Archive for January, 2008
January 29th, 2008
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet got Gov. Blagojevich’s attention when she noted on Monday that Blagojevich was the sole Illinois constitutional officer not appearing at an event for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the presidential contender and this state’s favorite son.
She suggested the Obama campaign didn’t want the governor around because of the heat regarding his connections to indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko, who was arrested Monday. Rezko was a top fundraiser and adviser for Blagojevich. (Obama also enjoyed support from Rezko, as did many Chicago-area politicos.)
Later, Sweet reported that she received a quick response from Blagojevich’s press office, which she also posted on her blog.
Blagojevich spokesman Abby Ottenhoff called to say that the Obama campaign has given Blagojevich an assignment, to woo six Democratic governors for Obama.
She also said that a new poll from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows the governor has better ratings than the legislature and asked that this be noted.
So much for Blagojevich’s taxpayer-funded staff not handling political matters. Isn’t there supposed to be some divide between politics and government.
But there was Ottenhoff, the governor’s taxpayer-funded spokeswoman, responding by noting two clearly political points — the governor’s “assignment” from the Obama campaign and the poll. Where was Blagojevich’s campaign spokesman, Doug Scofield?
Oh look, here’s Rebecca Rausch, the governor’s other taxpayer-funded spokeswoman, weighing in on the same matter.
Instead, they said Blagojevich was asked to call Democratic governors who’ve yet to endorse a presidential candidate and lobby them to back Obama. Blagojevich got that assignment because it’s something only he can do among the statewide officers, governor spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch said.
Ottenhoff and Rausch did not respond to requests for comment.
UPDATED X1 :
Jay Stewart, of the watchdog group Better Government Association, returned my call last night, but I had already left the office. Here is his take on it:
Stewart said while spokespeople such as Rausch and Ottenhoff can respond to questions from the press about political topics, they should probably refer the question to the politician’s campaign.
“If they get a question about it, it doesn’t mean they can’t talk about it. It just means they should refer it to … the Friends of Blagojevich (campaign),” Stewart said.
But he said taxpayer-funded spokespeople who actively reach out to the press about political subjects have crossed a line.
“To the extent they start answering the questions about political activity and not referring to the Friends of Blagojevich, they are probably getting into some uncharted territory,” Stewart said. “To the extent that they are reaching out to reporters to spin them on it, that strikes me as you’ve crossed the line.”
Sweet mentioned in her blog that she received a call from Ottenhoff about her post, but it is unclear whether Rausch was simply responding to questions from the Chicago Tribune.
January 29th, 2008
Gov. Rod Blagojevich and state Veterans’ Affairs chief Tammy Duckworth today touted a new program that would screen returning Illinois National Guard members for traumatic brain injuries.
They are also offering the testing to all other state veterans as well, according to the news release.
Let’s just hope reporters at the news conference also ask about this:
Substandard care at the Marion VA Medical Center left nine patients dead and 34 others seriously injured during a two-year period ending last September, investigators reported Monday.
… The reports describe a dysfunctional, sometimes dangerous, environment in which the hospital hired physicians without fully checking their credentials, allowed surgeons to perform procedures for which they were not trained and failed to act on information that suggested that patients were at risk.
January 29th, 2008
This could be the Democrats’ year.
An article in today’s New York Times lays all the numbers out on the table, and at first blush, the figures seem to foretell the story to come.
Even the Democratic fundraising numbers are impressive – particularly because the GOP traditionally fares much better in the money race.
But then there is this pesky little paragraph in the Times piece:
Republican Party analysts also note that both Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush were elected after Republican primaries in which turnout was lower than in the Democratic primaries.
As Illinois Democratic Party spokesman Steve Brown said in this Peoria Journal-Star piece, “It’s a neck-and-neck situation. The clearest indication will be, ‘Where are we Feb. 6?’”
January 28th, 2008
With all of the attention being paid to the presidential primaries this year, some of the election jargon floating around can be confusing.
Delegates and superdelegates to the nominating conventions are becoming increasingly important as the primary season wears on. Both political parties treat delegates differently with multiple layers of rules.
One way to look at the delegates is to consider them as cash on hand.
When Democrats show up in Denver in August, the roughly 4,049 delegates will come assigned to the presidential candidates for the party. For the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. in September, the estimated 2,380 delegates
Traditionally, delegates assigned to a specific candidate vote for that person at the convention. Therefore, just as in life, those who have the most “money” going into the convention are likely to win the nomination.
But of course, national politics is never that clean-cut.
The convention, particularly for the Democrats, always includes a number of delegates that are not bound to a candidate. For Democrats these are called superdelegates, and Republicans call them unpledged.
Many media outlets are predicting that these unattached delegates will be the key to settling a potentially open nomination process.
Here is some additional reading because this isn’t likely to go away until this fall:
- Superdelegates who haven’t endorsed a Democrat yet
- A good overview from my Gatehouse colleague
- CNN and the New York Times break it down, here and here
Even Bill Clinton gets a vote
- Dems have been wooing superdelegates since summer
- 1982 rule creating superdelegates could be boon to Dems
January 28th, 2008
Gov. Blagojevich has scheduled his annual combined State of the State/Budget Address for Feb. 20.
I hear our increasingly reclusive governor will deliver his address from a couch in the basement of his Chicago bungalow. There’s no word yet on whether press or the public will be allowed in to watch.
Just kidding. The governor will deliver his address in the Illinois House to a joint session of the General Assembly, as is traditional.
Over the next couple weeks, we’ll look at some of the challenges facing Illinois, fiscal and otherwise. For starters, here’s some background on bill pressure from a recent report by Comptroller Dan Hynes:
Through the first half of fiscal year 2008, the
state’s cash flow position continued to deteriorate.
At the end of December, the backlog of
unpaid bills in the Comptroller’s Office stood
at $1.720 billion although the office began the
year holding no bills. This time last year
payables totaled $1.336 billion. Just as significantly,
the delay in paying bills was 34 business
days as of December 31st, compared to
only 22 days at this time last year. Both the
backlog volume and the number of days
delayed represent record levels for the midpoint
of the fiscal year.
January 28th, 2008
Gov. Blago’s approval rating has bounced back to 42 percent, according to a poll commissioned by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. An associated story is here.
Forty-two percent is not pretty for the second-term Democratic chief executive of an increasingly Democratic state. Still, Blago is now nearly twice as popular as he was three months ago, when his approval rating was in the tank at 23 percent.
No doubt much of the bounce in popularity is due to Blago’s free-rides-for-seniors plan, which he inserted into a mass transit bailout plan via an amendatory veto. He and his taxpayer-funded staff practically beat this plan into the heads of Illinoisans with a full-scale promotional blitz around Illinois.
I’m guessing another factor is at play here, too: Blagojevich and lawmakers have officially left Springfield for the first in a year. Yes, there have been occasional breaks over the last year. But each of those breaks occurred amid gridlock and posturing at the Capitol. Blago spent those breaks parading in front of TV cameras and threatening to call lawmakers back into special session.
The current break, now in its second week, is truly that: A break from the acrimony. It follows closure on a significant matter — how to help Chicago-area mass transit agencies, which for the better part of a year had begged for more state money.
In short, folks appear to be much more fond of their government leaders when they actually accomplish something and then disappear.
January 27th, 2008
After winning Iowa, but losing New Hampshire and Nevada, Barack Obama tonight won South Carolina.
January 25th, 2008
With two more primaries just around the corner, today is probably a good day to catch up on the week’s national political news and commentary.
I’ve been scouring the Internet for perhaps the columns, analysis and stories you missed:
- The big dogs at the New York Times made two key endorsements in today’s paper.
- Is it ‘All about Bill‘? Another Clinton precedent?
- What was Rudy thinking? Will Florida make him the new ‘Comeback Kid’?
- One last pitch before Saturday
- Breaking up really is hard to do
- Guilty as charged
- Wobbly Republicans continue wobbling
- Losing ugly
- Campaign season’s most fashionable accessory: Authenticity
- R.I.P. Fred ‘08
- From man-to-beat to lackluster
- It’s now or never
- Convicing the Right
- It’s hard out there for a conservative
January 24th, 2008
State party support can make a huge difference in a local legislative race. The state party can send the dollars a candidate needs to buy advertising and the foot soldiers a candidate needs to build an organization.
But there’s also a certain stigma attached to state party support, particularly in the minds of independent voters. They want their local legislator to walk in lockstep with their own values, not with party leaders. A candidate who accepts state party support, and who goes on to win the election, certainly is under pressure to vote with party leadership — at least when it really counts.
Whether and to what extent the Democratic and Republican parties get involved in the race to represent the 69th legislative district, which includes a slice of east Rockford and all of Boone County, certainly will affect the outcome of the race. The district leans Republican. But when Democrat Greg Tuite challenged incumbent Republican Rep. Ron Wait in 2006, he came within just a few points of winning.
Tuite, of Rockford, did not enjoy support from the Illinois Democratic Party in that race. In the summer before the 2006 election, he played down the influence of state party dollars. From the Register Star:
(Tuite) said he is not expecting financial support from the Illinois Democratic Party, and that he got only a few donations from Chicago folks.
“It’s all Rockford people and Belvidere people,” he said, “who feel that they’ve been ignored and underserved.”
But after losing the election, he changed his tone. Also from the Register Star:
Rockford’s Greg Tuite came so close to ousting Belvidere’s Ron Wait, a 22-year incumbent, from the Illinois House.
Tuite was 1,383 votes — 3.5 percentage points — from beating Wait. That’s so close that Tuite on Wednesday was wondering, “What if the Illinois Democratic Party had put dollars behind my campaign?”
House Speaker Michael Madigan controls the Illinois Democratic Party. Madigan opted during the 2006 election to play defense and focus on keeping seats in the House rather than play offense and attempt to gain additional seats. He focused state party dollars on defending incumbents like downstate Rep. Kurt Granberg from GOP attacks.
Tuite wondered whether those dollars would have made a difference in his race:
“If I could have gotten some of that Granberg money — the money that was put into some of those other races — in my race, there might have been a different result,” Tuite said.
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown responded to Tuite at the time:
“I know we were aware of his candidacy. He was a quality candidate. But there is a limited amount of resources, and you’ve got to defend incumbents for starters. So we did.”
Tuite is challenging Wait, of Belvidere, again in this election. On Wednesday, I asked him whether he expected support from Madigan this time around.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I’m not gonna bank on it. You know, my opponent, he had state party support from his party last time. And obviously if that happens again, I would welcome state party support on our side. But I’m going to proceed as if it’s not going to happen.”
Tuite continued, “Obviously, if the Republican Party comes in and dumps a couple hundred thousand dollars into the race, I would appreciate if the Democratic Party would do the same.”
Wait enjoyed support from House GOP Leader Tom Cross’ organization in 2006. I asked him whether he expected the same support — money and staff — this time around.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Usually, they’re here to help incumbents and stuff like that. The question is, Madigan probably will send somebody up to help my opponent this year. So I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see that happen. That usually happens.”
January 23rd, 2008
Sen. Todd Sieben said Wednesday that he plans to retire shortly after the Feb. 5 primary election, paving the way for Republican party bosses to fill his seat with Tim Bivins.
Republican Bivins would therefore enter the Nov. 4 general election as the incumbent, potentially giving him a significant edge over Democrat Marty Mulcahey.
Since the Senate seat is held by a Republican, the district’s GOP chairmen get to pick Sieben’s successor. The district covers much of northwestern Illinois, stretching from western Winnebago County through Freeport to Galena and south to Geneseo.
“Certainly, an individual who is an incumbent senator has an advantage in an election,” said Sieben, R-Geneseo. “That’s been proven over and over again.”
Mulcahey said the move smacks of insider, old-school politics — an attitude he claims he would counter as a legislator.
“This falls into that politics as usual, that backroom, you know, cigar mentality of how we do things,” he said.
Sieben noted he’s just doing what Democrats do all the time.
“I learned how to do this from the Democrats,” Sieben said. “This is nothing new in their playbook. This is a typical way that the Democrats would handle the same situation.”
Sieben is retiring after serving more than 21 years in the General Assembly — six in the House and 15 in the Senate.
Mulcahey, the son of former Rep. Dick Mulcahey and a former legislative staffer, works for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White. He lives in Galena.
Bivins, a retired Lee County sheriff, lives in Dixon. He is excited about Sieben’s move.
“It’s a probably a two-edged sword right now,” he said of the prospect of incumbency. “If we have another year like last year (in Springfield), where the session lasts until August and into September and there’s numerous special sessions, it could be a disadvantage.”
Update 1
The Senate district leans strongly Republican, so this development seems like bad news for Mulcahey. It’s largely rural with scattered urban pockets. In the 2004 presidential race, George W. Bush won 56.2 percent of the vote. Democrat John Kerry won just 43.8 percent.
It’s tough to say at this point whether the November general election will be good for Democrats around Illinois. If this state’s own Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president, Democrats and independents probably will head to the polls en masse.
On the other hand, all-Democratic control of state government has been nothing short of a trainwreck for a solid year. Party infighting has been so severe and so consistent, it’s hard to imagine that voters won’t unleash some level of anti-Democrat sentiment once they get to the polls.
Then again, Illinois simply is an increasingly Democratic-leaning state. The Democrats control literally every statewide office, as well as both U.S. Senate seats. And it’s hard to imagine the Republicans winning any of those statewide seats back in the next two years. Their own state party infrastructure is in shambles.
UPDATE 2
More from my conversation with Sieben:
“I’ve let it be known to the county chairmen, the eight county chairmen in my Senate district, that my intention is after the primary, after the Feb. 5 primary, that I intend to retire as state senator,” he said. “Once I do retire, then that obviously creates an opening and my hope is that the county chairmen would then appoint Tim Bivins to complete my term.”
He continued, “Since the office is held by a Republican, the Republican county chairmen are notified of the vacancy and they convene a meeting, elect a chairmen and a secretary, and each county chairmen then casts a weighted vote for a candidate to complete my term.”
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