NW Cook leaders endorse Hynes

Two northwest suburban committeewomen — Sue Walton of Palatine Township and Kathleen Sances of Wheeling Township — endorsed Dan Hynes’ campaign for governor last night.

From the Daily Herald:

“Dan Hynes has presented a coherent plan for a budget that cuts unnecessary government spending yet maintains funding for essential services. [...],” Sances said.

and

“Dan Hynes was the only one to stand up to both Governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich for their mismanagement and irresponsible budgeting,” Walton said.

“Liberal Lion of the Senate” Passes

God rest ye merry gentleman, Sen. Ted Kennedy passed away last night. Flaws and all he was truly a great American leader.

Hynes In It to Win It

Dan Hynes sent out an email to Cook County Dem Chair Joe Berrios this afternoon and apparently cc’ed the entire central committee.

He’s asking that the county party skip its traditional slate-making process and instead make no endorsement for governor as a way to illustrate a clean break from the past:

Dear Chairman Berrios:

I want to thank you for your service on behalf of the Democratic Party. I know from personal experience the hard work and long hours required in the pursuit of building our great party from the ground up.

I am writing to you today as a state officeholder, a candidate for Governor, and as a life-long Democrat. I encourage you and the Committee to forsake the traditional “slate-making” process and issue no endorsement for Governor or any other statewide elected office before the February primary election. If the slate-making process does go forward, I have and will continue to encourage all Committeemen and women to vote “No Endorsement,” whether or not they have pledged to support me.

It has been a tumultuous time for our state and our party. On the one hand, our hard work and commitment to true progressive principles were rewarded when we saw our favorite son Barack Obama elected President. On the other hand, we have been forced to deal with the embarrassing saga of Rod Blagojevich, whose alleged criminal conduct and mismanagement of our state continues to be a burden. The one common thread of these vastly different occurrences is the certainty that the old way of doing business in Illinois has run its course, and that we must reaffirm our commitment to move forward.

I therefore propose that we have a completely open process whereby Democratic Party candidates for statewide office present themselves to the electorate at large to seek their votes.

It is to the Committee’s credit that there exists such a desire to maintain and renew the Democratic Party in Cook County, and to ensure that our strongest possible candidates are on the ballot next fall. I share this desire. I believe, however, that strength is attained and built through openness, transparency, and ultimately an open primary process.

I have and will continue to seek the support of individual Committeemen and women just as I am seeking the votes of men and women across Illinois.  It is my belief that the Party is best served when all Democrats have that same opportunity to take the measure of their candidates and decide, on their own, whom they will support at the ballot box.

To this end, I have requested that all Committee members who support me vote “No Endorsement,” and I will not accept the Cook County Democratic Party’s endorsement regardless of the outcome of the slate-making vote. It is my belief that we must fundamentally change the way Illinois works, and this is a necessary step in that direction.

Thank you again for your hard work and support of the Democratic Party we all love.

Very truly yours,
Dan
Daniel W. Hynes

CC: Cook County Central Committee

Will it work? Remains to be seen but clearly this will be the first test of just how strong Hynes’ support is as he takes on elevated Gov. Pat Quinn.

As an aside, one other very awkward effect of the way-too-early February primary: if Quinn does not win the nomination he will be a lame duck for nearly a full year. (This did happen in the state legislature in 2008, but that’s just one member out of many rather than such a high profile position.)

As another aside, once upon a time state Democratic Party Chair Michael Madigan made the audacious move of having the party endorse his daughter for Attorney General in the primary and a few years ago the Cook County party got together to place Todd Stroger on the ballot in place of his ill father after the primary. I’m proud to say my friend the late Pat Botterman voted against both moves.

No “Sen. Kennedy of Illinois”

The Tribune is reporting that Merchandise Mart chief Chris Kennedy will not be entering the Democratic primary for the US Senate:

In a letter e-mailed today, Kennedy, the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said he “decided not to run” for the Senate. “The decision wasn’t easy to arrive at,” he said, and he joked that in wanting to consult with his family members, “just speaking to them can take months.”

That leaves State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias and Urban League head Cheryle Jackson as the two main opponents for the Dem nomination to Senate. A poll from earlier in the month had Giannoulias with a big lead in the primary while another poll released today (this one from Republican-leaning Rasmussen) showed GOP Rep. Mark Kirk within the margin of error against Giannoulias and with a lead over the less well-known Jackson. Both showed quite a lot of undecideds out there.

Rest in Peace Fellow Illini Bob Novak

Bob Novak has succumbed to his cancer. I often (almost always) disagreed with his political philosophy but the one time I met him at an Illini Media event he was as warm and jovial in person as everyone who knew him says he always was.

Rest in peace.

(IL-66) Harris gearing up to challenge Walker

In a move that wasn’t completely unexpected, Arlington Heights resident Dave Harris is gearing up to challenge State Rep. Mark Walker (D-66, Arlington Heights).

Harris is a man of many hats. He was a State Rep from 1983-1992. He achieved the rank of Major General in the National Guard before retirement. He is a former Adjutant General of the Illinois National Guard, appointed by Gov. George Ryan and then retained by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He applied for a seat on the Metra Board but the county board instead chose the mayor of Arlington Heights. And, he was one of President George Bush’s point men in the State Department as a civilian director for Iraq reconstruction a few years ago.

Here’s a little bit of info about Mr. Harris based on newspaper accounts and political analysts’ columns.

Kotowski & Walker Veterans Bill Signed by Gov

Kudos to Sen. Dan Kotowski and Rep. Mark Walker for shepherding the Higher Education Veterans Service Bill (SB 1624) through their chambers. Gov. Pat Quinn signed the legislation into law today.

Illinois and Federal governments and others offer a number of services and opportunities for veterans who are attending college and this bill essentially requires schools to consolidate that info into one source and also appoint someone on staff as an ombudsman for veterans who are students (doesn’t have to be a new hire – could be someone on staff already). Many schools already do some or all of what’s required — meaning the fiscal impact will be minimal — but this bill makes the state’s public colleges and universities uniform for all veterans.

Walker himself is of course a veteran, having volunteered for service during Vietnam and being sent overseas, and jumped right into veteran’s matters in the Capitol. Kotowski has also been very involved in veteran’s issues and this Act is just one of his pieces related to our responsibilities as citizens to the quiet heroes among us.

This is common sense legislation meant to help those to whom we owe our very freedom achieve their goals in life. Congrats to my senator and representative!

Trib’s Rick Pearson needs a hot shower after FOX attack

Progress Illinois notes that Rick Pearson recently told WGN radio personality Steve Cochran: “I got hijacked the other night. Actually, my credibility got hijacked and I’m not happy about it.”

What happened to make him feel so used? FOX News asked him to sit for an interview on Illinois’ upcoming US Senate race. Pearson discussed what he knew about the frontrunners from both parties: Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk.

Being a journalist, Pearson told Cochran he presumed his interview would used for a straight news story about both candidates.

Instead, as ArchPundit and others reported the other day that bits of it were used to bolster an attack on Sean Hannity’s show. We now know this happened unbeknownst to Pearson. FOX’s Sean Hannity took that tape, did a little slicing and dicing, removed commentary about GOP candidate Kirk and turned the Giannoulias comments into fodder for a weak-in-the-knees hatchet job against the Dem.

How much ya wanna bet that FOX “News” segment is going to be circulated among Illinois Republicans and conservatives from now til November 2, 2010 and quoted ad infinitum?

Indeed, the NRSC already has a Google ad up this week cajoling people to:

Stop Alexi Giannoulias

Stand Against the Chicago Machine
Text “NoAlexi” to (######) for info

Hmm… For those that keep up on things, one of the more bizarre central themes of Hannity’s hack job was that Giannoulias, who actually ran against the Machine in 2006’s Democratic primary, is somehow a part of that same Machine. But what’s a little fib for FOX, eh?

And Mark Kirk’s first web ad? Chock full of grainy photos, dark music and references to Blagojevich, Burris and scandal.

Quite the string of coincidences.

And despite his remorse the question remains: When sitting down for an interview with a TV network so full of slimey characters whose only goal it seems is to propagate. one. political. agenda’s. propaganda. … why would Mr. Pearson not expect to walk away feeling slimey himself?

I’ll let Mr. Pearson have the quote of the week:

Frankly, Hannity has had people on before that were not qualified to really tell you what the price of a loaf of bread is in a grocery store.  I’m not a politically ideological person. I don’t pick sides to root for here — any of that stuff.  And for a legitimate news segment, I have no problem with that. But to really, kind of, had this happen to me — I mean, it’s almost like an identity theft kind of thing in a way, because all I have is my credibility.  And I know that show doesn’t have any.

Ya been had, Mr. Pearson.

Sen. Durbin calls out anti-health care astroturfers

Sen. Durbin held a brief news conference today calling out the extremists trying to take over and literally shout down otherwise civilized discussions between citizens over health care reform.

He called out those right-wing extremists for turning otherwise civil discussions into “free-for-alls” and based on the way these adults are acting in public he’s right. The conservatives are holding up signs with Nazi SS symbols, drawing silly devil horns on Congressmen’s pictures, and even hanging Congressmen in effigy for Pete’s sake. (This coming the same week as a conservative Glenn Beck fan was arrested for casing a National Guard post on the East Coast. She was armed to the teeth, and then some, and went berserk when she was in court for trespassing.)

The White House has also officially gone on the offensive to debunk the more and more numerous half-baked spin stories that are circulating through people’s e-mail accounts.

A tale of two local events…

The Wheeling and Palatine Township Democrats held a health care debate at the Arlington Heights Library on July 16. This event was held without incident and everyone in attendance was very respectful of each other and of the panelists who presented the spectrum of options from status quo for-profit insurance plans to a public option (mixing an offering of private and public insurance plans similar to Australia’s well-received system) to a single-payer system.

The non-partisan Palatine League of Women Voters held a health care forum the next week on July 22, right around the time a now infamous right-wing memo literally describing how to disrupt meetings went public. The otherwise civilized LWV meeting devolved into mayhem with people shouting over regular citizens and others taking over the mic to recite insurance industry spin … apparently complete with mispronunciations when they came across words they didn’t recognize as they were reading the talking points.

This exactly mirrors what the conservative lobbyist group’s how-to memo re disrupting meetings instructs anti-reformers to do: create a free-for-all so no rational discussion can take place.

(FYI, the person who wrote that letter to the editor panning the League’s lack of control over their meeting is a health insurance broker who earns a living by getting commissions for selling various health insurance plans. I don’t know Ms. Thies so can’t make a judgment as to her motivation re that letter but it seems suspicious that she would chastise the League when it was a few audience members who were disrupting the meeting, no? Doubly suspicious given that those over-the-top audience members appeared to be following a right-wing group’s script nearly line for line.)

Questions: If conservatives and others truly just want to slow down health care reform in order to have a rational debate on the topic why are they instead using this August discussion time to just shout and wail so that nobody, pro or con, can have a frank talk about fixing our health care system?

Or, are they simply automatically opposed to anything but the status quo — thereby protecting the very profitable insurance industry at the expense of regular Americans — and will do anything to live up to their moniker as the Party of No?

Is this really not a “Republican vs Democrat” issue but more of an “Insurance Industry vs We the People” issue?

Just because you have a right to be a complete icehole

Doesn’t mean you should be.

(h/t BarbinMD)

Health Care debate comes to NW ‘burbs

Northwest Cook County will feature two local discussions on national health care reform in the next few days.

The first is this Thursday, 7/16 in Arlington Heights. It will be hosted by the Democrats of Wheeling and Palatine Townships and be held at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library starting at 6:30pm.

The second will be next Wednesday, 7/22 just up the road in Palatine. This one will be hosted by the non-partisan Palatine Area League of Women Voters chapter. It begins at 7pm in the Palatine Public Library.

Both will feature physicians such as local activist Dr. Hal Snyder, MD (a friend) and others to discuss the various facets of our current system and the possibilities being discussed by President Obama and Congress.

Speaking of Congress, blogger Downtowner reports that IL-14’s freshman Congressman Bill Foster supports a strong, no-trigger public option — making him one of a score of Blue Dog Dems to sign on as fighting for a public option. No word yet (that I know of) if his neighbor to the north in IL-8, Rep. Melissa Bean, will join him in backing a solid public option without triggers.

And if you don’t have any inkling as to why we need to reform health care then go read Downtowner’s heartfelt autobiographical post over at Progressive Fox. She describes her experience in dealing with the ubiquitous Big Insurance Company and the trials and tribulations of simply surviving despite our country’s current for-profit, corporate-rationed insurance system. (I recently added Progressive Fox to the blogroll. Good stuff.)

Is Proft a Gov Hopeful or a Court Jester? …Twittering the Day Away

Considering that we just impeached a goofball and are enduring some some fireworks with the new guy… it doesn’t bode well that one of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls spent the afternoon trading sophomoric barbs with the citizens he claims to want to lead and breathlessly giving us his quicktake on minutes-old news by tapping away a seemingly endless string of tweets.

I can understand elected officials and candidates occasionally posting their goings-on and informing citizens of up-to-the-second issues — such as Rep. John Fritchey’s tweets during a group meeting with the governor, also from earlier today — but if Dan “rapier-like wit” Proft truly wants to lead shouldn’t he log off Twitter for a stretch and actually go drum up some primary votes or find some people willing to help gather those signatures he’ll be needing to even get on the ballot in the first place?

…Or does he have nothing better to do with his time at the moment?

(Screen cap from the CapFax Twitter feed with afternoon Proft tweets highlighted. Just sayin’.)

Word of the Day: Fizzled

A choice quote from Sen. Roland Burris’ campaign manager Delmarie Cobb, via a Trib blog:

“As you know, there have been many marquee names thrown out for this seat and so far they have all fizzled,” Cobb said. “With [Burris] as the incumbent, it seems the Democratic Party would do well to rally around the person who has the seat and keep the seat rather than mine for a candidate.”

What was that? Some marquee potential candidates “fizzled”?

From later on the same day, via the Sun-Times…

Sneed has learned U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has decided NOT to seek election to the seat he fought the government to keep [...]

The decision by Burris was based on his inability to raise campaign funds [...]

Seems to me that is the definition of “fizzled”.

We don’t take kindly…

Everyone makes mistakes, even lil ol me. But if the allegations against Rep. Froehlich are true (and he doesn’t need to wait for a States Attorney investigation to know if they are or not) … he should just go.

Retire. Resign. Buy that B&B in the country. Go hike the Appalachian Trail. Whatever.

I don’t care what party you belong to. If you’re corrupt, get out.

Fran Eaton and the GOP’s Trillion-Whine ‘Misread’

Short version: Conservatives like Illinois Review’s Fran Eaton and the NRCC press office from which she lifted a boilperplate attack can’t both complain that Obama’s Recovery Act spends too much money and complain that it’s not doing enough… That’s illogical and actually serves to bolster liberals’ arguments that a second stimulus package is needed.

If you only grease a few pistons but leave the others dry your engine can still lock up.

Longer version is below the fold…