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 ›

Mark Kirk was sworn in as Illinois' junior senator yesterday, calling his swearing in the end to "a sad chapter in Illinois history" and pledging a bipartisan, centrist approach while taking a shot at Democrats he said had squandered the public's goodwill. "Our state's leaders tried to sell this seat, then blocked an election to fill it," Kirk said at a reception following his swearing in. "But the courts, the law and the people spoke." 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 ›

From the heart of the 53rd Ward comes an unlikely mayoral candidate: Alderman Ed Bus. You can check his ongoing campaign through Election Day 2011 here. more ›

Congresswoman Melissa Bean finally conceded to her Republican opponent, Joe Walsh, in the 8th Congressional District race. After all absentee ballots were counted, Walsh's final lead over Bean was reduced to 290 votes, a gossamer-thin margin that even Bean realized she couldn't overcome with recounts. more ›

According to an AP report, Kirk won’t be seated in time for the start of the lame duck session of Congress because the paperwork officially declaring him senator won’t be delivered until November 29th. Already, a website has been created to “save us” from the lame duck session and various media outlets have penned scathing editorials. more ›

As Rahm Emanuel comes closer to making a formal announcement of the inevitable, he's also taking steps to consolidate his power heading into the upcoming mayor election. To begin with, Rahm has hired Blake Sercye, an African American field organizer from the Quinn campaign. That move has several benefits for Emanuel. Taking Sercye off the market as a hired gun keeps a talented organizer with knowledge and connections in a critical community (Sercye is an Austin native) from going to work for a rival candidate. Sercye also helps counter charges that the campaign doesn't have support in the black community. 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 ›

"All politics is local." So true. Yesterday, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun took the lemons of the Democrats sound defeat at the polls and turned it into lemonade. Braun accused Rahm Emanuel of "cut and ran" from the Obama Administration, leaving the President to take responsibility for Wednesday's election results. 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 ›

With the Blago spectacle in mind, two-thirds of voters who went to the polls yesterday voted in favor of adding a recall amendment to the state Constitution. more ›

It has to be hard to be an election judge in Chicago. Certainly it can be thankless. But some should probably blow some steam after the polls close. more ›

Barack Obama said, "as president I take responsibility" for the economic issues that led to last night's GOP takeover of the House of Representatives and expressed a willingness to work with GOP leaders to find common ground on such issues as tax cuts. 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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A couple of announcements regarding election night coverage this evening. more ›

Voter turnout in Cook County "looks good" so far this Election Day. A County Board of Elections spokeswoman said that roughly half of registered voters have turned out in midterm elections over the past 20 years, and there's been an increased interest in absentee and early voting. more ›

The polls will close in five hours across Illinois and it's nice to not have to hear or see a campaign commercial. This must be the silence Mom referred to as her time, before we all stirred awake and she herded us along to school. more ›

And if you that person and are insisting on voting today, then we want to arm you with the resources to at least make an informed opinion at the ballot box. more ›

What did Julie Andrews sing in Mary Poppins? "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?" more ›

President Obama is scheduled to be at a rally along Midway Plaisance tomorrow, which means that traffic around the Plaisance and the University of Chicago will be strictly monitored. 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 ›

Leave it to the Illinois Democratic Coordinated Campaign to potentially disenfranchise voters it wants to help exercise their right to vote. Thousands of absentee ballot applications sent out to registered Democrats by the IDCC contain errors that can hold up voters from receiving their absentee ballots in time to have them counted in next week's election. The mailing address on the return envelope is a PO box for the State Democratic party, which then confirms the information with voting records before sending the applications to county election officials across the state for processing. more ›

In a press conference held just in time to be upstaged by Tom Dart's announcement that he's not running for mayor, Forrest Claypool, who is running against Joe Berrios for county tax assessor, released a review of where taxes breaks have been granted in the county. more ›

This election season has been one of the most expensive in history in Illinois, in nearly every race for office. Last week, Fox News Chicago estimated that candidates in the Chicago area spent at least $61.1 million on television campaign advertisements alone. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform reported that ten legislative races hit $1 million in campaign spending, with more than 60% of funds coming from legislative leaders. Even holding onto a Supreme Court seat shattered spending records. The ICPR reported this week $3.1 million dollars raised in the one-candidate retention contest of Justice Thomas Kilbride. 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 ›

A press release from State Representative John Fritchey yesterday indicates a slight rift between 32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack and Fritchey over supporting the state Democratic ticket. 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 ›