Sieben to retire early, help Bivins UPDATED X2

January 23rd, 2008 at 05:47pm Aaron Chambers

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.”

Entry Filed under: Tim Bivins, Marty Mulcahey, Todd Sieben, Illinois politics