A new name has emerged in the U.S. Senate race between Mark Kirk and Alexi Giannoulias.
It’s Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq.
Kirk’s campaign first leveled the accusation in a press blast after Alexi Giannoulias released a new campaign ad Monday morning, and Kirk reiterated Alexi’s supposed tie to the “Butcher of Baghdad” during a campaign question and answer session at the Sofitel Hotel Monday while he addressed the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
If you want to read the Kirk campaign’s full explanation of this, click here. It’s a bit of a stretch, but they seem to think it’s a worthwhile charge.
On a day that Democrat Alexi Giannoulias released a new commercial slamming him as a liar, Republican Mark Kirk tried to shift the focus back onto Giannoulias’ family bank, saying the bank gave a loan to Nadhmi Auchi, who Kirk said sold arms to Saddam Hussein.
“According to the New York Times, he was a banker to Saddam Hussein,” Kirk said of Auchi. “And According to the Observer of London, he was a middleman in the billion-dollar naval arms deal between Hussein and the Italian Navy.”
Voters should care, Kirk said: “This is not political Kryptonite — this is Hemlock,” Kirk said.
Kirk delivered his remarks after giving a 40-minute speech on foreign policy — Iran, Afghanistan, etc. — to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It was the first of a series of speeches Kirk planned to “elevate” the debate above mud-slinging in the senate race, Kirk said. Then he went back to trying to link his opponent to Saddam Hussein.
“This was a huge loan,” Kirk said of the $22.75 million loan the Sun-Times disclosed last week from Broadway Bank to Nadhmi Auchi and Tony Rezko to develop a 66-acre South Loop site. “The owners of the bank and its officers would have known that they were lending money to a convicted felon with a record of facilitating arms deals to Saddam Hussein and I’m not even talking about Tony Rezko.”
Giannoulias’ campaign said he left five months before the loan was approved and had nothing to do with it. But Kirk said today he had his doubts and he noted Giannoulias was at least still a part-owner of the bank.
“When you look at Treasurer Giannoulias’ statements, I can’t tell when he left the bank,” Kirk said. “The other day, he said he was at the at bank in March of 2006, which would have been a month after this loan was approved. They were running a federally insured institution and so you would think that dealing with a person barred from the United States, convicted of a felony, that a simple Google search would have revealed his business dealings.”
Actually, Giannouolias said in March of 2006 that he was still running things. Now he says he was on a paid leave by that time. But, whatever, you get the drift.
* Meanwhile, Kirk says he will likely vote for a bill that will pump hundreds of millions of federal dollars into Illinois coffers…
Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk says he’s inclined to vote for a $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats are pushing. […]
On Monday, Kirk called the measure deficit neutral and said it would keep teachers in the classroom.
He says he still needs to read the fine print but expects to support the bill.
* Giannoulias was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today. You can watch the full thing here, or you can choose to view the short clip that the Kirk campaign wants you to see…
From a Kirk press release…
Scarborough: Did you guys give loans to organized crime?
Giannoulias: No.
Scarborough: Is that a no?
Giannoulias: Yes that’s correct.
Giannoulias Lies about Loans to Mobsters: This morning, in a flat-out lie, Alexi Giannoulias told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Broadway Bank never made loans to organized crime figures.
Actually, he was not asked if he made loans to organized crime “figures.” He was asked if he made loans to organized crime. Parsing, yes, but if you’re gonna accuse somebody of lying, at least get the quote right.
* And the Adam Kinzinger campaign is touting a new poll by Public Opinion Strategies that has him leading Democratic US Rep. Debbie Halvorson by 11 points, 51-40. From the pollster…
* Among high interest voters (those who rank interest at 8-10 on a scale of 1-10), Kinzinger’s lead expands to 57-35, with seven percent undecided
* Twenty-six percent of respondents believe the country is headed in the right direction, while 68 percent believe it is on the wrong track
* Thirty-one percent of respondents support re-electing Halvorson, while 55 percent think it is time for new representation
Public Opinion Strategies is working with 50 House and Senate campaigns this year, so it’s a biggie. But the firm had real problems with this district two years ago, claiming in late September that Marty Ozinga was only trailing by two points. Ozinga got clobbered, scoring just 34.5 percent of the vote. The firm also rated almost at the bottom of 538’s June rankings - just below the now widely discredited R2K.
Also, I seriously doubt that Kinzinger has a name ID of 60 percent, as the pollster claims. It doesn’t make sense, especially since only 27 percent rated him favorably and 4 rated him unfavorably.
Even so, the Halvorson campaign isn’t releasing its own numbers, so you gotta figure that Kinzinger isn’t doing too badly.
…Adding… I’m not saying it, but if I was saying, this looks a whole lot like a high tech brick through your own campaign window. Just saying…
An independent candidate for governor believes someone is trying to sabotage his effort to get people employed.
Scott Lee Cohen calls it a despicable act. His office has received well over 100 phone calls from people seeking more information about a job fair he plans on holding Aug. 19 in Chicago . The problem: those people had been given the wrong date, and not by Cohen’s campaign or from fliers that he has disbursed to local churches and other outlets. He believes someone is intentionally mass texting people the wrong information.
“I don’t know who’s doing it. However, if it’s an attack on me, to try and hurt me, what they’re really doing is hurting the people of Illinois. I think it’s a despicable act…a cowardly act,” Cohen said.
Cohen believes it’s deliberate, although he isn’t pointing fingers because he doesn’t know who’s doing it. “I believe it is deliberate. … If this is a political ploy, then whoever is doing it is really a sick individual.”
…Adding More… A friend of mine just forwarded me the text message that he received…
From: 7736551309
Received: Aug 4, 2010 4:01 PM
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: “Job Fair” August 19th,
Fwd: Fwd: “Job Fair” August 19th, 2010 @ 566 W. Lake - Lower Level - Call Andrew @ (312) 441-0300 for more info.
I called the 773 number and it went straight to voicemail, which was full.
* Keep in mind that this is a national Rasmussen poll, and that the “40 percent Yes” answer to the first question is way off the mark. But, it might give you an idea of what Illinoisans think about the sales tax holiday…
* Does your state briefly suspend sales taxes at this time of year to encourage back-to-school shopping?
40% Yes
43% No
17% Not sure
* Do you favor or oppose so-called sales tax holidays?
62% Favor
22% Oppose
16% Not sure
* Are you more likely to buy things during a sales tax holiday or less likely to buy things during a sales tax holiday?
60% More likely
14% Less likely
23% No impact
3% Not sure
Fifty-two percent (52%) of all adults favor a school ban on the sales of sugar snacks and soft drinks.
Sixty-three percent (63%) oppose a full-year school calendar. Just as many oppose a four-day school week as a possible budget saver.
Most adults nationwide (55%) believe bullying in schools is a bigger problem today than it was in the past.
After students graduate from high school, 68% say every American should attend a post-secondary school.
* Methodology…
The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on August 2-3, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
* In other polling news, the Tribune sat on some polling results for almost a month…
The telephone poll of 800 heads of households across the six-county Chicago region July 8-14 found that 57 percent of the respondents did not want police to seek illegal immigrants for deportation.
Almost half of those polled, 48 percent, said they believed that illegal immigrants snatched jobs and resources, taking away from society and the economy.
Nearly all of those who responded, 87 percent, believed that some sort of legal status should be offered to the nearly 11 million people in the country illegally, provided that the immigrants aren’t dangerous felons, that they learn English and that they pay fines and back taxes.
Opinions about immigration in the suburbs are slightly different than in Chicago, whose immigrants from around the world have helped define the city. In some collar-county communities that have only recently seen new immigration, there is more support for police enforcement and a more negative view of illegal immigrants. On the question of offering legal status, 84 percent of those in the collar counties said they would support such a program, compared with 90 percent in the city.
Speaking to a group of Hispanic business leaders at Chicago’s Navy Pier Friday morning, State Senator Bill Brady called on the federal government to reform immigration laws and to secure America’s border.
Brady said increasing legal immigration would boost economic growth. He said our current birth rate is too low.
“The birth rate in this country will not allow us to grow at a rate we need to grow at, and we need to bring real reform to immigration policy and open the doors so we can see a growth rate in this country of four percent or greater,” Brady told the group.
When asked how many legal immigrants he proposed to admit, neither Brady nor his campaign spokeswoman would respond. Later — responding to reporters’ questions — Brady said
officials should “negotiate” over proposals that would penalize current illegal immigrants, but allow them to remain in the U.S.
* Related…
* Quinn defends sales tax holiday: The governor predicted that waiving the 5 percent state sales tax will result in more revenue for the state because it will entice more shoppers into stores. Once there, those shoppers will spend on items such as electronics and sports equipment that aren’t covered by the tax holiday. Shoppers still will have to pay the local portion of the sales tax, which is 4.75 percent in Chicago.
