstate legislators right now, so they need to get a move on.
I’m on a panel at the Union League Club this morning, and I need to get there right away, so there won’t be any blogging until later this morning. There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot happening right now anyway, but use this as an open thread on the day’s news until I return.
Dan Conley has a post today at Political Wire that strikes me as just about right, at least as far as Clinton is concerned.
Whether the Obama boomlet began as a clever way to hype his book, out of sheer boredom or after careful planning, there’s no question that it’s now taken on a life of it’s own. It’s become clear that the Obama campaign is the one with all the heat on the Democratic side and the more likely it looks that Hillary Clinton will decide to run, the stronger the pressure will build for Obama to get into the race as well. Why? Because he’s the only candidate with the power to capture the queen.
For all of Sen. Clinton’s poll and money advantages, the fact remains that Obama is the candidate party insiders are excited about. It’s the campaign everyone wants a part of. Nobody is saying the same for Clinton — her campaign is looking like the most corporate, oldest and blandest since Mondale in ‘84. Great campaign team? Sure … for the 1992 Presidential race. There are plenty of generals, but who wants to be a footsoldier for HRC? And speaking of wars, the longer the U.S. remains in Iraq, the better for Obama, who was aganst it from the start and has a plan to get us out.
Can another candidate break through in this environment? I think it’s unlikely. Bayh couldn’t even outshine Edwards, never mind Obama. Clark’s best shot was having the Clinton’s on his side in ‘04. Gore is too happy hanging out with Leo and Will Ferrell to get in now. Kerry is the walking dead. Edwards seems even more lightweight today than he did four years ago. Within six months, it will become clear that Clinton vs. Obama is the only game in town … and who wants to be on the side of the safe, corporate, vaguely pro war candidate in this party?
The video posted below has been getting a lot of attention on political blogs lately. Republican Ed Rogers takes the schoolyard taunt angle (most favored by the DC crowd) by ridiculing Obama’s middle name “Hussein.” “Put me down as somebody who counts him out,” Rogers says.
Maureen Dowd’s lede was pretty funny this weekend:
If you call Barack Obama’s office to check the spelling of his middle name, the reply comes back: “Like the dictator.â€
However, there is a more important Arabic name associated with Obama that the national media has mostly left untouched to date: Rezko.
And finally, Tom Bevan attempted a bit of myth-busting recently that ironically relied on a false myth.
Consider just how meteoric Obama’s rise has been. In 2000, he lost badly to Bobby Rush in the Democratic primary in Illinois 1st Congressional District. Four years later, with only about a month left in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, Obama was running tied with Dan Hynes for second place, ten points behind gazillionaire Blair Hull - until the frontrunner’s campaign imploded in mid-to-late February amid revelations his wife had filed a restraining order against him for abuse (I think he admitted kicking her in the shin during a spat, if I recall).
Barring that last minute turn of events, Obama would still be an Illinois State Senator and two-time loser for higher office that no one in the country had ever heard of.
That would be true if the Hull disclosure and its timing were purely accidental and completely unexpected. As I’ve said before, the Hull thing was a planned hit, timed to coincide with a televised debate and Obama’s first TV ads.
Hull was a damaged candidate. Everybody on the inside knew this thing was coming out eventually, even if it hadn’t been neatly packaged for media consumption. To claim that Obama would still be an unknown if Hull’s past had remained undisclosed is like saying Topinka would have won last month if nobody had voted in Chicago.
Man, when it rains it really pours. It’s rare to see a guy’s entire world collapse as fast as Rezko’s.
Federal authorities are investigating an Iraqi power plant deal involving Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a former top fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich charged with defrauding Illinois taxpayers.
Investigators want to talk to Iraq’s jailed former electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, about how Rezko landed the potentially lucrative contract, a source familiar with the probe told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Alsammarae, who holds dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship and has a house in Oak Brook, helped Rezko get the deal, another source said. […]
During a Sun-Times interview in summer 2005, Rezko’s point man on the power plant, former Peoples Energy executive Michael Rumman, said Rezko used his “formidable overseas network of business relationships” to join energy consulting companies and win the contract.
Not mentioned is that Rumman was also Rod Blagojevich’s director of CMS - reportedly installed at the behest of Rezko.
Mayor Daley on Friday defended his decision to require Democratic precinct workers circulating his nominating petitions to sign a sworn affidavit verifying they were promised no jobs, promotions or other benefits in exchange for the political work. […]
In a Nov. 13 letter to Democratic ward committeeman, Daley campaign manager Terry Peterson warned that “petitions will not be filed” with the mayor’s nomination papers unless the “statement of circulator” is completed, signed and notarized.
It says the circulator has neither requested nor been offered “any benefit or compensation of any type, including any request for employment or promotion in exchange for circulating” the petitions. < It further certifies that the petition was passed on the circulator's "own free time, [not] during the hours of my employment" and that it was done "under my own free will" with no "public funds, vehicles, computers or telephones" used to help.
I’d like to extend my most sincere sympathies to the family and the many, many friends of Margaret Mell, wife of Alderman Dick Mell and mother of First Lady Patti Blagojevich. I’ll post funeral arrangements when they become available.
“Margaret was taken too soon from those who loved her, and she will be dearly missed by all who knew her,” said Mrs. Blagojevich in a written statement. “A kinder, better person than Margaret could not be found.”
*** UPDATE *** From a state legislator:
Wake is tomorrow at Drake and Sons, 5303 N. Western, from 3-9
Funeral is Wed at 11 at Fourth Pres, Michigan and Delaware
* Finke: In introducing Hoyer to a House committee last week, Madigan took note of the fact that Hoyer won the position even though he was not the choice of the speaker. Maybe that stuff happens in Washington, but not in Springfield.
* Brown: Latest indictment tastes like an appetizer at the corruption buffet
* Daley shrugs off HDO leader’s indictment - Says it won’t affect decision on a 6th term
* Stroger has a vote, his adviser claims - Old law gives power to County Board president
* County’s sweet pension deal targeted - Bill would end rule giving retirees like Steele big bonus
