Bitter Primary To Succeed Hastert
If you thought the presidential campaign was nasty, get a load of the GOP primary in the special election in Illinois to replace the former speaker of the House, Republican Denny Hastert. This race has it all: entrenched bitter enemies, dirty money, ice cream... and dead cows (but not real dead cows).
The Republican candidates in the Feb. 5 primary election make the spats between Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain look tame. Yes, the characters in Chicago's west suburban 14th congressional district are definite contenders for the nastiest House campaign of them all.
One of them is Jim Oberweis, Hastert's personal choice and the heir to a dairy fortune who has spent millions of his own money to run three times unsuccessfully for statewide office. His opponent is state Sen. Chris Lauzen, who has returned about $100,000 in donations from an Illinois company that was sued by the federal government for widespread sexual harrassment allegations.
Oberweis has viciously attacked Lauzen over the tainted contributions; Lauzen has repeatedly bashed Oberweis for being nothing more than a spoiled rich ice cream maker.
Lauzen's recent mailings attacking Oberweis ran the messsage: "Good ice cream... yes; Good candidate... No!" But the cartoon background was the best part of the mailer: cute dairy cows rolled over dead in a pasture. It may the first dead-cow mailer in political campaign history.
No one is having more joy - schadenfreude alert! - watching the bloody Republican primary play out than House Democrats, who hope that the ugly divisiveness on the GOP side will give them their best chance ever of winning what has traditionally been a solidly Republican seat. It would be, as one Democratic operative put it, an "earth shattering" coup for Democrats to pick up the former House speaker's seat in a presidential election year.
Which is why the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hopes its GOP friends will keep ignoring Ronald Reagan's golden rule that "thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."
"The Republicans here have not just forgotten Reagan's 11th Commandment; they have used stone tablets to whack each other," says DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer, with just a hint of elation.
By
Eric Pianin
|
January 23, 2008; 6:00 PM ET
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Posted by: Can't help but notice | January 23, 2008 9:41 PM | Report abuse
the consensus front runner on the democratic side is bill foster, who has put in a million dollars into this race and still out-raised his democratic opponents from outside contributors! john laesch, the democratic nominee from 2006, is still running an all-volunteer insurgent campaign, hasn't raised even a third of what he raised last cycle -- and has yet to send out a mailer (even though early voting has begun at a record pace). the surprise candidate in this race is jotham stein, who has raised more money than laesch (and sent out more mail) and has knocked on more doors than the other two combined.
regardless, the democrats should come out of this race unified, although some of laesch's more ardent supporters will probably be disappointed with the result...
Posted by: bored now | January 24, 2008 7:42 AM | Report abuse
John Laesch is the winner in this bunch!! He got 40% of the vote against Hastert in the last election. He is a Union carpenter, and an Iraq veteran. His brother is in Iraq. I am a supporter, and I live in Pensacola, Florida. I have heard him speak on many of the radio shows I listen to...Ed Schultz, for one. There is a reason that he has so many volunteers....he is the person for this job. Period.
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The comments to this entry are closed.
I keep reading that this Chris Lauzen gave the tainted money "back" (the donor was also convicted in NY of attempted Grand Larceny - easy to fact check that), but the candidate provides no proof he ever returned the money. The media takes him at his word. Not to mention the fact he was clearly aware of the donor's moral defiency as reported by his comments in an AP story in 2006. He waited until now(?). Either way, it appears to be a character issue...obviously not the WP's job...but what's going on over at the Tribune and Sun-Times? Clearly, the democrat frontrunner would be a much better choice than these two.