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Illinois

* Alvarez revels in upset, more here

* Peraica comes out fighting vs. Alvarez

* Decoding Rezko: Breaking down his pending trial; the prosecution’s evidentiary proffer

* Stroger claims foes ‘smacked in the face‘ by election results

* Stroger’s new plan: Cut budget, hike tax; more here

* DOE official apologizes for mocking FutureGen site, Illinois

C.H. “Bud” Albright says he’s sorry for saying the federal government isn’t interested in “building Disneyland in some swamp in Illinois.”

* Illinois awards grant for sculpture to mark race riot

* Crowded ballots, economy spell disaster for proposals

Of the 14 Will County referendum requests on Tuesday’s ballot, 12 failed - some by margins of 40 percent or more.

* Wrap-up Wednesday

The surprise on Super Duper Tuesday in Illinois was at the state level, not the national level. Illinois still played a significant role February 5 by doling out more than 200 presidential delegates to the Democratic and Republican candidates, but the state got lost in the mix of 22 states that held primaries that day.

* Jim Oberweis already campaigning, though opponent in doubt; more here

* Democrat won’t concede yet in race for Hastert seat

* Congressman Mark Kirk’s father dies of pulmonary fibrosis

* Handley leaving state job to join cable TV group

* Blagojevich Announces State’s First Court Victory For Equal Pay

* Can Obama, like Harold, get Latino lift?

* Obama’s Rezkopportunity knocks

* Little-known ballot name Illinois son

Sen. John McCain may have won Illinois Tuesday, but Republican presidential candidate James C. Mitchell walked away from Super Tuesday with 456 votes.

posted by Kevin Fanning
Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:08 am

Comments

The Suntimes indictment uncoding is a handy little read. It looks like they will convict Rezko. Faced with the reality of a long time in prison he will testify to get a reduced sentence. Then the indictment of Public Official A will be next. My money says the Gov is indicted somehwere bewteen the end of 09 and the summer of 2010.

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:42 am
Peraica will incur the wrath of Dem and GOP females in Cook County if he refuses to respect Alvarez–c’mon Tony, let’s have at it…

Comment by Anonymous45 Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:44 am
Alvarez should not be touting her previous stint as head of the State’s Attorney’s political corruption unit. This is Peraica’s strong point, and he will have a field day pointing to all the corruption she turned a blind eye to or was completely oblivious to, while challenging her to name one high profile corruption case she prosecuted and won.

Alvarez got 26% of the Dem vote, and she got it mostly because of her gender and race. It may take more than that to win the general election one-on-one against someone who presents himself as not only tough, but tough on corruption. In the end though, the D next to her name on the ballot should carry her through.

Comment by Snidely Whiplash Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:48 am
About the James Mitchell article. It’s almost unfortunate that the politicians with the money and flash get more attention than an unknown upstart who’s never held office. Though I still think it pays to actually win an election before running for President.

Comment by Levois Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:52 am
45’s comment is exactly on point. They are going to make this a gender battle, and portray Peraica as sexist. The combine “Republican” females like Liz Gorman will then crawl out of their holes (well, Liz has already done so, I guess) blasting the Republican candidate and defending the Democrat. They figure that they can get away with it because they’re not betraying their party, they’re defending a fellow female. They have one Republican candidate on the entire county ticket, and the county GOP chair is already out praising the Democrat and blasting “her” candidate.

How does this bode for future GOP tickets in Cook County? Who will want to put his or her credibility, reputation and money on the line for the county GOP if they realize that they’ll not only receive no support from their own “party,” but likely have to battle them as well in order to try and earn some credibility for a two party system here?

Say what you will about Peraica’s personality, but he is your candidate, and it is your party’s credibility on the line in this race. If Peraica loses, the GOP in this county may not recover for one or two full generations.

Comment by Snidely Whiplash Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 9:58 am
“Peraica will incur the wrath of Dem and GOP females in Cook County if he refuses to respect Alvarez–c’mon Tony, let’s have at it… ”

Except that women always fall for the bad guy.

The NOW women were the first ones to line up to support Clinton after the thing with Monika came out.

Comment by True Observer Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 10:09 am
“John Laesch is not admitting defeat in the regular primary. He thinks the absentee ballots will pull him over the top. That will create a mess with Foster having won the Special election primary.”

If Laesch does pull it out, it will be labelled as one of the worst mistakes a governor ever made.

Everyone assumed that Foster was in because of his strong support from the Party Establishment and his ability to fund himself.

Gov. Blagojevich was trying to mess up the Republicans by scheduling the special primary for the same date as the general primary because everyone assumed Oberweis and Lauzen would be competitive and they might each win one and not both.

The best laid plans of mice and men…

Comment by True Observer Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 10:15 am
Alvarez won in a crowded field because she is the most qualified for the job, not because of her gender or ethnic background. She is level headed, more experienced as a trial lawyer than crazy Tony, and honest and hard working. The voters saw these traits and put aside the political endorsements, stupid ads, and machine workers. All she has to do is show one ad with footage of crazy Tony leading the drunken mob to the county building after he lost his last election and it will be all over.
Tony was barely re-elected to his seat on the Board in his own district. He’s through county-wide. He’s a laughingstock.

Comment by Bill Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 11:03 am
Tony may have some money problems in this race too. According to his D2 he’s piled up a lot of loans to himself, and not brought in the kind of dough it’s going to take to run a winning campaign against a D in Cook County.

Comment by Gene Parmesan Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 11:10 am
Bill– Wanna decode “level headed” for voters not in the…in as in “the know”?

Comment by anonno Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 11:16 am
“All she has to do is show one ad with footage of crazy Tony leading the drunken mob to the county building after he lost his last election and it will be all over.”

With what the voters know now, they’ll wish he had taken over the County Building.

Comment by True Observer Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 11:27 am
There you go again..it is and it ain’t and it really ain’t, when it cuts. No rules broken it just cuts and cutting is reserved.

I’m going to make a point of introducing myself at the next City Club breakfast. Wear your sailor hat.

Comment by anonno Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 11:47 am
More bad news for our financial mess:

“State investment income to take hit from financial swoon.”… Giannoulias said the state probably will collect $38 million to $50 million less in investment income during the 2008 fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Things will get worse next year, when the treasurer expects the state to collect $243 million, at best, from investments. In the last full budget year, Giannoulias’ office made $426 million in investment income.

http://www.sj-r.com/extras/breaking/index.asp#4473

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:00 pm
Random thoughts on the State’s Attorney’s race:

1) The contest played out like a “down ballot” judicial campaign, just as I predicted on this website on Monday. Women win multi-candidate judicial races in Cook County. There were 14 multi-candidate judicial contest on ballot Tuesday and female candidates won 11 of them. What’s more, 2 of the 3 male judicial winners had names that could have easily been perceived as female: Pat Rogers and Mauricio Araujo.

2) A much bigger surprise than Alvarez finishing first was Brookins finishing fourth! His performance was shockingly bad. Black voters simply had no idea who was. Obviously, his campaign was hurt by not razing enough cash to get on television, but his free-media effort was poor, focusing too much on John Burge and not enough on his own record, (albeit thin,) as a prosecutor. He also could have highlighted any crime fighting efforts he undertook as alderman. His biggest tactical error was not putting his picture on his yard signs that appeared all over the South Side – a missed opportunity to reinforce his status as “the black candidate.” The “Obama-Brookins” signs weren’t enough. Dozens of other candidates tried the same Obama sign-stunt, including Suffredin. I thought Mike Noonan was better than this.

3) Alvarez’s campaign successfully pushed negative media stories that damaged her rivals. Suffredin was badly hurt by the focus on his lobbying activities and probably lost the Tribune endorsement as a result. Brookins lost middle class, black female support because of all the deadbeat stories. Alvarez won Bloom Township, an area with few Hispanic voters (outside of Chicago Heights,) but filled with professional African-American women. In her first political campaign, Alvarez’s press guru, Sally Daly, dominated her higher paid rivals in this race by setting the free media agenda.

4) It took a crowded, evenly divided race, but Hispanics finally cashed in on their growing population numbers in Cook County. (Also see Berrios; and Avila and Santos in the Water Rec race.) Some have speculated that Mayor Daley jumped into Alvarez’s corner in closing days of the campaign, pointing to her wins in the 11th, 13th and 14th Wards. Daley had NOTHING to do with it. Hispanics make up a healthy majority in Ed Burke’s 14th Ward and constitute at least one-third of the population in John Daley’s 11th and Mike Madigan’s 13th Wards. Had Daley secretly thrown his support to Alvarez, she would have finished much better than fourth place in the 19th Ward, a ward with very few Latinos and a whole bunch of Daleyites. Percentage-wise, the 19th was one of Alvarez’s worst showings – one of only two wards where she finished worse than third place.

5) Alvarez’s commercial that tied her career as a prosecutor to being an overprotective mother was, by far, the best ad of the campaign. It was the key to her winning suburban townships that traditionally have a high percentage of female voters in Dem primaries (Schaumburg, Elk Grove, Bloom.)

Comment by R.A. Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:11 pm
RA forgets or forgot to mention Skinny Sheahan and the guy waiting for him out front in the Blue Ford Explorer.

Comment by anonno Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:20 pm
Alvarez is a professional prosecutor, more of a technocrat than a politician. I could say the same for Milan so if the world was sane, they should have been the two most likely to win. The fact that Alvarez was on the air and Milan wasn’t might have been the final factor. Her gender may have been a plus, but only because she was qualified for the job.

The reason other GOPers may be distancing themselves from Tony is because he is obviously a loose cannon. He’s not as well qualified as his opponent, and first impressions count and so far Tony has made a pretty poor first impression.

Comment by cermak_rd Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:30 pm
Geez annono,
Are you gonna spill all the beans?

Comment by Bill Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:43 pm
Alvarez was as qualified as any of the candidates running, however, she won because she is a woman. I found this out when I called my x-wife, mother and sister to get them to vote for Allen and they all told me they are going to vote for the woman.

Comment by Garp Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:46 pm
By the way, what was Pat Quinn’s role in the Alvarez victory?

Comment by Garp Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:52 pm
Bill–

Don’t blame me its that terrible nuisance and fearfully irresponsible Iggy J. Reiley who’s spilling the beans.

Comment by anonno Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 12:53 pm
Peraica is going to get slaughtered in November. he lost the November election on February 5th.

Stroger is doomed in 2010 - I don’t see any silver lining in this election for him at all.
I think some Democrat should run as independent if Stroger somehow wins another primary.

Comment by Captain America Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 4:18 pm
Cap’n, that’s a good bit of sly GOP strategy, isn’t it?

Comment by Snidely Whiplash Thursday, Feb 7, 08 @ 7:34 pm