Elections: The Day After
By Kevin Robinson in News on Nov 8, 2006 2:55PM
In case you missed it, there was an election yesterday. Chicagoist hopes you got out and voted. And after we rocked the vote, we rocked the Daily Bar & Grill at a special election night happy hour; you should have been there.
That said, it was an exciting day: The Democrats have taken the House, but the Senate is still a toss-up. And yes, that means that Nancy Pelosi will be the new Speaker of the House. Rich Whitney carried the Green Party to a "permanent" ballot line in Illinois, in spite of his previous role in the Socialist Labor Party. Sadly, it looks like Joe Lieberman won, which is just a national tragedy.
We would put our money on both Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama being owed some big political favors for all the money that they raised and all the support that they threw into bringing a whole bunch of new Democrats into the mix. And even though we are disappointed that Obama backed the Toddler, sometimes paying back the machine is more powerful than any of us realize.
As of this publishing, the County Board President race is still in play, but it doesn't look good for our guy. Both Todd Stroger and Tony Peraica are claiming that they are still in the fight. Peraica even led an angry march this morning on the County Board of Elections. We're pretty sure we'll be writing about this race, and the County Board, for a while, no matter what happens. Tammy Duckworth ran ahead of Peter Roskam most of the night, but it looks like she couldn't quite pull it out. Melissa Bean has held on to her seat. Blagojevich has limped to a second term, but the indictments haven't gone away.
We suspect that things will slow down a bit in the next few weeks, as the winners and losers make their plans and get ready for the next Congress. George W. Bush is pretty much a lame duck; not much is going to happen in the next two years, unless the Democrats can take the Senate definitively. We here at the Chicagoist offices are nursing a bit of a hangover today, but it sure does make us feel good to see all that new blue on the map. Now that this election is under our belts, we can pay a little more attention to the upcoming city races.