*** UPDATE *** Hinz teases a polling leak…

Check my column in the edition of Crain’s Chicago Business that comes out this weekend for the first poll in the congested 5th District race to succeed Rahm Emanuel in Congress.

I don’t want to blab all the details. Let’s just say that, while a lot of voters are undecided, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley has a big smile on his face, a smile that will get bigger if Chicago Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th) doesn’t run.

Keep in mind that polling Democratic primaries in Chicago/Cook, especially crowded ones, is particularly tough. The Tribune and I both found this out last year.

[ *** End of Update *** ]

* The Politico looks at the special election in the 5th CD…

Three front-runners have emerged so far from a crowded field of candidates: state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley and state Rep. John Fritchey.

Quigley hasn’t yet filed his nominating petitions and we don’t even know if he’s raised much money. He has a name, but does he have an organization and the cash to back it up?

More…

In a splintered special election primary where turnout is expected to be very low, those organizational benefits could give Fritchey an advantage.

“More than half of the district is made up of parts of the city that have controlled votes. If you have a ward organization behind you, there are people that will hit the streets for you and will persuade every regular voter,” said one Democratic operative with experience running Chicago campaigns. “If you know there are 250 experienced door knockers working three to four weekends for you, that’s a huge leg up.”

That’s very true. But if Ald. Pat O’Connor stays in the race, that’ll eat into Fritchey’s ward numbers. And Fritchey will need all the votes he can get against Feigenholtz…

EMILY’s List endorsed state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D) on Thursday in the crowded field of candidates looking to replace former Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) in the March 3 special election primary.

EMILY’s List means big money and bigtime national exposure during the only federal election in the nation. If Feigenholtz ends up as the only female candidate, the only Jewish candidate and the choice of the district’s significant gay community, she has to be considered in the top tier.

The district is about 20 [Note: A consultant gave me this figure the other day, but I’m gonna check on it] percent Jewish, but Feigenholtz’s people say they expect Jewish voters to show up at the polls in disproportionate numbers. The same goes for the gay vote. She’ll need the organization and money to get that vote out, and EMILY’s List will be a big help.

Quigley will eat into Feigenholtz’s geographical and “reform” base, but only if he can mount a real campaign.

* Then there’s the lefties professors…

In addition to the established officeholders, two academics with no political experience are running — labor activist and author Tom Geoghegan and University of Chicago economics lecturer Charlie Wheelan.

Geoghegan is the more notable of the two, having won strong support from leaders in the liberal Netroots community. [link added]

Wheelan has filed his nominating petitions. Geoghegan has not. Petition drives are not easy, and that’s by design, but it’s not as horrible as this makes it sound…

As near as I can tell, having studied this stuff for years, our system is designed to be as confusing as possible in order to ensure that anyone who runs, much less wins, is either backed by the Democratic machine or loaded with cash. There are a host of rules and regulations that govern the signature-gathering process: voters have to sign, not print, their names; their signatures must reasonably resemble the ones on their voter registration cards; they have to live where they say they live; husbands and wives can’t sign for each other; and so on.

Oh, my goodness. Voters have to actually live where they say they live? They have to sign their own signatures and not forge someone else’s? Heaven forbid!

The reason so many candidates have so much trouble with petitions isn’t really because of the rules. It’s because they have no idea how to run a campaign.

Geoghegan, by the way, has launched an online petition drive “telling Congress to… ensure that the bailout money is directed towards those who really need it.”

He might want to finish collecting his nominating petitions first.

* Almost all candidates will try to tie themselves as closely as they can to Barack Obama, so this relative dark horse (relative used both ways, since he’s the son of a former alderman) can toot his horn loudly…

“People are very frustrated about the current state of the government in Illinois,” said candidate Justin Oberman, an Assistant Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator following the 9-11 attacks and later part of then-candidate Obama’s advisory committee on homeland security. “Voter turnout will be high and they will put a premium on ethics and integrity.”

The problem with that experience, of course, is anyone who has ever been through airport security is probably no big fan of the TSA. His online ad is also mostly about his father, whom many voters simply won’t remember. And it’s kinda weird to see a “reformer” campaigning so heavily on the nepotism angle.