The Foster Earthquake

Chris Cillizza makes some really good points.

Republicans' defeat in last Saturday's special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was stunning on its face but the implications of the contest are potentially far-reaching and critical in understanding the coming November elections.

As much as Republican strategists sought to downplay the national importance of the race -- mostly accomplished through bad-mouthing of their candidate -- it's clear that the race was fought on national, not local, issues.

The winner, Democrat Bill Foster, focused heavily on the troubled state of the economy and hit his Republican opponent -- dairy magnate Jim Oberweis -- as a willing advocate for the President Bush and the administration's policies on Iraq. Oberweis and national Republicans, on the other had, cast Foster as a tax-and-spend Democrat willing to throw money at any problem to make it better.

The fact that voters in an exurban district that went for Bush by double digits in 2000 and 2004 opted for the Democratic national message is telling. It suggests that the national political landscape is decidedly tilted in Democrats' favor -- that the uneven playing field of the 2006 election is still alive and well.

Cillizza goes on to list 50-odd seats that are more Democratic than IL-14 that could be in play in November. I think he needs to pare that down a bit; of the four California seats he lists, two (CA-26 and CA-50) are legitimate chances, one (CA-45) is maybe yes, maybe no, and the other (CA-24) really isn't much of an option at this time. But the major point here is golden. The race was fought on national issues, and considering that there's a Presidential election, all of the races will be. This is a major opportunity. Foster ran on Iraq and FISA and obliterated Oberweis. It is true that Oberweis was a terrible candidate but a national election will trump those particulars.

I truly believe that this will be a good November, though of course today's Spitzer scandal leaves me sad about progressive options at the top in the near term.

IL-14: Foster's!

It's Australian for "the Republicans are in deep shit," mate!

U.S. House - District 14 - Special General

Illinois - 564 of 568 Precincts Reporting - 99%

Name Party Votes Vote %
Foster, Bill Dem 50,947 52%
Oberweis, Jim GOP 46,125 48%

Put it this way: if I told you in the middle of 2006 that Democrats would control Tom DeLay AND Dennis Hastert's seats in Congress, would you believe me?

Now, Foster needs to be watched. He ran on ending the war in Iraq and stopping retroactive immunity for the telecoms. He needs to be held to those campaign promises. But clearly, this is a big victory for a new Democratic coalition that can win in formerly red districts and red states, that can capitalize on this uniquely horrible President and the trashed Republican brand. The NRCC spent a MILLION dollars, one out of every three dollars they have, to save this seat, and they came up short. Foster's win is a road map for how to win in these districts; run strong against the war and George Bush's lawbreaking, and offer a real contrast.

This is also a big victory for Barack Obama, who cut an ad that ran all week to help Foster. John McCain came in here to help Jim Oberweis and it didn't matter. Obama's reputation as a map changer is very enhanced by this. In a way it's bigger than his win in Wyoming today.

There are now DOZENS more seats in play than anybody thinks. This is going to throw the NRCC into total disarray. Tom Cole, their chairman, might have to resign. Money may dry up even more. This is awesome.

IL-14: All Eyes On Illinois

Yes, Wyoming awards 12 delegates in the Democratic primary tomorrow, but the most important race is in the Chicago suburbs.

In what some analysts describe as a proxy for the November election, voters in Illinois’ 14th District head to the polls Saturday for a momentous special election to fill the vacant seat of former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who resigned last November. Democratic scientist Bill Foster and Republican dairy executive Jim Oberweis are competing [...]

Democrats see an upset victory by Foster as the ultimate repudiation of the Republican Party and of President Bush, who handily carried the 14th District in the 2004 election — by a margin of 55 percent to 44 percent for Democratic Sen. John Kerry. But Bush was more popular then than he is now, and Republicans acknowledge a competitive race between Foster, a first-time candidate, and Oberweis, who lost Republican primaries for senator in 2002 and 2004 and for governor in 2006 [...]

Republican strategists acknowledge that the race is very close and that they’re aware of the implications of a Democratic victory in the former Speaker’s district.

“We understand the symbolic importance of the race,” Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole , the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), told reporters Monday at a breakfast meeting that was organized by the Christian Science Monitor. “It will be spun out of all proportions if we were to lose it. It will be ‘my God, it’s the end of the Republican Party, the Speaker’s seat is gone.’ ”

Jim Oberweis is grabbing at straws. He put out a mailer claiming that your taxes would raise under Bill Foster that had an admission at the bottom:

The four examples are fictional, and any similarity between these characters and any real people is pure coincidence. The effects on the individual's tax bills was calculated using the tax calculator found at a link to the Heritage Foundation.

Barack Obama is imploring his supporters to volunteer and help Bill Foster get elected. Oberweis is such a tool. His going down would almost be as satisfying as turning Denny Hastert's old seat blue.

UPDATE: It's notable that one candidate is helping get Democrats elected to Congress, and the other is claiming that John McCain is more ready to be commander in chief than a fellow Democrat.

IL-14: More Than A Tossup

Stu Rothenberg finally catches up and notices that Bill Foster is very well-positioned to smoke perennial candidate Jim Oberweis in IL-14 this weekend and pick up a seat for the Democrats in the House. This comes on the heels of a public poll showing Foster up by 7 points.

This seat would really break the backs of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has enough problems:

According to The New York Times this morning, it all began to unravel when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), a CPA, asked to meet with the audit firm that was supposedly checking the NRCC's books, an idea that apparently no one had had for several years. Christopher Ward, then the NRCC's treasurer, finally relented, but then chickened out 30 minutes before and fessed up that there actually hadn't been any audits.

It was ultimately discovered that Ward had been faking the audits since 2003. The Politico, which laid out this general outline of events early last month, reported that Ward had forged everything, including the letterhead. So when it came time to actually talk to the people who'd supposedly written those fake reports, it all unraveled.

The FBI is currently investigating, and it's not clear yet why Ward was so keen to hide the real numbers. But as the Times reports this morning, the signs are not good. NRCC internal audits since Ward's discovery show that "hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen." And it gets worse: there are apparently indications that "the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative."

We're going to take this seat, and the NRCC is going to be so tied up with legal issues that they'll be rendered virtually powerless in the fall. If you can help Bill Foster in any way please do so. His website is here.

IL-14: Fostering Victory

Bill Foster got a boost today when the right-wing Chicago Tribune endorsed him over his loudmouth opponent Jim Oberweis:

This page is closer to Oberweis than Foster on several economic and foreign policy issues. But we watched Oberweis in his races for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004, and for governor in 2006. We've watched this race for Congress. His campaign style has consistently been nasty, smug, condescending ... and dishonest.
In 2004, he ran an ad in which he hovered over Soldier Field in a helicopter and said 10,000 illegal aliens come to the U.S. each day, "enough to fill Soldier Field every single week." The number was grossly inflated and the ad smacked of fear-mongering.

In 2006, he ran TV ads that used headlines from the Tribune and other newspapers to attack an opponent. But the headlines were fake. They hadn't appeared in the newspapers.

This year, Oberweis' campaign is based on the notion that his opponent is a big-spending liberal. Oberweis' TV and radio ads quote Foster saying, "There's nothing in life that you can't improve by pouring money at it. ..."

Foster did say that, at a League of Women Voters debate. But the transcript makes it clear he was talking about the federal government's "poor efforts" to improve air-traffic-control safety. His conclusion: "This is one example of a place I would look to save taxpayer dollars."

And Oberweis' immediate response at the debate? He said: "I find myself in the almost embarrassing position of tending to agree with Bill on some of his comments there."

The sum impression of Oberweis from four campaigns: He sees public office as an opportunity to pick a fight.

Barack Obama has recorded an ad for Foster to run in the district. You can help fund it here. It should be known that Foster is explicitly running against telecom amnesty and for getting out of Iraq. He's a better Democrat than many we have now, despite his moderate pose and desire to be a Blue Dog on fiscal policy. Matt Stoller described him as more of a Patrick Murphy than a Jim Cooper. At this point, with the rule of law at stake, that's good enough for me. Not to mention the fact that this would really hurt Republicans down the road.

IL-14: Well, If It Means Beating Oberweis...

I've shown little enthusiasm for the Bill Foster-Jim Oberweis special election in IL-14, mainly because I'm not sure what to make of Foster. He appears to have a slight lead, which would flip a Republican seat (Denny Hastert's) and bode well for November, but he's also vowed to join the Blue Dog caucus, which would be frustrating. The better Democrats occasionally seems to me more important than the more.

However, this Jim Oberweis, who is the Tom McClintock of Illinois, having lost just about every statewide election imaginable, is just bad news. He's apparently violated the "millionaire's amendment" to the campaign finance laws, which requires that anyone dumping their own money into a campaign notify the FEC so their opponents' contribution limits can be raised. He's donated himself $640,000 already, and this is not an isolated incident. This is from a DCCC press release:

Jim Oberweis’ Pattern of Violating Federal Election Law and Deceiving Voters

Oberweis was previously fined $21,000 by the FEC for breaking federal election law. The FEC said Oberweis benefited from a television ad he appeared in for the Oberweis Dairy in the 2004 Senate race and that the ad constituted a corporate contribution which is prohibited by federal campaign laws. [Associated Press, 7/27/07]

Oberweis used fake headlines in his 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Oberweis ran two TV ads that use made-up newspaper headlines to attack his opponents integrity. The words were displayed as if they appeared on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the State Journal-Register. The St Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story with the headline “Ads for Oberweis using Fake Headlines…” after TV spots he ran attacking is opponent used replicas of real newspapers with fake headlines.” [ St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3/2/06] [ Chicago Tribune, 3/1/06]

So, if it means beating him, well, yeah, then I'm aboard the Foster train.