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Republican
legislative candidates in several targeted districts found
some numbers to smile about in last week's Democrat primary
for Governor. At
least a dozen of Rod Blagojevich's lowest performing counties
are within legislative districts that will be targeted by
Republicans this year.
This vulnerability will certainly be taken advantage of
in the fall.
A quick look at
numbers from the Democrat primary for
governor:
- Eisendrath won 6
counties
- Eisendrath
received at least 35% of the vote in 34 counties.
12 of those
counties are within targeted legislative
districts:
31st
Senate:
Lake
52nd
Senate: Champaign and
Vermillion
49th
Senate: Morgan,
Christian, Fayette, Greene, Macoupin,
Montgomery
99th
House: Sangamon
107th
House: Marion and
Jefferson
- Compared to the
last time an incumbent governor faced a primary
challenge:
2006- Rod
Blagojevich vs. Edwin Eisendrath. Eisendrath received
30%.
1994- Jim Edgar
vs. Jack Roeser.
Roeser received 25%. |
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 The dust from last week's primary had
just about settled at the end of last week, when State Sen.
James Meeks announced that he was seriously considering
seeking the Gov's Office as an independent. Meeks also announced
he could name a full slate of independent candidates as early
as this week.
Meeks can begin circulating petitions on Tuesday and
must file 25,000 signatures and run with a full slate of
candidates.
Meeks,
from Chicago, is the only
Independent office holder in the Illinois General
Assembly. Meeks
is the pastor of a massive black church and has said that he
would seek the office because he doesn't believe the state is
dedicating enough money to education and the poor. Meeks said that
if Governor Blagojevich lays out a four-year plan on how
education will be funded he would drop his plans to run. "If
he could do it without raising taxes, fine," said Meeks. "I am
not putting a demand on the governor for an income tax
increase."
Meeks met with Blagojevich last Thursday and came away
from the meeting "more determined than ever before" to seek
the Governor's Office. |
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 State Senator Dan Rutherford (R-Pontiac)
is the GOP nominee for Illinois Secretary of State. Rutherford has been
crisscrossing Illinois for the past couple
of years building name ID, organizing supporters and preparing
for a race against a very popular incumbent, Jesse White. Rutherford is planning on utilizing his
business instincts to topple the two term incumbent. "This is not a race
against Jesse White the person, however. It's
about a businessman by the name of Dan Rutherford, who has
political experience, and who knows he can do a better job
running the largest service segment of our government," he
said. "My
professional experience bears that out. And as far as how
we're going to do it, we're going out and talk to the people
across the state of Illinois."
Rutherford understands that
voters won't be engaged in the SoS race until late summer or
early fall. For
the time being, Rutherford,
whose term ends in '08, plans on finishing out the legislative
session and then jumping back into the campaign. Rutherford says that he will spend the
campaign pointing out the deficiencies he sees in the office
of Secretary of State.
"..when you go into a driver's license facility and
wait ... and wait ... and wait in today's service oriented
society, people don't like that. When you have people
getting tickets and late penalties for not renewing the
sticker on their license plates, and then realize they've
never gotten a reminder in the mail, something is
wrong." |
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 State Senator Ed Petka (R-Plainfield) decisively
won his primary election for a judicial subcircuit in
Will County. Petka, an
Illinois Chamber "Champion of Free Enterprise" award winner,
is Deputy Republican Leader in the Senate. He has a 98%
lifetime voting record with the Chamber during his service in
the state senate.
Terri Ann
Wintermute (R-Bolingbrook) will face Linda Holmes (D-Aurora)
in the November election to replace Petka in the 42nd Senate
District. The Republican leaning district includes
Plainfield and Aurora. |
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"Blagojevich's debate proposal is for 10 debates.
He suggests beginning the debates in April and having one each
month, with more frequent debates as the November election
gets closer. The details ultimately will be decided by the two
candidates, but more debates in a shorter time frame before
the election should be considered. It's hard for voters to get
too interested in an election that's six months
away.
Although
the governor didn't mention specific locations, the debates
should be held all over the state. It'd be interesting, for
example, for both candidates to explain how they would serve
Central Illinois during a debate in Central Illinois. With both candidates
being from the Chicago area, it's important
that downstate voters make a real assessment of which
candidate would serve the area best as
governor.
One
way to make that assessment is to have the two candidates
square off in a Central
Illinois debate." Read
the Whole Thing... |
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The Illinois Chamber wants to know what
your early impressions are of the candidates for
governor.