Short version: Eric Holder got to be testifying before the Senate on a day where the big news was that the NSA was having Verizon pull its phone logs and hand them over to the federal government. Mark Kirk had an opportunity to ask questions. Hi-jinks, as they say, ensued. For those of you who don’t have video, here’s a rough translation/summary of what Holder | Read More »
Rand Paul has done a brilliant thing filibustering the President’s appointment to the CIA. By keeping the filibuster going through prime time, Rand Paul forced ABC, CBS, and NBC — chief sources of news for low information voters — to cover the issue. Along the way, Rand Paul had help giving him time to rest his voice. Ted Cruz came down a few hours in | Read More »
The WikiLeaks document release will dominate the conversation inside the beltway today and this week. Tomorrow, the President’s Debt Commission will meet in an attempt to report a package of legislative items to Congress. The Commission needs 14 of 18 members to vote to report any measure and they are operating under a December 1st deadline to settle on a report. Also on Tuesday, the | Read More »
Chicago, where I grew up and lived for 26 years, has been the butt of jokes about corruption and election fraud. This behavior has seeped across the border at times into Indiana. For example 31 people were convicted for voter fraud in the 2003 East Chicago (Indiana) Democratic mayoral primary. At the very least, this year the Illinois Democratic Party and election apparatus has become | Read More »
Later today I will find out what my Senate projection says are the four closest Senate races are, but for now, here are what I think those four currently are, and the latest polling on each: Illinois between Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk, Nevada between Republican Sharron Angle and Democrat Harry Reid, Washington between Democrat Patty Murray and Republican Dino Rossi, and West | Read More »
Mark Kirk? The video at this link? It’s your next campaign ad. “If I knew then what I know now, these are not the kind of people that we’d do business with,” he added, “but that’s not how banks work.” Asked again if he knew that criminal figures were the recipients of some of those loans, Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL) said again, “I didn’t know the | Read More »
The Illinois Senate race keeps going back and forth. Republican Mark Kirk led a while, then Democrat Alexi Giannoulias took it back, but now having won three consecutive polls including PPP’s latest, it seems that Kirk is definitely on top again. It’s so close though that the polling of third party candidates is a serious issue. It may not matter in the end, though.
OK, this is a free piece of advice for the Giannoulias campaign: clearly their critical decision path process with regard to accepting assistance needs to be updated. From now on, they need to absolutely make sure that at some point during the process the question By the way: are you associated in any way with organized crime? be asked of potential assistants – and if | Read More »
Via Ed Morrissey, who looks at the landscape and implications in Illinois, Mark Kirk is explicitly campaigning as the 42nd vote against the Democrats in the lame duck session in December – which he probably needs to do because in Illinois, for reasons not worth rehashing here, there’s actually a second line on the ballot in which Roland Burris is running for re-election just for | Read More »
During the California Senate primary, my major criticisms of Carly Fiorina were that she had no public track record to back her on the issues, and that as a novice campaigner she was liable to make mistakes and lose a winnable race. During the race I didn’t quite give her the Tom Campbell treatment, but I gave Chuck DeVore all the support I could. During | Read More »
From Unlikely Voter: I theorized before that Pat Quinn would drag down Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois, with a rout for Governor having reverse coattails for Senate, and now Public Policy Polling seems to show the effects I predicted. A bad candidate for governor in a negative wave year is a terrible situation for a party to have, but that’s the Democrats in Illinois today.
From Unlikely Voter: The Illinois Senate race is already set to be an ugly war, only distinguished from France 1916 by the lack of chemical warfare. Both candidates are hated and have baggage that is not going to go away. Either one can win, though, judging by the polling I’ve seen. But if Republicans rally around a surging Bill Brady while Pat Quinn polls as | Read More »
He wants only free-range dirty lobbyist money, apparently. None of this factory-grown, federal dirty lobbyist money for him: Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias says he’s swearing off campaign contributions from lobbyists, but not all lobbyists. Giannoulias, the state treasurer, promised at the start of his Senate campaign a year ago that he wouldn’t take contributions from corporate lobbyists or political action committees. But that | Read More »
I understand that the man is desperate to escape to Washington, DC – but the bills are piling up. And I am not being figurative in the slightest: Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo. He | Read More »
A pleasant beginning to the week, no? First it was President Barack Obama, then White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, now U.S. Senate Candidate Alexi Giannoulias is joining the Rod Blagojevich corruption trial subpoena list. Giannoulias is in the middle of a hard fought campaign against Congressman Mark Kirk for the right to fill the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Obama. So | Read More »
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