If Pat Quinn campaigned through the primary and general election with the urgency and tenacity he displayed in the gubernatorial campaign’s final weeks, he might have beaten Bill Brady by a wider margin than he did. The Senate campaign, meanwhile, was distilled to one issue: who did voters trust more? Did they trust the congressman who embellished his military record? Or the Golden Boy who oversaw a bank that failed and may have made loans to alleged mobsters? Ultimately, voters chose the former. more ›

This morning Kevin posted video of Rickey Hendon shooting from the hip in explaining why he voted in favor of the civil union bill. This afternoon, we bring you the flip side of the coin of candidness. more ›

Bill Brady took up Gov. Quinn's offer to meet at Manny's for a post-gubernatorial campaign sandwich yesterday. Much like the "beer summit" between Senator-elect Mark Kirk and Alexi Giannoulias, this photo op was as natural and organic as the colors in the Oprah Winfrey Network logo. more ›

While folks in Southern Illinois are busy blaming Chicago for Bill Brady's defeat in he race for Governor, ballot experts have narrowed the focus to "ticket splitters," those folks who don't always vote straight party. 2 percent of Illinois voters chose Pat Quinn for Governor and Mark Kirk for Senator on election night. more ›

The editorial board at the Southern Illinoisian is quite dismayed at Bill Brady’s loss to Pat Quinn this election. So much so, they penned some scathing commentary calling for an end to Chicago’s “choke hold” on state politics by developing an electoral college. As Rich Miller from Capitol Fax points out, the Southern Illinoisian’s editoral board has lost its collective mind. They’re not the only ones either. On a Champaign radio station, a Brady supporter called in to say “I wish Cook County would just secede from Illinois” and Brady also said in a debate that voters should want Illinois to look more like Indiana or Tennessee. more ›

Bill Brady conceded the Illinois Governor race to Pat Quinn during a press conference in Bloomington earlier today. more ›

Despite trailing Governor Pat Quinn by 19.561 votes, a margin that Quinn said is "insurmountable," State Senator Bill Brady has yet to concede his campaign for Governor. There will be some adjustments on counts in precincts throughout the state and absentee ballots have yet to be counted, but it's impossible that Brady will run the table on those ballots to catch up to Quinn. more ›

The Associated Press is projecting Pat Quinn as the winner of the Governor's race. With 100 percent of precincts reporting and only absentee ballots left to count, Quinn has a lead over state Senator Bill Brady of 19.400 votes. more ›

It was nearly 1 a.m when Pat Quinn addressed his supporters at the Hotel Allegro when he pulled out a campaign button he bought as a teenager to support the Presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago in Westmont. "Kennedy won Illinois that year by 8,000 votes," Quinn reminisced, drawing a parallel between Kennedy's margin of victory and his own current gossamer-thin lead over Bill Brady in the race for Governor. more ›

Capitalizing on voter concerns of the economy and the spark provided by the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party staged what Illinois Senator-elect Mark Kirk called "a tsunami in the heartland," taking control of the House of Representatives and gaining enough seats in the Senate to make life miserable for Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic majority there. "The American people's voice was heard at the ballot box," said the incoming House Speaker, Ohio's John Boehner. more ›

Well, here we are. The polls have closed and it's all over but the waiting. We've installed a twitter chat widget in the post so you can follow along on the updates throughout the evening. You can also join in on the conversation by using the hashtag #Chilection2K10.

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Bill Brady's campaign porn is back on our airwaves, a day after they were pulled for non-payment. Brady said the issue lay with his media buyer and has since been corrected. He also got a burr in his saddle when questioned about the non-payment by ABC7. "Now wait a second, no one said we didn't pay our bills...we paid our media buyer, he's the buyer, don't put words in anybody's mouth," said Brady. more ›

With days to go before the general election, major television stations are pulling Bill Brady's campaign commercials because he hasn't paid for the airtime. And here we thought the ads last night seemed slightly less offensive because the politicians wised up on negative ads. more ›

Yesterday, we talked about the tenuous relationship that mainstream Republican candidates have with Tea Party activists. To wit: GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady will be attending a Tea Party event in Will County, but isn't promoting it as such. Now Mark Kirk will be joining Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (along with Bill Brady) on Halloween at Joe's Bar on Weed Street. more ›

We’re now heading into the home stretch in election season and both the gubernatorial and senate elections are tight races, according to polls released by the Tribune. Republicans Mark Kirk and Bill Brady both lead their respective races, but by thin margins. Kirk holds a 3 percent lead over Giannoulias (44% to 41%) while Brady has a 4 point lead over Quinn (43% to 39%). more ›

Republican candidate for governor Bill Brady sent out an email Monday inviting supporters to join him in Will County's Homer Glen for the "final stop on Brady's suburban ‘Clean Break Express' tour." What Brady's email failed to mention is that the event is hosted by the Will County Tea Party Alliance. more ›

Gov. Pat Quinn continued to make like Pontius Pilate and wash his hands of incendiary comments State Senator Rickey Hendon made about Bill Brady at a campaign rally Saturday. Hendon said of Brady, "I've never served with such an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic person in my life. " more ›

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn may be having second thoughts about the choice to have Chicago's Black Sarah Palin introduce Quinn at a "get out the vote" rally on the city's West Side on Saturday. State Sen. Rickey Hendon used the opportunity not to talk up the man he was about to usher on stage, but rather to make personal attacks against Quinn's opponent and Hendon's fellow State Sen. Bill Brady. About Brady, Hendon certainly didn't hold back and said: more ›

In light of Gov. Quinn's stern political campaign ad accusing opponent Bill Brady of supporting the euthanization of pets in carbon monoxide gas chambers, Quinn has released another political ad that attacks his opponent. But this time, Quinn's camp takes a more glee-ful tone: more ›

The entire foundation of Brady's campaign is of a man who won't accept "business as usual" in Springfield, not to mention hanging the albatross of a 20-year state budget mess on the neck of a man who's only been governor 18 months and was largely marginalized as lieutenant governor by the Human Pompadour... But how does Brady reconcile his "agent of change" stance while accepting money from two men who were complicit in maintaining the status quo? more ›

Gubernatorial candidates Pat Quinn and Bill Brady put on a show last night during their highly rehearsed debate on ABC7, evading questions like the best politicians while taking potshots at each other throughout the hour-long debate. This debate and the personal attacks for the most part followed the same script as the previous three debates between Quinn and Brady. more ›

Scoff at Chicago's suburbs all you want, but those SUV driving soccer moms are going to decide the direction Illinois heads in for the next four years. As state Sen. Terry Link (D-Vernon Hills) tells the Sun-Times, "I believe the collar counties will decide who the next governor is going to be." And both major party candidates are both too clueless to realize it. more ›

Governor Pat Quinn and his GOP challenger in next month's general election, Bill Brady, sparred with each other of Illinois' budget crisis during a debate at Southern Illinois University in downstate Carbondale last night. With a $13 billion budget deficit looming for the next governor to deal with, neither Quinn nor Brady offered any details as to how they would get the state out of the mess. more ›

A new poll conducted by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University finds Bill Brady holding a nine-point lead over Governor Pat Quinn as the gubernatorial race heads into its final weeks. Which begs the question: How milquetoast does Pat Quinn have to be to be trailing Brady? more ›

In a conversation with the Daily Herald earlier this week, Governor Pat Quinn affirmed his optimism that civil union legislation will pass in Illinois by the year's end - a crucial deadline of sorts for LGBT activists as they look toward a gubernatorial race whose polls have continually favored Bill Brady, who staunchly opposes such legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. more ›

GOP Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady and his running mate for Lieutenant Governor, Jason Plummer, sat down with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Tuesday on a far ranging interview that touched upon many subjects. Among them, Brady said that he would not stand in the way of public school districts amending curricula so that Creationism could be taught in schools. Brady explained his stance by straddling the issue like a lifelong politician. "My knowledge and my faith leads me to believe in both evolution and creationism,” he said. “I believe God created the earth, and it evolved." more ›

On tour in Illinois yesterday with New Jersey's Republican Governor, Chris Christie, GOP Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady got caught up in some difficult questions about how he'll handle the state's ballooning budget deficit. Brady called Christie "an inspiration" for cutting New Jersey's budget, but refused to discuss specifics of either the cuts he would propose or the borrowing he would consider, and cut short his news conference when the local media pressed him for details on how to handle the state's $13 billion budget hole. more ›

While recent polls and projections by a pretty reliable pundit - FiveThirtyEight - put GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady with a lead over Gov. Pat Quinn, a new Tribune poll shows the two may be closer to a dead heat heading into the final month of the campaign. The new Tribune/WGN poll, conducted last Friday through this Tuesday of 600 likely voters, puts Quinn in the lead 39 percent to Brady's 38 percent with Scott Lee Cohen registering four percent, Green Party candidate Rich Whitney pulling in three percent, and Libertarian candidate Lex Green with 2 percent; the poll has a margin of error of four percent. It's quite a swing from the pre-Labor Day poll the Trib conducted which put Brady in the lead by about five percent (37 to 32). Of the voters that were polled, 18 percent of those that considered themselves "Independent" were undecided, surely the key section of voters both Quinn and Brady will target in the upcoming month heading into November 2nd's general election. more ›

Governor Quinn will extend the Put Illinois to Work for up to two more months. The program, which has managed to put 26,000 people to work at more than 5,000 public and private sector employers, is set to expire September 30th. Governor Quinn plans to spend $75 million to keep the program running until Congress votes on an extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund. more ›

We’ve already seen plenty of mayoral polls for Daley’s seat, but now that election season is in high gear, expect to see plenty of polls for every open political seat. The New York Times’ FiveThiryEight blog (h/t Rich Miller at Capitol Fax) released updated projections for the Illinois race for Governor that show Bill Brady has an 89% chance of winning. Recent polls from Rasmussen, Survey USA and Public Policy Polling all show Brady ahead of Quinn by a decent margin. Nationally, the projections show Democrats still keeping a hold on the Senate but losing control of the House. At present, Democrats have a slim majority of governorships, but that appears that could change too. 538 predicts 25 out of 35 Republican wins this November. more ›