I'm very jealous today. I wish I lived in Pennsylvania. Folks in Pennsylvania got to go to the polls this week. Our primary elections in Illinois were held Feb. 3.
If Pennsylvanians did it the way we did it, Arlen Spector would be been the Democratic Party nominee. Instead, by giving voters an extended primary campaign in which they got a long look at the candidates, Pennsylvania Democrats chose a far stronger candidate in Joe Sestak.
We in Illinois aren't so lucky. We are stuck with Alexi Giannoulias. His primary challenger, David Hoffman, surged in the days leading up to the primary, but still lost by six percent.
Hoffman wasn't well known around the state, except in the Chicago area. He made headlines as inspector general in Chicago by criticizing Mayor Richard Daley's deal to privatize the city's parking meters, a move which brought in a ton of cash early, but which in the long run will cost the city untold millions of dollars.
One doesn't get ahead in politics around here by butting heads with Daley. So Hoffman had trouble getting his campaign started. Illinois Democrats went with the better known candidate, and Giannoulais had been elected to statewide treasurer's office four years earlier.
Would Democrats make that call today? I doubt it. Not after the feds siezed Broadway Bank a few weeks ago. Giannoulias resigned from the family business when he took office as treasurer. There is little doubt, however, that the decisions he made while working at the family's business, most notably over-investing in the commercial real estate market, led to the bank's demise when the market crashed.
Giannoulais makes some reasonable points in his defense. The bank wasn't heavily involved in the derivitives trading which contributed to the crash of 2008. No one at the bank has been charged with wrongdoing or illegal behavior. Broadway was a community bank, not one of the too-big-to-fail monsters. It gets complicated here, but hefty bonuses paid to bank officials before it crashed were used to pay inheritance taxes involved in keeping the bank in family hands following the death of his father.
Seems fair enough. But politics ain't fair. And does anyone really think Illinois Democrats would have selected him as their candidate if the primary were held this week? His opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, has been gleefully asking voters if they want a banker whose bank has been siezed by federal regulators to go to the Senate where he will vote on banking regulation. Giannoulias has gone so far as to demand that media stop running stories when Kirk criticizes him over the bank issue. No fair, he cries.
I doubt Kirk is worried about this, even though some media outlets have challenged him to start talking about other issues. And why should he be worried? The Blago trial starts soon. Disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich faces corruption charges. He allegedly auctioned off the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.
"This thing is f***ing golden," he said into a federal wiretap. "I'm not going to just f***ing give it away."
Blago eventually decided to pawn off Obama's Senate seat to Roland Burris in return for a fund-raiser Burris promised to hold for him. Burris professes innocence in the matter because he never was able to come up with the cash for Gov. Elvis. Blago demanded a golden parachute from the Obama administration, something involving cash up front and a cozy job, maybe ambassodor to somewhere no one's ever heard of. If he didn't get it, he promised, he would sing like a bird in order to save his own skin, and he knows where the bodies are buried.
Alexi isn't accused in having had a hand in this fiasco. He has, however, had to defend himself against charges that his bank lent money to convicted felon and fixer Tony Rezko, who was a huge speed bump in Obama's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, so don't expect any photo ops of Obama and Alexi shooting hoops, as they did in the old days.
This can't reflect well on the Democratic Party in Illinois. But say we had a primary this week? One in which one of the candidates is a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office, one whose job it was to put corrupt politicians in jail? One who enhanced his reputation as a reformer by butting heads with the Daley Machine?
Does anyone really expect that Giannoulais would win now? My guess is he would have bowed out of the race weeks ago, and Hoffman could run a winning campaign focused on his opponent's support for the invasion of Iraq and his flip-flop on climate change legislation. He dropped his support for it when he announced for the Senate.
And with the current mood of voter discontent with incumbents of both parties, Hoffman could paint the five-term congressman as a Washington insider and reliable vote for the Bush-Cheney regime and himself as the fresh face who is seeking national office for the first time.
Why does a state hold it's primaries in the first week of February, for an election in November? The reason most often cited is that, gee, Illinois is such a big state. It takes a candidate nine months to get around the place and introduce himself to voters. Do you know how far it is to Carbondale? My guess is that the power brokers in Chicago couldn't find Carbondale on a map. (Way down south. If you hit Kentucky, you missed it.)
Only one reason passes the smell test. It is to make it tough on challengers. February in Chicago qualifies as some of the worst weather on the planet. Ice and snow are crusted into place several inches high on most sidewalks outside the downtown Loop.
It forces challengers to begin their campaigns so early. If you are running against someone in a two-year seat--a state or U.S. Rep.--the person you are running against hasn't completed the first year of the two-year term. Than you have to hold off on the campaign during Christmas and New Year's Day. Then you have a month to knock on doors in January. Good luck with that.
I tried to prove my theory by checking vote totals in the primaries in both states, but I was proved wrong. A quick scan of Pennsylvania results shows there was better turnout here as a percentage of registered voters. There were reports of rain holding down turnout in Pennsylvania. Wussies!
But how much information did Illinois voters have? And how hard is it for a challenger to make a dent? I stand by my assumption that Illinois primaries are held early to make it tough on challengers. Polling in Pennsylvania shows Sestak losing by a landslide among registered Democrats back on Feb. 3, when Illinois voters had to make their decision.
How hard is it now to make a case against Kirk's assertion that the issue of corruption lies behind everything in Illinois?
Personnally, I can't imagine casting my vote for a guy I have voted against five times in his congressional races. But by burying the primary under three inches of snow that fell Feb. 3, the powers-that-be in Illinois have nationalized the case for Gianoullais, "It's a Democratic vote in the Senate!"
The same could be said for place-holder Burris. We Democrats could have, and should have, a much stronger case to take to voters in November.
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Comments
The Democratic Party has become very complacent, casting unworthy machine politicians into races that they think are in the bag. The Massachusetts, Illinois, and Connecticut Senate seats are a case in point. Massachusetts is already lost, and Illinois and Connecticut will likely be lost as well. What stupidity. What arrogance.
I am part of the poleaxed befuddled population. IL moving and conniving makes me feel like most of the information is hidden, and there are no healthy candidates. (although I've always liked Durbin- even though he must not be pro lgbt or we'd have equal marriage here)
another option
Also raising a ruckus was the practice of keeping meter enforcement going on Sunday, which the press dubbed "Pay to Pray" because of people finding tickets on their windshields when they came out of church.
The way the deal works is that the company gets the money from the meters, but the city still gets revenue from tickets, so cops have orders to enforce enthusiastically.
Julie--Depends on whom you ask. He'll tell you he's a great friend to the lgbt community, but some activists says he's all show and no go.
Stim--I found something but then lost it and couldn't find it again. One of the on-line sites ran a couple of stories wondering why the party didn't throw Alexi overboard after the bank seizure, lean on him to withdraw from the race. The question hasn't gotten any traction here.
You are a good reporter. You build this steady and make the local politics universal.
And you checked your assumptions, reported the facts, contrary-wise. I guess you know this puts you half a parsec above pro journalists.