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It wasn't just Presidential candidates that were running for nominations in yesterday's vote. A handful of local Democrats and Republicans also ran for their party's spot on the November ballot as well.
- Prosecutor Anita Alvarez won yesterday in a six-way Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney where no candidate had the edge going in. She'll face Tony Peraica, a Cook County commissioner from Riverside who ran unopposed in the Republican primary.
- Eugene Moore will hold onto
his personal fiefdomthe Recorder of Deeds office, beating 28th Ward Alderman Ed Smith by well over 150,000 votes. - 3rd District Congressman Dan Lipinski will hold onto the seat his father bequeathed him, beating Chicagoist favorite Mark Pera by 27 points. Jim Capparelli played a role in that loss, siphoning off about 12,000 votes.
- Democrat Dan Seals will face incumbent Mark Kirk in IL-10, handily beating Jay Footlik with over 80 percent of the vote. Democrat Jill Morgenthaler will face Peter Roskam in IL-6, a district that Tammy Duckworth lost two years ago after a bitterly fought campaign.
- Jim Oberweis may finally get to be a real elected official, winning the hotly contested IL-14 GOP primary to fill the vacancy left by retired House Speaker Dennis Hastert. (Free ice cream for everyone!) The Democratic primary is still too close to call.
- And Dick Durbin will be challenged by Republican Sauerberg for the senate seat he has held since 1996.
Image via Blee606
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Pera did not lose because of Capparelli. He lost either because a majority of people in his district are idiots or because his literature that he sent out sucked. His lit was all about the war in Iraq, like anyone believes that Mark Pera has anything to do with what is going to happen in Iraq, come on, whoever came up with his literature has absolutely no idea what people from this district want as a representative or how little value voters place on empty promises of stopping the war in Iraq. He should have hit hard on the fact that Lipinski is a buffoon who inherited his position, which sucks, but I didn't get one piece of literature hitting this issue hard.
Also, looks like the Claypool party of Cook County, sadly, is still unable to find any traction.
As a Republican who grew up on the South Side, I would have loved to see the anti-Republican Mark Pera win. Why? The nepotism in Chicago politics has to fought whenever possible. Especially when a buffoonish son of a political hack gets installed, as was done with Dan Lipinski.
I agree with the comment above. What happened with Mark Pera shows how some anti-war Democrats are so worked into a lather that they can't understand how average, working Chicagoans live and think.
Did Pera staffers really think that getting out of Iraq was the main election issue for South Side working families? And don't they realize that families down there tend to be very patriotic?
Don't they realize that families down there don't like carpetbagging outside contributors, as were used by Mark Pera? Do you realize that some voters on the South Side, even if they are Democrats, perceive some Democrats to be anti-Patriotic, lefty elitists?
The campaign staffers for Pera were working in a mutual admiration society. "Great idea! We'll hit him on Iraq!" "Hey, we'll say he supports Bush...that'll really turn voters against him!"
Campaign staffers for Mark Pera were suffering from a variant of Bush Derangement Syndrome, wherein they are so focused on the anti-war, anti-Bush movement that they thought they could convince South Siders to join with them. Guess what? Didn't happen.
It's not exactly precise to say Tammy Duckworth "lost" the 6th district in 2006--that implies she was the incumbent and Peter Roskam ousted her. The seat was vacated by Henry Hyde. She lost the election, not the seat.
Oh good. I'm glad I'm not the only one who received 1,379 unsolicited pieces of political mail. Some candidates sent about ten different mailings (this means you, Heather Steans, and you, Jay Paul Deratany) over the past month. There was a whole pile of the stuff weighing down the coffee table.
And naturally most folks threw these things away. With most candidates talking about green energy, the environment, global warming, carbon footprints, and saving rare breeds of dust mites found in remote regions of Antarctica -- the whole save-the-environment campaign was counterproductive.
Ward Up: Your argument that Pera lost because his campaign was run by a bunch of elitist left-wing outsiders would be great, except that Pera was more native to the Southwest Side than Lipinski. I don't think there was a Mark Pera and his "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show" operatives should get out of town moment.
If Lipinski hadn't put Jerry Bennett and Jim Capparelli up in the primary, the results would have been much closer. You can argue the merits of Pera's campaign strategy (I didn't agree with all of them, but I thought they made some good moves), but the "blue-collar working-folk are patriotic, inherently conservative" argument doesn't hold water.
It's not that Pera should have said I love the war. It's that voters don't buy that a 1st term representative has any say over what is going on in any war. The Democrats already played the war card last election and guess what they had majorities in both the senate and house, and hey nothing happened, they didn't change anything. So what makes Mark Pera, one man, a freshman congressman, think, if he wins the election he is gonna be the big difference in ending the war. He isn't. What people needed to hear was, I am a successful person who has been a productive citizen of the district, here are some unique ideas of mine, and by the way the guy I am running against has done nothing but be the son of the person who previously held the seat and it's about damn time we stop electing people like we live in a freaking aristocratic monarchy and by the way he lived in TN up until he won the damn seat. Why pull any punches and talk about the war like Lipinski was Secretary of Defense or some neocon lurking in a bunker secretly making plans to take over the world, tell it like it is he doesn't deserve the seat just because his father held the seat no matter what kind of a congressman his father was.
Pera is also the only Dem not smart enough to stop talking about running away from Iraq now that it appears we are winning. [Spin "appears" any way you like, Kev. It doesn't change the issue.]
Just about everyone else realized that issue is a non-starter. I'm with the activist echo chamber theory on that one.
Seanfield: I agree that criticism of the Democrats for not doing more to end the war is very much in order.
It's that voters don't buy that a 1st term representative has any say over what is going on in any war. The Democrats already played the war card last election and guess what they had majorities in both the senate and house, and hey nothing happened, they didn't change anything. So what makes Mark Pera, one man, a freshman congressman, think, if he wins the election he is gonna be the big difference in ending the war.
I thought Dick Durbin gave me some pretty good answers to those questions when he explained the congressional math he deals with on this issue.
I love Dick Durbin. More than Obama.
Dick Durbin for VP!
Pera is also the only Dem not smart enough to stop talking about running away from Iraq now that it appears we are winning. [Spin "appears" any way you like, Kev. It doesn't change the issue.]
That's rich,
Anyway I thought the war was won a little over 5 years ago (mission accomplished), oh and yeah everyone it's not "The War" it's "The Wars" let's not forget about our buddys in Afghanistan.