* Press releases, and other election-related news updates can be found on our live coverage post (click here). A declared winner page will be set up later, and I’ll post the elections results posts after 7 o’clock. As I told you earlier, Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet is hosting a show tonight. You can watch it right here…
* I’ve also created a new Scribble Live feed that will contain my own thoughts as the night progresses. It’ll also include anything I tweet or retweet during the evening. So, as always, follow along with Scribble Live…
…Adding… This has been quite something to watch today…
.@ChicagoElection board’s Jim Allen, on the erroneous text message that went out to election judges this morning, instructing them to hand out pamphlets saying Andrea Raila was NOT a candidate for Cook County Assessor: “It was a mistake, and we regret the error.” pic.twitter.com/erKwxwdvKi
I’m not sure this is permitted— it was spotted INSIDE the booths at Ward 27 precincts. Taped inside the wall!
Heh…
I asked him if he ripped the sample ballot down, but he said it was a text from a friend.
* I don’t know if this is a shenanigan, but whatevs. It’s Wilmette…
Highcrest School, a public school in Wilmette, just called the police on me because I was being a “distraction to the students” while electioneering for Mary Rita for State Representative (My mother). The election judge incorrectly believes the law is that the 100 feet rule applies only in one direction. The judge told me I was an idiot and that he just took the test on it yesterday when I explained that it’s a 100 foot radius I have to be outside of in any direction from the entrance. He refused to measure 100 feet in the direction I was standing. The police ultimately forced me to leave a zone where i could actually talk to voters and forced me to stand in an area where no one passes by. Police, Republican election judges and public school administrators colluding to prevent students from understanding the democratic process. I told them the students should come out and ask questions about the election and our candidates.
* This is actually my live session coverage thingy, but I just decided I’d repurpose it for this as well. Plus, it’ll give you something to look at while we wait for the polls to close. Watch it all in real time with ScribbleLive…
* From Mallory Quigley at the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List…
Hi Rich,
As you know it is Election Day in IL-03. I just got back from the district where for the past 4 days a crew of 70+ college student volunteers and Susan B. Anthony List staff have been visiting the homes of Democratic primary voters urging them to get out and vote for pro-life Rep. Dan Lipinski.
Our team visited more 26,489 homes! Below is a short video of why we got involved and what it was like this weekend
Should the Democratic Party accept and support anti-abortion candidates?
The party apparatus is supporting Lipinski at both the national and local levels. Go to the machine’s 23rd Ward and these are the kinds of lawns you’ll see…
It’s not about the party’s acceptance and support, it’s about the people who actually vote.
“I’m just a true-blue Democrat, and he’s a far-right radical Republican,” Newman said in an interview on Monday at her headquarters, citing Lipinski’s opposition to abortion, his positions on gay rights, and his 2010 vote against the Democrats’ signature Affordable Care Act health law. […]
“Marie Newman is a ‘Tea Party of the Left’ extremist who … wants to make the Democratic Party smaller and less inclusive,” the Lipinski campaign said in a prepared statement
If, as this data suggests, the only prerequisite for being called a tea partier is to attack your Republican opponent from the right, then, sure, Newman is waging the mirror image of a tea party challenge. But that’s a fairly lazy conclusion; it lumps together all the primary challenges listed above when the data shows there are clear differences between them. […]
If you consider the district’s partisanship, then maybe Newman’s campaign is more like Richard Mourdock’s Republican primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s 2012 U.S. Senate race: According to our partisan lean calculations, Indiana was as Republican then as the Illinois 3rd is Democratic now. Lugar was indeed moderate enough (a .304 DW-Nominate score) that a primary challenge made some sense on its own, but Mourdock infamously ended up losing that general election.
All things considered, it’s debatable whether Newman’s challenge of Lipinski is within reason, according to these ideological scores, or out of line. Lipinski is indeed a Democratic nonconformist who can’t reliably be counted on to vote against the Trump agenda — but he’s not wildly out of sync with his district either. The voters will have to decide how much heterodoxy they can tolerate on Tuesday.
The difference between Indiana’s election and this one is the Republican candidate is a bona fide Nazi…
Your cable news analysts will be pulling apart the returns from the 3rd to see if they signal a desire from voters for a more centrist Democrat — Lipinski, who has the same sort of appeal as centrist Democrat Conor Lamb, who won last week’s special congressional election in Pennsylvania — or a far more left-wing Democrat — Newman, who will excite the party’s base voters and donors.
The outcome is likely to have national implications for the sorts of candidates the party recruits in the coming months.
Conor Lamb was appealing because he promised to take a seat away from the Republicans, so the more liberal Dem voters looked the other way on some stuff for partisan reasons. It happens a lot. The 3rd is a solidly Democratic district. Liberals want it. We’ll see if they can take it.
Back in 2004, a Democrat from a safe district voting with the president as often as Lipinski might have been tolerated. Gallup found that moderate and conservative Democrats made up more than 60% of all Democrats in 2004. Liberals made up less than 35%.
Today, it’s an entirely different ball game. Liberal Democrats, at 50%, are a greater force than the combined 48% of moderate and conservative Democrats.
We can see the change in the Democratic electorate on the specific issue of abortion, as well. According to a Quinnipiac University survey in December 2004, 67% of self-identified Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Still, a significant minority, 27%, said it should be illegal most or all of the time.
“It’s not about the direction of the party—it’s about the direction of the district,” Joe Trippi, the strategist who helped lead Jones to victory in Alabama, told Newsweek on Monday. “You often have incumbents who’ve been standing in the same place for a decade or more and don’t realize the electorate and the district are changing. That’s creating a lot of vulnerability for incumbents in both parties.”
And while Pelosi would take heat from outside for backing a losing candidate against a progressive challenger, the inside game is different. Pelosi’s loyalty to her own members remains a key reason that she remains in control of her caucus.
*** UPDATE *** NBC National Political Correspondent…
Anti-abortion Democrats in the House:
1978: 125 1996: 70 2007: 32 Now: 3 (will fall to 2 if Dan Lipinski loses tonight)
* What have you seen in the precincts? What’ve you heard? What do you know?
…Adding… From the Pritzker campaign…
Our statewide, grassroots operation:
· Since May, the Pritzker campaign has built a statewide, grassroots organization from the ground up in order to talk to voters about the upcoming election.
· The campaign has 18 offices statewide, over 100 staffers, and almost 10,000 volunteers across the state.
· The campaign has so far knocked on 591,576 doors and made 3,236,362 phone calls.
From the field today:
· This morning, the campaign launched almost 200 volunteers from 48 locations to knock on the doors of likely primary voters statewide.
· Volunteers educated voters on when, where, and how to vote and walked them through a vote plan to ensure they get out to the polls before they close.
· We’ve had great volunteer turnout in our morning shift! Many supporters we spoke with told us they have voted already.
· For example, we have a report from Wheatland where volunteers have knocked on every possible packet of doors, so they’re now driving to Joliet to finish up packets there.
* Rauner GOTV e-mail with subject line “Do you have lunch plans?”…
No mention of Madigan? They broke character. Somebody better reboot that guy. /s
Ms. Ives released a poll last week that showed her within striking distance of Mr. Rauner, who is down by 7 percentage points. Mr. Rauner’s internal polling shows the governor ahead by 12 percentage points but with his popularity among the state’s Republicans slipping.
“Governor Rauner is in strong shape, he should win easily tomorrow night,” Jon Thompson, the Communications Director for the Republican Governors Association (RGA) said
* As you will recall from yesterday, Gov. Rauner compared his current primary battle to Gov. Jim Edgar’s 1994 primary, which Edgar wound up winning by 50 points. Illinois Working together has since been gleefully trolling Rauner…
We need everybody in the Chicagoland area, your listeners, to know that this election is gonna be closer than anybody thought. This primary is gonna be tough. And Evelyn Sanguinetti and I have to win because we can be victorious. We’re the only ones who can be victorious against Pritzker and Madigan.
We need everybody to get out and vote in today’s primary. So, your listeners, if you haven’t already voted, vote today and take a Republican ballot, please, and on Republican ballot vote for Rauner and Sanguinetti. This primary is gonna be closer than many people originally thought. There’s a huge amount at stake here because Rauner and Sanguinetti, we as a team are the only team that can beat a Pritzker and Madigan in the fall in November. We’re the only ones that can do it.
All of those moves suggest a suddenly nervous candidate. And while strategists in both parties think he’ll likely hang on to win on Tuesday, some aren’t completely foreclosing the possibility that Ives could pull off a shocker.
“It appears this election is going to be a lot closer than anyone thought it would be — especially the governor,” former Rauner adviser Lance Trover told TPM on Monday.
In the race for Illinois Attorney General, Pat Quinn’s campaign is running a radio ad touting an Obama endorsement as well — the catch being that former president endorsed Quinn in a different election for a different seat, during his failed gubernatorial re-election bid in 2014.
“You know, I’ve been attacked a lot this week by attack ads,” Pat Quinn told NBC 5. “President Obama stood up for me in 2014; he said I was a consumer advocate, a champion of working people.”
Quinn is using audio from President Obama’s 2014 endorsement in a black radio ad for Quinn’s 2018 attorney general race. Not cool at all.
* From Sen. Kwame Raoul’s spokesman Ron Holmes…
“Old dog, same tricks. Pat Quinn’s willingness to blatantly deceive the public is one of the reasons Bruce Rauner was victorious in 2014. Despite what Pat Quinn may think, black voters won’t be bamboozled by him again.”
@KwameRaoul No lie here. President Obama praised me before for doing what's right. In the Attorney General race, it's not right to rake in cash from utilities, tobacco firms and others directly dealing with the office. My loyalty is to the people and it's not for sale. #ilag
— Pat Quinn for Attorney General (@QuinnForIL) March 20, 2018
Willfully deceiving the electorate ain’t “what’s right” and I’m sure 44 ain’t praising the endless investigations you’ve been involved in. #twill#ilaghttps://t.co/cWeCAViAG0
Hi. This is Hillary Clinton. I’ve spent my life fighting for children and families, and so has my good friend JB Pritzker. For decades, JB has worked to expand and improve early childhood education for at-risk youth in Illinois. He’s also worked with non-profits to bring school breakfasts to 230,000 children in Illinois so they have a better chance to succeed in school. I know JB personally, I know his values and I know that JB Pritzker will make a great governor for Illinois. Election day is tomorrow. I hope you will join me in supporting JB Pritzker. Please vote. Thank you very much.
* From Gov. Rauner’s pep talk to supporters today in DeKalb…
Now, nobody likes a primary. I feel bad about it. We’ve got some disagreements. Jim Edgar had a primary opponent in his second election just like I got. It happens. I respect the process. I will work hard to unify us afterwards and find policies we can all agree on to bring us back together. We have got to come together. But we’ve gotta win tomorrow.
OK, but Jim Edgar won his primary race by 50 points: 75-25.
