It’s about time – ’18 election cycle’s “put up-or-shut up” moment arrives

Friday was the day retail fanatics felt compelled to queue up outside of their favorite stores in search of particularly-good sales for holiday shopping.

Never-was gubernatorial candidate Ameya Pawar will have counterparts following this week's nominating petition filing period.

Monday will see similar lines of political geeks – candidates in some cases, their operatives in others. Although those lines will be at Illinois State Board of Elections offices, as it’s finally time for people wanting to run for political office to file the nominating petitions to gain themselves spots on the March 20 primary ballots.

FOR ALL THOSE people who have been going about throwing out hints that they want to be candidates for electoral office, they’re going to have to show the required support levels indicating they’re deserving of a ballot slot.

Between 8 a.m. Monday and 5 p.m. Dec. 4 (a.k.a., next Monday), the candidates will file their petitions showing signatures of support from people indicating they’d actually vote for this person.

Now I know some people think this is unfair – they think it ought to be easier to actually get on the ballot. Let everybody on the ballot (they’d say); let the voters decide on Election Day.

Yet I think there is too much clutter in these early stages, and candidates for office ought to be capable of defending their ballot existence by showing some support.

JUST THINK THAT there are about eight people saying they want to be the Democrat running next year for Illinois governor and for state attorney general.

DAIBER: Will he continue to exist?

Most of us can’t even come close to naming all of them, and the only people who truly want all of them hanging around are the ones interested in causing political confusion.

As in the only way they can win is if enough people cast votes for them without knowing who they’re supporting. Which may sound ludicrous, but does anyone seriously think Mark Fairchild or Janice Hart would have won Democratic primaries back in 1986 based on their merits?

Yes, those are the two followers of Lyndon LaRouche who managed to win that year’s gubernatorial and Illinois secretary of state primaries, with voters not realizing their tie to the would-be presidential hopeful that some consider more fascist than Democrat.

MY POINT IS that there have been people trying to talk themselves up as candidates even though there’s really no evidence anybody wants them or would support them.

RAOUL: How many opponents will remain?

As for one-time gubernatorial hopeful Ameya Pawar who came to the realization a few weeks ago he couldn’t win the Democratic primary, he’s alone. Although it’s quite possible that many of the other seven people who think they’re going to be running for the office will fail to meet the standard to get on the ballot.

Their campaigns will end before they even began. Will Bob Daiber (the regional schools superintendent from the part of Illinois down near St. Louis) still be around?

Or will this officially become a less-cluttered J.B. Pritzker/Chris Kennedy political brawl? We’ll see come next week.

JUST AS MOST of us likely can’t even come close to naming all of the Illinois attorney general dreamers on the Democratic side. If a few of them disappear before ever becoming official, it will be more comprehensible to the electorate.

STROGER: Will he have valid signatures?

It will be the same for many other political offices. Personally, I’m curious to see the Democratic primary for Cook County Board president, where Toni Preckwinkle has two challengers talking up long-shot campaigns against her.

But Todd Stroger has only declared himself a candidate as of last week. Can he truly produce nominating petitions with enough valid signatures of support by this week?

Anything’s possible, but I’m sure that Preckwinkle operatives are counting on Stroger doing a sloppy-enough job that they can challenge his petitions and keep him off the ballot that way. Which means the serious politicking can get underway following this coming week, rather than the stupid speculation we've been engaging in up to this point.

  -30-

Putting a limit on term limit talk

By now, anybody who cares knows that we're not going to have a chance to express our view on the concept of term limits for state government officials on the ballot for the Nov. 4 general elections.


Both the circuit and appellate courts had rejected the idea, and the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday decided not to even hear the concept. Which resulted in the Illinois State Board of Elections signing off on the final ballots for the upcoming Election Day.


THERE WON'T BE any referendum question about whether state officials should be limited to two terms in office. There will be enough other referendum questions to occupy voters' attention.


Yet I can't help but be a bit appalled at the attitude of Republican candidate Bruce Rauner, whose finances have been behind much of the effort to bring the issue up.


He wants to stir up the resentment of those voters who have been unable to overturn Democratic Party candidates at the ballot box, so now they want to make them ineligible to run again in future elections.


Any sense that this term limits measure is a "good government" issue is a batch of nonsense. It is meant to encourage more people of a certain ideological bent to show up at the polling place.


I SUSPECT THAT the people who are now screeching and screaming for term limits would eagerly call for their abolishment the moment they got political officials of their ideological preference into office.


It isn't sincere. It has nothing to do with reform or good, honest government.


So when Rauner on Friday issued a statement denouncing the state Supreme Court and saying he expects the voters to back his idea by voting for his allies in November, I'd say it is the only time he has been honest about this issue.


He wants to use this idea in ways that get him more electoral support. Perhaps he would have found a way to let this issue slip by the wayside once the election is over -- if he is able to win.


"A PRO-TERM LIMITS General Assembly pushed by a pro-term limits governor can put this critical reform in place any day they want," Rauner said. "Illinoisans should have that in mind when they vote this November."


Except that political people of all ideological persuasions are going to have their self-interests in mind. No one is going to come forth and implement this idea voluntarily. And yes, the Supreme Court previously had ruled that term limits changes the rules for electing legislators so significantly (by limiting whom we can pick) that it goes too far and violates the state's constitution.


Rauner may be right on one point. This may influence my vote, although in a way he won't like.


All his cheap talk and posturing on this issue is such a turn-off that I may wind up making a point of voting against him just because of this.


IT IS THE reason why I have written several commentaries this spring and summer as to why this term limits measure is a bad idea that probably sound like they're written by the most intense of 'machine' hacks.


I'll also admit to being semi-impressed by the fact that Gov. Pat Quinn -- who once himself backed an effort to impose term limits -- has said this would be his last term in office IF he wins on Nov. 4.


It would mean about nine years in office -- two terms of his own and the part of Rod Blagojevich's term that he completed. By any stretch of the imagination, that is enough time for most officials to complete what they intend to do.


Now if Quinn experiences a change of heart some time in late 2017 and decides to run for yet another term, then perhaps we can hold it against him then. Until then, ...


  -30-

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

If he hadn’t been a guru, of sorts, to the New York baseball scene, Yogi Berra could have had a career as a political observer to our local officials – perhaps the guy whispering his words of wisdom into their ears.

The Tao of Yogi?

Because that particular Berra-ism about declaring victory too soon is one that perhaps the people trying to lead a movement to change the way we draw our political boundaries should have learned a long time ago.

I STILL REMEMBER reading the reports about how the movement (calling itself Yes for Independent Maps) was crowing a month ago when they submitted nominating petitions that demand the issue be put on the ballots for the Nov. 4 elections in the form of a referendum question.

Let the people decide. “Yes,” or “no.” They had 532,264 signatures of support that they filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections

That is well in excess of the minimum number of signatures needed in order to actually get an initiative on the ballot across the state. They won. They declared victory. They made smug statements about how this, alone, showed the moral high-ground and desirability of their cause.

There was no way they could be stopped now!!!

READING THOSE ACCOUNTS, I recalled thinking they were premature in declaring victory. Way too cocky, as a matter of fact. Somebody was going to wind up eating some serious crow.

Which is what seems to be happening now.

Reports this week indicate that the State Board of Elections is finding that the 532,264 signature figure is off, way off.

Yogi 'plays' better on TV than most pols

For one thing, the elections board says it counted all the signatures, and only came up with 507,467. Which is still well ahead of the 298,400 valid signatures required this year (it’s based on voter turnout in recent election cycles, so it changes) to succeed.

BUT …

The state Elections Board handles the process by doing a thorough review of a randomly-selected share of petitions.

Petitions containing 25,375 signatures were scrutinized – and 11,568 signatures were found to be legitimate. That’s less than half!

At this rate, the petition drive is going to turn out to have produced a lot of junk (that’s a lot of times that “Mickey Mouse” signed his name to these documents). May 31 isn’t only the deadline for the General Assembly to conduct its business. The end of the month (actually, May 30, the last business date, since May 31 is a Saturday) is when the process must be completed.

SO UNLESS SOMETHING shifts dramatically in the next week or so, this is going to wind up being a failed effort.

Like many pols, son followed him into family 'business'

Admittedly, the Yes for Independent Maps group is trying to fight back, although their route seems to be one more of whining about the review process being “hasty,” and the Chicago Tribune reporting about “personal advances” made by state Elections board officials to the group’s official watchers.

It sounds like this could be a cause that falls by the wayside. Which doesn’t surprise me because the whole process of nominating petitions is such a subjective one. There is so much leeway by officials to declare what is, and isn’t, valid.

Nobody should presume this is over until they actually walk into their polling place and see the question printed on their ballots.

IT MAY COME across that I’m enjoying this lesson in political reality being taught to the Yes for Independent Maps group – which at times behaves in ways that make it seem more like a cause funded by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner so he can have something to talk about, rather than an actual concern for the issue.

Yogi comes equipped w/ his own 'yes' men

It’s actually funded in part by Chicago Cubs part-owner Tom Ricketts (he gave $50,000 back in March). Which makes me wonder why he’s not focusing more on his ball club.

Perhaps Yogi could come to Chicago and give the Wrigley Field set some advice on what constitutes a real winning ball club (he would know, 14 World Series appearances, with 10 of them on the victorious side).

Although reading through the various lists of Yogi-isms, I came across another one that I suspect many of our local political people would find applicable – “Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”

  -30-

Quinn gets a primary election opponent who’s left even weaker than before

The key to comprehending elections boards is not that they’re serious investigatory units that ponder the qualifications of those people who wish to appear on the ballots for various government posts.

HARDIMAN: He lost by winning?

They’re more the mechanism by which certain campaigns can be harassed into submission. Even if the candidates are able to survive the challenge, the fight to stay on the ballot can suck what little life they had right out of them!

THAT EVEN APPLIES to the Illinois State Board of Elections, which on Thursday wound up closing the case that was brought against Tio Hardiman. He’s the activist type from suburban Hillside who will now be on the March 18 Democratic primary ballot against Gov. Pat Quinn.

His campaign was being threatened because of the fact that his lieutenant governor running mate (Brunell Donald) was being challenged. It seems she moved to a new address in Chicago since the last election cycle and hasn’t bothered to re-register to vote.

Which means that technically, she can’t vote from her current home address – which is grounds for declaring someone ineligible to vote.

She could have been booted from the ballot – which would have left Hardiman without a running mate. Theoretically, that could have been grounds to make his campaign ineligible. It would have resulted in lengthy court fights to figure out if someone can run for governor without the said running mate.

BUT THAT’S NOT going to happen.

For on Thursday, the day that Donald likely was to be removed from the ballot, the attorneys representing Quinn’s interest in this matter said the objection was being withdrawn.

RADNER (as Litella): Violins on TV sensible as Donald

As the late actor Gilda Radner’s “Emily Litella” character from Saturday Night Live of old would have said, “Never mind!”

Nobody really cared if Donald lived at a legitimate address. It was just a technicality that could be used to smack her about. Now, she’s totally weakened by the matter. It doesn’t matter if she’s on the ballot, or not.

THE QUINN INTERESTS have prevailed, even if the Hardiman/Donald ticket is there to take a small percentage of votes from people who don’t want to vote for Quinn/Paul Vallas – and think the Republican candidates are a batch of dinks.

QUINN: The frontrunner, for a change

It gets worse when you get into the political world of municipal elections – because oftentimes the electoral boards consist of the political establishment that is being challenged.

Those people do each other the political favors of knocking off the would-be challengers to their allies.

At the state level, the board is a little more distant from those officials. But ultimately, they’re only able to rule on the arguments put forth by attorneys for the political interests.

THE WILLINGNESS OF Quinn allies to drop their “concerns” about Donald now that they’ve used them to beat up on her doesn’t mean the issue wasn’t legitimate.

Or that there isn’t a legitimate legal question about whether a gubernatorial candidate must have a running mate on the ballot with him/her – now that state law says candidates must name someone prior to the primary, rather than run with whoever happens to win a completely separate lieutenant governor primary.

Not that the Hardiman/Donald ticket was ever going to be competitive.

Take the latest reports about campaign finances into account. As of Dec. 31, the Hardiman campaign had only $550 in the bank, and had only raised $15,000 during the last three months of 2013. The Capitol Fax newsletter reports that only $2,000 of that was donated – the rest of it was Hardiman’s own money.

COMPARED TO THE $4.5 million campaign fund Quinn has accumulated, including sizable donations from organized labor interests.

Which means Quinn will have sufficient funds to take on whichever of the Republican challengers manages to prevail in that primary election.

  -30-

EXTRA: Jones off the ballot, Medrano off to prison. Both off to nowhereland

For those of you who didn’t notice my mention of Republican gubernatorial hopeful Peter Edward Jones in a recent commentary, never mind. You can formally forget all about him – at least until he tries to run another token campaign for office.

MEDRANO: Down for the count, again!

The State Board of Elections officially kicked him off the ballot – meaning that the Republican field of candidates who want to challenge Gov. Pat Quinn in the Nov. 4 general election is now down to the four blowhards you actually have heard of.

ALSO REMOVED WERE Armen Alvarez and William Lee, who both wanted to run as Republicans against Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. That field of people likely to get beaten up electorally by Durbin is down to state Sen. James Oberweis, R-Sugar Grove, and Doug Truax, who owns a risk consulting firm and likes to make mention of the fact he attended West Point!

But they are not the only ones who will no longer be part of the political scenery.

Take Ambrosio Medrano, the one-time City Council member who got put away years ago on a political corruption rap and served a prison sentence.

Medrano on Friday in U.S. District Court received a 10-1/2 year prison sentence for what prosecutors convinced a jury was illegal activity he engaged in while serving as a political consultant who worked with Cook County government officials (prosecutors say he was getting financial kickbacks on the bandages being sold for use at Stroger Hospital).

MOST POLITICAL PEOPLE who wind up doing a prison sentence get out and maintain a low profile.

They certainly don’t get back in the political game and engage in activity that puts them right back into prison! But that is what happened to Medrano – whose place in the Chicago political history books is literally now one of being a political corruption repeat offender.

Considering that he’ll be nearly 70 by the time he is released, I don’t know whether to think it is feasible that he could become a “three time loser” in the acts of legally inappropriate government behavior.

  -30-

It’s campaign time – ’14 cycle begins

I didn’t venture down to Springfield early Monday, although I wish I could have. For there was the occurrence of a key moment in an election cycle.

The ticket of Tio Hardiman/Brunell Donald-Kyei filed its nominating petitions Monday so it could challenge Pat Quinn/Paul Vallas come March 18. Photograph by The African Spectrum

 

The filing of nominating petitions; the documents required of any candidate to show that he has any kind of support that makes him (or her) worthy of a spot on the March 18 primary election ballot.

EVEN IN MY absence, however, the usual spectacle took place – hundreds of people lined up outside the offices of the Illinois State Board of Elections to submit their petitions in hopes that they can be the first to file for their desired office so as to qualify for the top slot on the ballot.

In some cases, the actual candidates came out to wait their turn in line. While others sent their political operatives to do the dirty work of bearing with wintry-like weather.

It seems this year, there were a few people who camped out beginning last week to ensure they were they absolute first people in line when the state Board of Elections offices opened at 8 a.m. Which is always the case. I’ve seen it in the past – only the names have changed, ever so slightly.

According to the Chicago Tribune, they were people who worked for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. Personally, I’d have been more impressed if Madigan himself had shown up to file his petitions.



William Brady gets credit for filing ...

INSOFAR AS THE Republican brawl for the gubernatorial nomination, it seems that William Brady and Kirk Dillard to file the petitions that their campaign aides put together for them.

While Bruce Rauner sent aides to do it for him, and Dan Rutherford sent Steve Kim – his running mate for lieutenant governor, to do the paperwork that gets the two of them on the ballot.

Since all were on hand when the Elections Board office opened, there will be the lottery sometime next month to determine who actually gets the top ballot spot (which according to political superstition can be worth as much as 5 percent of the vote).

Won’t it stink for the candidate who froze his tushie off on Monday, only to lose the lottery and wind up last or next to last?



... own petitions, as did Kirk Dillard

THERE’S ALSO THE Democratic Party brawl, so to speak, for governor.

Tio Hardiman filed his petitions to get on the ballot, meaning that Gov. Pat Quinn will have an actual challenger for the primary. But now we know the actual name of Hardiman’s lieutenant governor running mate.

She’s Brunell Donald-Kyei, an attorney who according to the Capitol Fax newsletter once worked in the Public Guardian’s office before going into private practice, where she was the attorney for Eugene Mullins – a friend of former Cook County Board President Todd Stroger who was found guilty of corruption charges for allegedly taking kickbacks related to county contracts.

We can joke about a possible Paul Vallas/Donald-Kyei debate, although it probably says a lot that the State Board of Elections website botched her name. We may have some voters searching for “Donald Brunell” on the ballot.

THAT IS IF they don’t just ignore the Hardiman/Donald-Kyei slot and cast their vote for Pat Quinn.

I’m focusing primarily on the governor’s races for now, because I suspect they’re about the extent that anybody is paying attention to political campaigns at this point.

Other elections will get their day in the sun, although it probably will be a cloudy, overcast day and few will pay attention. It always causes me to feel dismay the degree to which many people don’t pay attention to their elected officials – then want to rant and rage when their ineptitude comes through.

Although I found it intriguing to see state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago, filed his petitions Monday for re-election. Smith, of course, was the freshman legislator whose colleagues kicked him out of the Legislature when he was indicted on federal charges that amount to soliciting bribes.

SMITH: The political thing that won't go

BUT SMITH GOT himself re-elected in the very next election cycle. And it seems the U.S. Attorney’s office is taking so long to get around to Smith’s trial that he may well finish out his current term and get himself picked to another!

For those who are repulsed at the notion, his conviction would eventually remove him from office. But the Smith shadow will continue to cover the General Assembly.

It is why political observer geeks such as myself find days like Monday to be something special. It literally is a day when everybody who wants to run for office has to make their physical presence in Springfield – or at the County Building downtown if their desired dream post is a Cook County government position.

It’s not quite the same as those people who line up to ensure they get any seat for a rock concert or major sporting event. Even though it ought to be regarded as more important -- considering the influence these people have to dictate how the tax dollars generated from our incomes actually gets spent.

  -30-

Petition flaws; a campaign fatal error

RUTHERFORD: Cleaning up mistakes?

Remember Alice Palmer?

I don't know if Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Rutherford does. But his actions of late indicate he doesn't want to suffer her same political fate.

FOR RUTHERFORD IS the candidate who realized his nominating petitions, the documents that are meant to officially get himself a spot on the GOP primary ballot come March, were flawed enough that he could have been kicked off.

His campaign could have died before ever taking place – and Republican-leaning voters would have had to pick between the trio of William Brady, Kirk Dillard and Bruce Rauner.

The state treasurer who served in the Legislature for nearly two decades representing the Pontiac area would not have been a presence on the ballot.

Now his circumstances are far different from those of Palmer – the one-time state legislator from the South Side who would up getting tripped up (and kicked off the ballot) when she tried seeking re-election in the 1996 election cycle.

PALMER’S PROBLEMS AROSE when she got dreams of running for Congress. She wanted a promotion. But it became apparent to her during the campaign cycle that her chances of actually winning were nil.

So just before the deadline for filing nominating petitions, she changed her mind and went for re-election. Which required a whole new set of petitions – the others had people supporting her for Congress, NOT the state Senate.

But because they were put together on the rush to meet a deadline, they were sloppy. There were flaws. Enough flaws that she didn’t have enough valid signatures of support.

PALMER: Historic gaffe

Now had there been politeness and courtesy, no one would have brought up these flaws. If no one challenges the petitions, they automatically become legitimate – regardless of the flaws.

BUT THEY WERE challenged, the flaws were found, and Palmer got kicked off the ballot. She never again held elective office. That is how a community activist named Barack Obama began the 12-year trek that wound up at the White House.

It seems Rutherford’s own petitions had flaws – ones even his most ardent backers acknowledged. We just know that the Republican opposition would have ganged up on him to get a credible candidate knocked off the ballot.

Anything to make their own campaign effort easier.

OBAMA: Took advantage of a fluke?

Which is why the Rutherford campaign these days, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, is taking it upon themselves to circulate all-new nominating petitions – which did not include a notarized statement specifying when the petitions had actually been circulated.

THAT’S EXACTLY THE kind of technicality that election law attorneys love to exploit to knock around the opposition.

For Rutherford’s sake, let’s hope that none of his people are feeling particularly rushed. Because that could lead to further errors of sloppiness that could still harm him.

My guess is that Rutherford’s petitions (in whatever form they get submitted to the Illinois State Board of Elections) are going to be scrutinized to the “n’th” degree by people looking for anything they can try to claim is a flaw.

The outcome, if a flaw is found, can be worth the legal battles and hurt feelings – although I can’t say I see any of the GOP gubernatorial dreamers as anyone with potential to become president come 2028.

I DOUBT THAT history will repeat itself in quite that way.

Although it does seem odd that a petition flaw would occur this time, since there were also questions about the nominating petitions that put Mitt Romney on the ballots in Illinois for U.S. president.

ROMNEY: Didn't learn from mistake?

The only reason there weren’t serious challenges to that (which would have been embarrassing to the Romney campaign if it couldn’t get on all 50 states’ ballots) was because of potential for flaws in the petitions of opponent Rick Santorum.

Both sides ultimately decided to “play nice” and not pursue the issue. That won’t happen again if anybody thinks Rutherford is vulnerable to a technicality that could undo him before the voters get a chance to.

  -30-

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: It strikes me as being quite pathetic that the people most willing to denounce Barack Obama for using flawed petitions to eliminate his opposition are the same ones who would eagerly have pounced on Dan Rutherford petition flaws to undo his campaign if it would gain them an ideological ally.

Will anybody vote for Buddy? And no, I don’t mean Kristy McNichol character

I have to confess my ignorance. Until just a couple of days ago, I had no clue that former Louisiana Gov. Charles “Buddy” Roemer had his own fantasies about becoming U.S. president.

ROEMER: The 'protest' vote?



I first realized the existence of his campaign on Friday when I saw that he, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich had their Illinois “backers” file the necessary paperwork to get those candidates on our state’s ballot for the March 20 primary.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, President Barack Obama of the Hyde Park neighborhood also submitted his paperwork for a ballot spot – making it official that Democrats in Illinois have no one to pick from but him.

But the Republicans officially (as of now, someone could always get knocked off the ballot) have six candidates to choose from in their primary, as Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Perry also filed their ballot-slot paperwork last week.

So now I have to seriously wonder to myself how many Illinoisans are delusional enough to want to cast a ballot for Buddy Roemer. Could there be some people who are ABM to the degree that their vote for Anybody But Mitt includes casting a ballot for Buddy?

Because I sure don’t sense any “Roemer for president” movement in Illinois, or anywhere in this country. In large part because his national political battle against one-time Klansman and still a white supremacist David Duke was some two decades ago. Who remembers the name “Buddy Roemer” anymore? How many people this weekend stumbled across his name on the Internet because they were searching for word about Kristy McNichol publicly saying she is a lesbian?

THEN AGAIN, PERHAPS Buddy (as in Roemer) sees the fact that at various points, now-former candidate Michele Bachmann and current flavor-of-the-month Rick Santorum were at the head of the pack.

Perhaps he thinks it is just a matter of waiting his “turn” to become the darling of the GOP – even though he’s a Democrat-turned-Republican who once vetoed a Louisiana Legislature attempt to impose severe restrictions on abortion for purely ideological reasons (which federal appeals courts ultimately ruled was the right thing to do – the attempt at state law violated Roe vs. Wade).

Roemer may like to talk “tough” and “law and order” now. But about the only hope he has of getting any serious support is if our society suddenly gets hit with a serious bout of stupid.

Then again, it always is a mistake to over-estimate the intelligence of the electorate. So who knows what to think?

IT AMUSES ME that I didn’t realize Roemer was in the race for the presidency until he filed those papers, which was a few days AFTER he got his clock cleaned (I’m full of clichés today) in Iowa.

Only 31 people who took the time to attend a caucus event across Iowa last week publicly were willing to say they think it would be good for Buddy Roemer to be president.

Nearly twice as many publicly backed now-former candidate Herman Cain, and more than four times as many people (135, to be exact) went to a caucus, publicly stood up, and said they had “no preference” for president.

Which is a concept I don’t comprehend. If I didn’t have a preference, I probably wouldn’t show up at all. Then again, the fact that the “I can’t make up my mind” kind of people were four times larger than the “Buddy for president” people ought to be a factor that would make him hang his head in shame. Except that political people often have no shame.

IF I GOT whomped on as badly as Buddy did in Iowa, I’d be thinking about going into hiding with the groundhog who will stick his head out of the ground in a few more weeks. I doubt I’d be filing more nominating petitions to set myself up for another blow-out in Illinois.

Yet I’m realistic enough to know that it probably does not matter. The upcoming weeks will see primary elections (beginning Tuesday in New Hampshire) that will go a long way toward determining who is seriously in the running.

I doubt there will be six viable Republican presidential campaigns in operation by the time of the Illinois primary elections.

At best, Illinois will be the state whose Republicans provide the crowning blow to whichever GOP partisan gets the chance to take on Obama come the Nov. 6 general elections.

WHICH MEANS BUDDY Roemer may wind up serving the same purpose that Bill Bradley served for me in the 2000 Democratic primary.

I voted for him because his name was on the ballot – even though his campaign had already closed up shop by the time of the Illinois elections – out of a sense of expressing my apathy toward the party establishment’s preference of Al Gore.

Maybe the couple of dozen people across Illinois who cast votes for Roemer will be of a like mindset?

  -30-

Who will the alleged “Party of Lincoln’s” home base choose from?

I must admit to being curious who will even make the ballot come March 20 for Republican voters to pick from for their political party’s presidential nomination.

GINGRICH: Will Newt be moot?



Just because someone says they are a candidate does not mean you’re going to have a chance to cast a vote for them. Not even if they have a big, shiny bus that has taken them from place to place about the country in pursuit of the goal of who can shake the most hands without catching some sort of virus.

SO IT IS LIKELY that when the Illinois operations of the various presidential campaigns get around to filing their nominating petitions with the Illinois State Board of Elections to get their ballot spots – along with slots for their delegate slates (the vote that actually matters) at least a few of the now-candidates will be gone.

That is most likely the lesson we should learn from Virginia – where only two campaigns were able to get ballot spots.

Virginia voters will be asked to pick between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. All of the rest of the candidates are pretenders, as far as the Commonwealth of Virginia is concerned.

ROMNEY: Winner, by default?



Will Illinois have an equally-restrictive list of people to pick from when we get around to casting our votes?

I’LL BE THE first to admit that this exercise will be largely theoretical for me. It is likely that I will take a Democratic Party primary ballot, which means my presidential “choice” will be to make my mark next to the name of Barack Obama, and the slate of delegates that he sends to the Democratic National Convention (Sept. 3-6, in Charlotte, N.C., to be specific).



Only if I want to believe the conspiracy theories being peddled by the Weekly World News (which is running a headline claiming that Bill Clinton is urging spouse Hillary to challenge Obama come ’12) will there be a choice for me, or the bulk of Illinoisans who WILL choose a Dem ballot come March.

LaHOOD: Still speaking to his son?

But for the GOP faithful (which means largely the one-third of the population that likes to think itself more significant than it really does because it is spread across 96 Illinois counties), it will be curious to see how many of the candidates will fail to get on the ballot.

Will Newt Gingrich throw another hissy fit if he fails to get on the Illinois ballot, similar to how he did when he failed in Virginia? What about Michele Bachmann!

I THINK HIS line about his failure being equivalent of “Pearl Harbor” (as in both were allegedly surprises that were distressing to the American people) is way over-the-top. Will he manage to come up with even more ridiculous rhetoric if he fails in Illinois?

We’ll have to wait and see. For if a recent Chicago Tribune report is at all accurate, it would seem that Gingrich doesn’t exactly have the largest base of support in Illinois – and may NOT have enough time to build one up among our state’s residents. Newt may be moot in the Land of Lincoln.

Although I did get a kick out of learning that state Sen. Darin LaHood, R-Dunlap, is among those willing to be a Gingrich delegate. It’s not amusing because his father, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is a part of the Obama administration.

It’s absurd because of the fact that LaHood, the elder, was chief of staff to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Peoria – a man whose sense of moderation was so thoroughly denounced by Gingrich’s rise to House speaker in the mid-1990s.

TO HAVE A “LaHood” now backing a “Gingrich” is just too much to take in all in one fell swoop – although it isn’t completely unheard of for a political sibling to disagree with the parent. Ask Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and daughter Lisa (a.k.a., Illinois attorney general) where they stand on abortion – if you want an equal-sized ideological gap.

OBAMA: Is GOP primary his 'wish come true?'



But this may be all a moot point if Gingrich can’t get on the Illinois ballot. In fact, what if that Illinois ballot winds up only having a couple of names on it just like in Virginia. It would really make the whole Republican primary seem like such an afterthought.

Particularly if it turns out that Romney winds up being about the only candidate who can get on the ballot in all 50 states.

Because the sense I get from watching campaign-type activity across the nation is that there probably is about 25 percent to 30 percent of the people who will vote Republican who want Mitt to be president.

THE REMAINDER OF the GOP electorate desperately wants Anybody But Mitt, and I’m not sure how enthused they’re going to be if he winds up being the only choice (which is how one reader of the State Journal-Register newspaper wound up colorfully phrasing it recently).

This has become the electoral cycle where the people will vote for who they hate less. But what happens if we go to the polls on March 20, then again on Nov. 6, and decide that we don’t like anybody?

  -30-