Today I met with John Burros and Jeff Smith. Burros is running in the 9th Representative District (Lawndale-Near West Side) which is an open seat because Rep. Art Turner is running for Lt. Governor. Smith is running in the 18th Represenative District (Evanston-Rogers Park-North Shore), which is open because Julie Hamos is running for Congress.
At the Smith event, someone made the observation that with if Joe Laiacona succeeds in removing Deb Mell (40th Rep District) from the ballot (see Greg Hinz @ Crain's), Northside DFA may be in position to elect four members to the Illinois General Assembly: Daniel Biss, Burros, Laiacona and Smith. Biss is also running in an open-seat race because incumbent Beth Coulson (17th Rep District) is running for the same seat in Congress as Hamos.
(550 people came to our forum (with 100+ turned away), so I figure people would be interested to know how our members voted on endorsement. - promoted by Jim in Chicago)
NDFA held its regular monthly meeting last night (normally 1st Thursdays of the month) and discussed the 5th Congressional Special Election, and the thorny topic of whether we would endorse a candidate. No endorsement was made, as there was no consensus among our voting members on who was the best candidate in this race. In order for NDFA to endorse, we need 75% of voting members to vote to endorse a candidate.
First, what does an NDFA endorsement mean? More than the candidate getting to tout us as endorsers, it means we organize volunteers to go work on the campaign, and generally those who can donate money do so. But we're all about volunteer work, and putting time in where your mouth is -- so its those volunteer hours that's really important to the campaign's we endorse/adopt (we have two tiers in a normal election cycle, where there are multiple races that we're interested in ... but that's a topic for another day). Its because we're committing to organizing volunteers, and because we need the volunteers to turn out to be effective in our work for the campaign, that we have such a high threshold for endorsement: our members have to want to work for a candidate, and with their vote implicitly commit themselves to volunteer hours for that candidate. There's no tally, we don't check up, but if we endorse, we expect a good number of our members to show up to do the good work of the campaign.
NDFA recently held an endorsement session. They only considered the names on our front page poll. Any member could place any candidate up for consideration. So that's how we arrived at that list. To be endorsed by NDFA the candidate needed 75% yes of the total of all yeses and noes. Abstentions were not counted towards the 75%. They could endorse any one, several, all or none of the candidates. But keep in mind that an endorsement by NDFA implied a committment to a level of effort and work for the endorsed candidate(s). You want to know the results? I'll give someone from NDFA a chance to post the results. If they don't, then, of course, I will. :-)
Illinois5th.com Forum. Well, Okay, the fire marshals weren't actually there (at least not to my knowledge.) What an amazing event. Beyond my expectations in every way. This is the way democracy is supposed to be run. It's a shame it wasn't on network tv. Hat's off to all the sponsors.
The winner was Jan H. Donatelli. Of course, that's in the expectations game. The runner's up were the doctors. But don't get me wrong, the professional politicians held their own. Even Frank Annunzio presented himself well.
Here's a quick hit on the top four, Mike, Sara, John and Tom. Mike was down, Sara was flat, John held his own and Tom impressed as expected. Israel was the trick question. It's a question you have to finesse. The question was "Would you increase spending on Israel?" See what I mean about it being trick. I assume that that was Lyn Sweet's doing. On the whole she was the most authoritarian person on the dais. Really that shouldn't be a hard question to finesse. Sara didn't particularly try and said yes, but blah blah. Fine she did her finesse thing. Fritchey did a great job finessing it. So good that I had trouble writing down whether he actually said yes or no. Tom did his intelligent type answer, "no" because he'd seen no reason to increase it. But Mike, oh Mike, Mike Mike. He said yes, he'd increase it. Well so had Sara. But for Blah Blah Blah, he then launched into worrying about Iran, the "much greater threat." Oooops.
Various diaries at Daily Kos have reminded us that we need to be concened about the down-ballot races.
In Illinois, nothing is further down the ballot than judicial retention.
This past week, Northside DFA has been passing out flyers listing the ratings of various lawyers groups -- both for candidates in our area and for retention of sitting judges. They are copies of the compilation by The Appleseed Fund for Justice.
We sent electronic copies out to an e-mail list last week, have been putting them on doors since Sunday, and will hit EL stops today and Friday. While most people react negatively to any flyering efforts, these ahve been well received. The Cook County Circuit Court is notoriously corrupt and ineffective. But people don't know enough about the candidates to do anything about the court.
Longtime independent Bob Bartell, who previously served 4 terms over a decade ago as state chair of the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization, a/k/a IVI-IPO, has reportedly won the state chairmanship, after a vigorous contest whose balloting concluded today. Bartell, recently active in Northside DFA, and a frequent contributor to local Democratic blogs, boosted the membership of the organization significantly in his previous tenure. The organization in subsequent years suffered some decline after some bitter internal divisions. Bartell campaigned on a plank of rebuilding.
The venerable organization continues to be a sought-after endorsement for candidates, as voters continue to place value on the group's cumbersome but thorough procedures. In the most recent election, parochial infighting seemed to play a part in the unexpectedly hot race; political insiders attributed some efforts to oppose Bartell's candidacy to 48th Ward regular Democratic forces. Bartell is also a resident of the 48th Ward, and was a member of the now-defunct independent Network 48.
Outgoing state chair David Igasaki, who did not run for re-election, supported longtime IVI-IPO stalwart Hilda Frontany, who placed second in the balloting. Marc Loveless, another 48th Warder, who has been most active on LGBT issues, came in third.
Several Northside Democracy for America members "marched" in two Fourth-of-July parades for the Biss campaign. At least three people were in Evanston, and a group of eight of us were in Glenview.
I'll report our experiences in Glenview after the jump.
Northside (Chicago) DFA sent three of us up into the northern suburbs to canvass for Dan Seals, who came close to beating Mark Kirk in '06. He's running again, starting with the people he recruited and teh lessons he learned last time.
Turns out that the campaign was holding a "United for Change" event before we went out. I'll talk more about that after the jump.
the campaign provided us with a list of supposedly swing voters. (In Illinois, where you don't register by party, this consists of people who don't vote in primaries or vote in different primaries different years.) So, in a couple of hours, two of us nearly covered the limited list of names we'd received from a precinct. The driver was in a different precinct with a walk sheet covering only half the precinct. My experience after the jump.
David Sirota, author of The uprising and Hostile Takeopver, columnist, senior editor of In These Times, etc. will be in Chicago at the end of the week.
His most important appearance -- most important because I'm responsible for publicising it -- is at
Loyola's Simpson Multip0urpose Room, 6333 N. Winthrop (on the West Sheridan extension of Devon) on
Sat. June 21 at
2:00 p.m.
Sirota will be interviewed by The Reader's Joravsky on Money and Power.
Saturday, I went back to Hammond Indiana with the Democratic Party of Evanston. This time, there were 25 of us leaving Evanston. The Hammond Obama office was jammed the whole time we were there. (We went seperately in cars, The car in which I was riding -- with two sisters -- got there fairly early; another car came later, but the ofice was so jammed that they arrived before we could leave.)
Reception in the area I covered was overwhelmingly positive. Most were not home, but more than half of those who were said that they were Obama voters. Many said that they would vote early. I got one volunteer.
The driver had to come back early, so I was there only two or three hours, but we think we made a real difference.
Next Saturday, the effort will be getting out the vote.
Cars leave the Democratic Party of Evanston at 10:00 A.M.
Or see the directions here for the rendezvous of NDFA.
I was part of the effort of NDFA's drive to boost turnout in the critical race which Bill foster won on Saturday.
The headline about the election in the Chicago Sun Times was
BOMBSHELL
That was accurate.
Of the 8 Republicans who are in the US House from Illinois currently, 6 received a lower percentage of the vote in '06 than Hastert did. Only on the far-west edge of the 14th CD is there anyone who is represented by a Democrat in the legislature. Putting as money much into Republican open seats with lower winning margins in Illinois as the RNCC put into this losing race would take more than it has on hand. Never mind the other 49 states.
My experiences after the jump.
I posted a long diary on Daily Kos regarding the primary race in IL 03.
It's all in the extended text of this diary.
The bottom line is that district-wide Lipinski lost a mere 0.64 points from '06 to '08.
Pera gained 5.55 points over Sullivan, and the two diversions this time lost 4.88 points from Kelly's figure. (This should add up, and doesn't quite.)
The results were varied from one section of the district to another. Lipinski lost 2.24 points in the suburbs, gained 2.72 points in the city outside the 11th ward, and lost 4.98 points in the 11th ward. The reformer (comparing Pera to Sullivan) gained 6.41 points in the suburbs, 6.61 points in the 11th ward, and lost 3.08 points in the rest of the city.
I've been campaigning for Mark Pera in the 11th Ward. It's a nearly-isolated island of the 3d Congressional District. As Yoda wrote earlier, we have seen nobody else out for this race. (I mean nobody out for the other three candidates. We have seen non-members of NDFA help us. Most Pera volunteers who aren't involved in our group campaign elsewhere.)
I've seen one states-attorney candidate's flyers and something for a guy who'w running for Republican committeeman. I've seen a mailing from a state-senate candidate in an open mailbox. I've seen nothing from Bennet or Caparelli.
The Cook County State's Attorney position is one of the most important around. It touches on everything government does or doesn't do in Cook County. It is especially important to reformers, because when political machines break the law, reformers have to persuade the Cook County State's Attorney to do something about it. Remember, the serial torturer Jon Burge has avoided prosecution b/c the Cook County State's Attorney dragged it's feet until the statute of limitations had run.
For most Chicagoans, the 11th Ward is what Chicago is for the rest of the country, the home of the Daleys and the epitome of machine politics.
The 11th Ward is almost entirely in the 3rd Congressional district. It's attached to the rest of the district by a thin "umbilical cord" snaking through several other wards.
NDFA, the Northside Democracy for America, has adopted the Pera campaign in the 11th Ward as our battle ground in the primary. We have been there two Saturdays and two Sundays in December, and we'll go back as soon as voters are willing to listen in January. (The primary is February 5.)
NDFA (Northsi8de Democracy for America) is sponsoring a forum on
Getting out of Iraq What can one person do?
at
Edgewater Library
1210 W. Elmdale (6000 N. At Broadway)
on Thursday, 13 Dec.
at 7:00 p.m.
Speakers are
Christine Cegelis, who needs no description here, and
Jeff Leys of Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Jeff has taken several trips to Iraq, and the group is Kathy Kelly's group.
Illinois5th.com