The White House confirmed Wednesday that President Joe Biden will stump in Illinois Friday, ahead of Tuesday’s midterm balloting — likely in the Chicago area — and Vice President Kamala Harris hits Chicago on Sunday.
Biden will lead a get-out-the vote for Democrats with a focus on boosting suburban Chicago congressional incumbents — especially Reps. Sean Casten and Bill Foster — who are in races that may be tightening.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris visits Chicago on Sunday. […]
The vice president’s office said Harris will “deliver remarks” at an Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders event in Chicago. Another source said the stop is likely an event for the AAPI Victory Fund, a political action committee. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., an Asian American, and on the Tuesday ballot, is also scheduled to attend the event.
* Illinois early vote totals…
The @illinoissbe has updated early vote totals (11/02/22): Total VBM requested: 860,663 Total VBM returned: 467,112 Total VBM outstanding: 393,551 Return Rate: 54% Total Early Vote: 419,002 Total Grace Period: 6,580 Total Already Voted: 892,694https://t.co/44ga6Axjmq
The statewide vote by mail return rate (as of today) is 54.27%. Only a few jurisdictions are below that, but they include some of the most populous areas, like City of Chicago (37.42%), Lake County (43.51%) and Suburban Cook County (52.05%).
The most up-to-date Early Vote and Vote By Mail totals in Chicago, night of Tuesday, November 1, 2022.
The Early Vote total stands at 70,656 ballots cast.
Additionally, 76,071 Vote By Mail ballots have been returned to the Board – total VBM applications stands at 208,003.
The grand total is 146,727 ballots cast so far in Chicago for the November 8th General Election.
FOR COMPARISON:
As of June 22, 2022 (6 days out from the 6/28/22 Primary Election): 61,377 ballots cast
As of October 27, 2020 (6 days out from the 11/3/20 Presidential Election): 583,372 ballots cast
As of October 30, 2018 (6 days out from the 11/6/18 General Election): 152,320 ballots cast
Chicago is still at 16 percent of total votes cast, even though the city is 21 percent of the population.
* Michael Flynn’s The America Project is leafleting in suburban Cook County and it looks like they’re piggy-backing on the anti-union group’s bandwagon…
Republican Regan Deering, running for the new 13th Congressional District, appeared Wednesday to accept the endorsements of the Illinois, and U.S., Chambers of Commerce.
As she paints opponent Nikki Budzinski as a “political insider,” the discussion turned to why elective office seems to be the only job for which experience is a liability. After answering that she would represent business experience and new blood, Deering volunteered, “I also am a supporter of term limits. I think America is tired of career politicians.”
What term limit will she place on herself?
“I’ll get myself elected in six days, and then we’ll see.”
But she just said she supports term limits. What sort of term limits is she talking about?
“We can talk about that when it comes to a vote. That would be great.”
House Republicans’ top congressional super PAC is betting that a last minute cash infusion can flip two deep-blue districts on the edges of the House battlefield.
The Congressional Leadership Fund is going on air with seven-figure buys targeting Democratic Rep. Sean Casten in suburban Chicago and the Long Island seat held by retiring Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice. The super PAC is investing $1.8 million and $1.5 million, respectively, on broadcast buys in the expensive Chicago and New York City media markets.
Neither district has seen much outside spending before the final days of the midterms, and President Joe Biden carried both of them by double-digits in 2020. But the late ad buys suggest Republicans see opportunities in both places as the country grapples with high cost of living and the possibility of an economic recession looming.
House Majority PAC, CLF’s Democratic counterpart, also recently invested in both districts — a sign that both parties believe the seats are at risk of flipping.
Two-term Congressman Sean Casten (D-Downers Grove) and challenger Mayor Keith Pekau (R-Orland Park) are locked in a closer-then-expected race than the major ratings services indicate:
- Cook Political Report with Amy Walter: Likely Leans Democrat
- Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: Likely Democrat
- Elections Daily: Safe Democrat
- RCP: Toss-up
While no published independent polling is available in this race, Mayor Pekau is broadcasting TV commercials on broadcast TV in Chicagoland. Congressman Casten has been on broadcast TV since Labor Day. Casten launched attack ads against Pekau in late September, possibly indicating Pekau and Casten are close according to internal polling.
* Isabel’s roundup…
* Black voters drive the right crazy by showing strength in numbers during elections: The strength of Black vote turnout in densely populated metropolitan areas drives the right crazy. The fact that urban Blacks vote in high numbers is one reason Republicans like to bash big cities. That’s partly why Darren Bailey, the GOP nominee for governor, called Chicago a hellhole. Black voters in the Southland are a big reason why Democrats enjoy one-party rule in Illinois. The concentration of likely Democratic voters on Chicago’s South Side and in the south suburbs makes this place ground zero for political power.
* Vaccines used to be apolitical. Now they’re a campaign issue: Pro-vaccine advocates worry that the rise of these candidates, along with an emboldened anti-vaccine movement, could spell trouble for public health in the years to come.”I think it’s really unfortunate that an issue that has saved so many lives has become partisan and hyper-political,” says Northe Saunders, the executive director of the SAFE Communities coalition, a nationwide nonprofit committed to supporting pro-vaccine political candidates and policies.
Scott Lennox, 21, of 3300 N. Lake Shore Drive, is charged with one felony count each of threatening a public official, telephone harassment and harassment by electronic communications, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
According to a Chicago police report, Lennox left Bailey a voicemail at 10:27 p.m. Oct. 28 in which he threatened to “mutilate and kill” him. Illinois State Police learned Lennox used his cellphone to make the threats against Bailey. Police said Lennox admitted making the threats.
Police say he admitted it. I’m hearing the threat was really gruesome.
Bailey had Illinois State Police protection the other day because of this awful man.
Pritzker on Wednesday took to Twitter to condemn the incident, saying “the violent rhetoric and division we’re seeing across our country is unacceptable.”
“Hatred in any form has no home in Illinois,” the governor continued.
Also condemning the incident was Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, of Hillside. “We need these violent threats to stop,” Welch tweeted. “Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to lower the rhetoric and bring back civility to our politics. I don’t agree with Mr. Bailey’s policies, but I want nothing but the best for him and his family.”
The voicemail in question followed a fight Lennox had at a Chicago bar after a political ad appeared on the bar’s television. The ad — and repeated ads he had seen during the campaign — made Lennox “angry,” prosecutors said, and a “heated argument” began between Lennox and his friends, leading him to send a voicemail to Bailey’s Springfield office, prosecutors said.
“I’m going to skin Darren Bailey alive, making sure he is still alive, and I’m going to feed his f****** family to him as he is alive and screaming in f****** pain,” prosecutors say Lennox said in the voicemail. He also made statements about abortion in his message.
He further said, “He is a piece of white a** racist s***, and honestly if he doesn’t kill himself, I will. You know what? I know where he lives. I know where he sleeps. I know where his kids sleep. And I know the f****** school he works at,” prosecutors allege he said. Lennox also said “the candidate teaching all this mother f****** misinformation is going to die. So honestly he should just kill himself before anything else happens.”
“Divisive, inflammatory, and misleading rhetoric is driving hatred across our state as some attempt to label political opponents as dangerous threats,” Bailey said in a statement Wednesday. “Whether we agree or disagree on policies, we are all Americans. I pray this young man gets the help he needs. We must bring our state together and fight for the safety and prosperity of every Illinoisan.”
This is the latest report in a research project established in 2019 to trace the use and provenance of local news sites created and operated for the purpose of exercising influence, be it electorally or to promote the interests of corporate clients or advocacy groups. While publishing news sites or newspapers to exert influence is not new, the increasingly involved campaign tools and tactics deployed through these networks create a challenge for independent local journalism and demonstrate how modern political campaigning makes it harder for readers to distinguish between political advertising and journalism.
This extended network is operated by a conglomerate of corporate entities—Metric Media, Newsinator (alias Franklin Archer), Local Government Information Services (LGIS), Pipeline Media (alias LocalityLabs or LocalLabs)—each of which claims ownership of different subsets of the network. […]
John Tillman, an influential conservative activist based out of Illinois, holds executive positions in at least nine organizations that, through a dizzying series of transactions, move millions of dollars around interconnected non- and for-profit organizations. As we reported last year, Tillman is also currently listed as the secretary for LGIS, the Illinois-centric subset of the network comprising thirty-four “local news” websites and eleven physical newspapers, which was subject to an FEC lawsuit for disguising campaign materials as local community newspapers (the suit was dismissed in 2019). Timpone is listed as the president of LGIS, a position previously held by Proft. In the run-up to the midterms this November, newspapers from the LGIS outlets have started appearing on doorsteps in Illinois attacking Pritzker for his policies on crime, COVID, and LGBTQ rights.
Proft’s PAC is financially backing Republican candidate Darren Bailey against Pritzker in the November election. Proft ran for office in 2010, currently hosts a show on the Salem Radio Network (which syndicates Christian political talk, conservative programming, and music), and his now-defunct PAC Liberty Principles paid Newsinator (one of the organizations in the extended network) over $300,000 for advertising. This year he started a new PAC, People Who Play by the Rules, which—at the time of writing—has received over $28 million from Uihlein, the shipping magnate and Republican mega-donor. The PAC has paid Pipeline Media just over $225,000 for services that include websites, SMS messages, and robocalls. […]
Only a small fraction of the $28 million that Proft’s People Who Play by the Rules PAC received from Uihlein—$226,668—was spent on Pipeline Media to cover services like website, SMS messages, and robocalls. […]
Since July 13, [Proft’s PAC] has spent over $12 million opposing Pritzker, of which $10,000 was disbursed to Pipeline Media for “website.”
Other anti-Pritzker domains registered in mid-September include pritzkermustgo [dot] com (which features a new ad campaign by the pac) and pritzkerbook [dot] com (which presents users with a book about “what every Illinoisan should know” about the incumbent). The book, too, is paid for by the People Who Play by the Rules PAC.
All these domains share digital identifiers like IP addresses and analytics infrastructure with other sites in the extended local news network, including the Will County Gazette, Kane County Reporter, Chicago City Wire, and DuPage Policy Journal. […]
People Who Play by the Rules isn’t the only PAC that’s received millions from Uihlein this election cycle. Restoration PAC, whose raison d’être is to “provide support to truly conservative candidates” and to “oppose Leftists and the woke agenda,” received at least $13.7 million from the founder of Uline, the privately held shipping-supply company. Of this, $1.37 million went to Pipeline Advisors LLC ($1,336,109) and Pipeline Media ($30,463) for various types of consulting and “production costs.”
It’s apparently all one thing. There’s more, so click here.
*** UPDATE *** I should’ve posted this interesting graphic. Notice the Franklin News Foundation. That’s the publisher of Center Square…