Just in time for the premiere of AMC's "The Prisoner" remake, we learn Illinois may be the home to some 200 al-Qaida terrorists currently near a Cuban beach in Guantanamo Bay. The Hound says ship them to the Thomson Correctional Center. We might as well make something off the Jihadists.
Besides, these prisoners look like they will be surrounded by about 1,500 GIs, if U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin knows what he is talking about. If military guards are involved, what happens to the 3,000 jobs Gov. Pat Quinn was touting for tiny Thomson, out there in northwest Illinois, a region which over the years has commonly been referred to as Forgottonia. That's because the rest of Illinois has forgotten about it, like one of your funny uncles.
Congressional Republicans have decided to fight this proposal by the Obama administration tooth and nail with Highland Park Congressman Mark Kirk leading the charge to keep these terrorists where they belong --- Cuba. He says putting them in Illinois leaves us open to danger at O'Hare International Airport and the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). He even has an online petition on his U.S. Senate campaign Web site to send a message that Illinoisans don't want terrorists here: www.noterroristsinillinois.com.
Kirk and his fellow Illinois Republicans argue if the Islamic terrorists are here, they will endanger Illinois. The Hound thinks we have enough of homegrown terrorism on the streets of our cities that we can handle 200 Jihadists. Besides, they may like it here. Except in winter.
There was a lot of clucking in the Blogosphere, especially among Illinois Democrats, about GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk seeking Sarah Palin's backing in February's Republican primary. In effect, they said the Highland Park congressman was going rogue.
Well, The Hound believes that is the farthest thing from Kirk's mind. This will blow over by the time November comes around, just like most of the pre-election political hijinks on both sides of the political aisle.
What Kirk is doing is no different than what any candidate does in a political primary. He leans to the right as a Republican, to the left as a Democrat. The party faithful are more apt to vote in primaries, not independents. And to win, a candidate has to appeal to the broad spectrum we call the electorate. Candidates have been doing this for decades and once the primaries are over, they start to meld in the middle. Can't win without appealing to independents, which President Obama realized last fall.
Palin, whether you like her or hate her, is hot right now. She's on "Oprah", she's got a book coming out, she's hot on the conservative speechifying circuit. It's normal to seek her support, regardless of one's political independence. As of this date, she hasn't said if she'll support anybody in next year's GOP primary.
Meantime, Kirk, a military man himself, was all over Chicago TV on Veterans Day, giving a long-ignored medal to a Zion World War II vet. Except for Gov. Pat Quinn, no other statewide candidate made the evening news. That should tell Republicans of all persuasions something as the runup to Feb. 2, 2010 begins.
Senior citizens sure have clout in this state. They stared down lawmakers and Gov. Pat Quinn when it came to the possibility of losing their free mass transit rides. Sturdy legislators turned to Jell-o when facing the voting booth wrath of Illinois geezers denied gratis bus and train rides. Quinn, too, waffled after transit agencies thought they had an agreement to restrict the free rides to low-income seniors and half fares for other seniors.
For all of you who thought there was no free lunch, talk to Illinois pols. They fear seniors mainly because they vote. A lot. While the nation's youth vote may have propelled then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama into the White House, they only come out when they're energized on an issue or candidate. Seniors don't care. They just vote. A lot. Which is why seniors get so much free stuff and reduced rates for everything from hotel rooms to national park entrance fees.
A group of seniors storming Springfield sends shivers down the spine of normally unswayable pols. Which is why the two-year-old free rides for seniors 65 and older is still running. When faced with re-election prospects, pols err on the side of seniors and their growing numbers (see, Boomers, Baby).
Chicago Transit Authority officials believe the free rail rides instituted by former Gov. Rod "The Apprentice" Blagojevich has cost them some $60 million. They were hoping to recoup that. Guess again. Now the CTA is looking at service cuts and fare increases.
We like what one lawmaker unconcerned with geezer rage said: "There is no free ride on a bus that doesn't exist." Who said seniors are in their golden years? Not The Hound.
There's nothing like a Democrat scorned, The Hound always says. Take Lake County Democratic Party boss, state Sen. Terry Link of Waukegan. He's still in a snit over Sheriff Mark Curran jumping to the Republican Party.
So Link now has a candidate to fight fire with fire. He's tapped Waukegan criminal attorney Douglas Roberts to take on Curran, who once was a Waukegan criminal attorney and a Democrat. Says Link in today's Lake County News-Sun about Roberts' candidacy: "He's a real Democrat."
Like there's a litmus test for this in Lake County? A lot of Republicans running at the County Board level are actually Democrats in disguise, knowing they probably couldn't get elected in certain districts unless being a Republican. And, Curran, according to newsroom geezers, isn't the only Democrat who's jumped to the GOP side in past years.
Looks like Democrats' memories are as long as an elephant's. And, what happened to actual law enforcement types seeking the sheriff's job instead of lawyers? Maybe it's tough to make a living as a lawyer in a recession, eh?
Stay tuned. Candidate filing for countywide and state offices begins Monday in Waukegan and Springfield. The primaries are in February 2010 and the general election in November, which is when the real fun begins.
Those Democratic lawmakers in Springfield sure have some nerve. After rejecting the chance for voters to boot former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the curb last year, they now vote to put a gubernatorial recall measure on next year's ballot. And, like most of their backbones, this offering for voters surely is weak.
State Sens. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, who also doubles as Lake County Democratic chairman and is an announced candidate for lieutenant governor, and Michael Bond, D-Grayslake, decided to join the rest of their colleagues this time around and let us nobodies vote to get rid of a sitting governor. Except, if voters approve it, the law specifies that 30 members of the General Assembly must support the recall measure and then supporters would have to get at least 15 percent of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election.
And the kicker: It's only governor we can try to recall. Not, for instance state senators. Like most of what has been accomplished in Springfield this year, this is a nothing bill. Voters wold be wise to reject this bone tossed to us and make sure the candidates we elect next year won't be afraid to put the people's business before their political backsides.
Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk has had a bad few weeks of late. That's what happens when you decide to jump from the narrow confines of the 10th Congressional District and run for the U.S. Senate. Your every move is placed under the microscope. And there's that learning curve moving from a tiny district to the statewide stage.
The Highland Park Republican is being accused of flip-flopping on the "cap and trade" issue, whereby pollutants companies release would be capped, but they would be allowed to buy and sell them for more emissions. Sort of a mercantile exchange for industrial polluters. When Kirk was a congressman, he was one of a handful of Republicans to support the bill, mainly because he voted the narrow interests of his congressional district.
That's what congressmen do. They vote their districts. If they don't, they don't get re-elected. Senators are supposed to look at the big picture, the statewide canvas. Kirk says if first nominated and then elected next November, he will do that when it comes to "cap and trade."
Democrats have leaped on Kirk's "cap and trade" stance as changing his tune, while conservative Republicans, who haven't factored in a Senate or gubernatorial race since Peter Fitzgerald, are getting their pound of flesh from moderate Kirk. Fortunately, it is early for Kirk to rebuff these pre-campaign gaffes.
The only folks paying attention at this stage are political junkies and the opposition. Voters aren't focusing yet on any election, if early polls are any conclusion, and won't start concentrating on the Feb. 2 primary until after Jan. 1. There's plenty of time for the Kirk Express to get rolling across the Illinois prairies.
Republicans have targets of opportunity across the Land of Lincoln next year. Just don't get overconfident.
Lake County Democratic Chairman Terry Link plucked Carol Sente from the obscurity of the Vernon Hills Park District. Let's see if this parkie can survive a contested primary come February.
That's what it's looking like as Waukeganite Link, who also is the state senator from the 30th District, which includes Sente's 59th House District, cast the weighted votes for the Vernon Hills owner of a Deerfield architecture firm to replace Kathy Ryg in the Illinois House. That move has not made a testy Buffalo Grove Mayor Elliott Hartstein none the happier.
Hartstein had lobbied vociferously for the appointment, but was rebuffed. He also has said he is a candidate in the Feb. 2 primary noting that "a contested primary on both sides of the aisle is a good thing for the district." At least two Republicans also are expected to run for the GOP nomination when filing begins next month.
Some may recall Link, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Illinois lieutenant governor, threw his considerable political weight into another intraprimary squabble last year. That was the 60th House District fight between incumbent state Rep. Eddie Washington of Waukegan and Lake County Board District 12 Rep. Angelo Kyle, also of Waukegan. Link spent a lot of money backing Kyle and when the smoke cleared, Washington was an easy winner. Is there the possibility of back-to-back losses for the Dem chairman?
As for Sente, vice president of the Vernon Hills Park District, she certainly hasn't been static since being sworn into office last weekend by the county's only Democratic judge, Jay Ukena of Wadsworth. That should send a message to Hartstein that party folks are, for the time being, behind her. She is reopening the shuttered 59th District office next week and getting her name out amongst the electorate.
The soon-to-be fighting 59th is one of those gerrymandered districts, which dips a bit into Cook County, but most of the voters are in the Vernon Hills corridor, although stretching north into Park City and snips of Waukegan.
We will see sooner than later if Master Link still has the political touch.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn made a big deal last week of vetoing the campaign finance "reform" bill he originally proclaimed as a "landmark" piece of legislation. As The Hound has contended all along: Illlinois ain't ready for reform.
Nobody was happy with that "reform" bill, except for Gov. Flip-flop. Quinn certainly is looking bad when it comes to making proclamations and then having to backtrack when everybody else goes, "Huh? What's he talking about?"
What the veto means is there won't be any campaign finance reform before next year's round of elections, just like lawmakers and the governor planned it under the original "reform" measure which was passed on party lines. Democrats lined up to vote for any measure they could spin as "reform". That sure worked out well.
Remember, this is the party of Rod Blagojevich. They will need all the faux-reform measures they can muster to convince voters next year Democrats should remain in office. But the Blagojevich reformers gave us what was essentially the Incumbent Protection Act of 2009. It gave incumbents an advantage such as failing to cap in-kind donations and not limiting contributions by election cycle. And, of course, implementing the bill until after the 2010 elections.
So, campaign reform continues to "go round and round and round in the circle game". As Joni Mitchell put it: "We're captive on the carousel of time/We can't return we can only look behind from where we came."
The handlers for state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias are touting the results of an August poll his U.S. Senate campaign committee commissioned that shows him with a "solid lead over" 10th Congressional District Congressman Mark Kirk in a head-to-head matchup. The Democratic statewide officer should have a lead over Kirk at this time. After all, the Highland Park Republican represents only a sliver of Illinois, whereas the treasurer has his "Cash Dash" to give his office and name recognition.
But trumpeting a poll of only 805 Illinoisans reached by telephone isn't the largest of samplings in what will be a volatile contest, and especially this early. Of course, Giannoulias is showing his "lead" to other potential Democratic primary challengers for the Senate seat once held by President Obama.
The Giannoulias campaign certainly danced around those poll numbers, though, according to the report in Michael Sneed's column in the Aug. 23 Chicago Sun-Times. Sneed said a source says the treasurer has a lead "outside the margin of error of 3 percent" over Kirk. What, 4 percent? And what does this mean that his campaign told Sneed: "...even after a battery of equally weighted positives and negatives, Giannoulias still came out ahead." Does that mean a negative is a name with lots of vowels in it?
With the poll, state and national Democrats believe at this time Kirk will be the GOP candidate come next fall. Bet Kirk releases a poll soon showing him closer than the Giannoulias camp thinks after only being in the race for less than a month. This one is an election to watch. .
It's good to be the party chairman of an Illinois county, as state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, has found. You know most of the other party chairmen and can call your counterparts in the state's other 101 counties and ask them to support your political advancement. In this case, Sen. Link wants to be Lt. Gov. Link.
Illinois hasn't had a lieutenant governor since Pat Quinn was elevated to governor with the departure of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Have we missed one? The Hound doesn't think so. What does the lite guv do besides applaud the actions of the governor, as Quinn was fond of doing during the nearly two terms Blagojevich served?
If, as the late Texan John Nance Garner once said about the vice presidency being as worthless as a bucket of warm spit, or words to that effect, the office of lieutenant governor must be even lower on the political food chain. But folks really want to be lite guv so they must see some value in the office. As The Hound said, we haven't missed one for much of this year so do we really need one? Well, the state constitution says we need one, so we must.
As for Link, he has as good a chance as being first nominated and then elected lite guv as any of the other no-name candidates who might be thinking of making the statewide run. Lake County has foisted a Republican lieutenant governor on the rest of Illinois, we might as well offer them a Democrat as well.
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