The White House had been working for months to talk Illinois Attorney
General Lisa Madigan into running for President Obama's former Senate
seat to keep it from falling into Republican hands.
Ms. Madigan is popular, has high voter-approval polls and was
seen as the strongest Democrat who could hold the seat. But in an
unexpected blow last week to the White House's political recruiting
efforts, she turned down the president's request and decided to run
instead for re-election to her present job.
Within hours of her decision Wednesday, Republican Rep. Mark
Steven Kirk saw his chance and sent out word he was running for the
seat now held by Democratic Sen. Roland W. Burris, who announced Friday
that he will not seek election to a full term. Appointed to fill Mr.
Obama's seat by disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Mr. Burris has been the
target of a Senate Ethics Committee inquiry into whether he offered any
quid pro quo in exchange for his appointment before Mr. Blagojevich was
impeached and removed from his office on charges he had sought to sell
the seat to the highest bidder.
Until now, no one thought the Republicans had any chance to win
the Senate seat in heavily Democratic Illinois, especially in the
present climate, when the Republican brand has been badly damaged.
However, Mr. Kirk may be the one candidate who can pull it off in a
state where widespread corruption has badly damaged the Democrats'
brand even more.
The youthful five-term congressman represents the
Democratic-leaning 10th Congressional District, which Mr. Obama carried
last year by 61 percent, but Mr. Kirk's cross-party appeal has kept it
in the Republican column against all comers.
He is a prodigious fundraiser, too, having raised more than
$580,000 in the second quarter, amassing a total of $1.1 million in
cash on hand.
"Kirk is a very strong statewide candidate for Republicans.
This is an easier race for them now that Madigan is not running," said
Jennifer Duffy, senior elections analyst at the Cook Political Report.
But other Democrats were expected to run for the seat next year
no matter what Mr. Burris decided, promising a potentially divisive
party primary fight that could further weaken their party's chances of
holding onto the seat.
State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias already has announced that he
is running, and businessman Chris Kennedy also was expected to enter
the race.
Ms. Madigan's decision to forgo the Senate contest was not only
a major disappointment to the White House but a personal blow to White
House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman from Chicago
who has become Mr. Obama's chief candidate recruiter.
Ms. Madigan, a top Democratic vote-getter in the state, was
called to the White House last month. There she met with Mr. Obama, Mr.
Emmanuel and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in what insiders say was a
full-court press to draft her for the race.
This has not been an especially good month for Mr. Obama and
his White House team to demonstrate their political firepower. So far
they have failed to get their way in three key battleground Senate
races.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York ignored their political
pleas against challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for the party's
nomination in next year's contest to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton's
seat. None other than former President Bill Clinton is headlining a
gala fundraiser for Ms. Maloney on July 20 despite the White House's
heavy efforts to consolidate the party establishment behind Ms.
Gillibrand.
Then Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania dissed White House efforts
to keep him from running against Sen. Arlen Specter, the recent
Democratic convert whom Mr. Obama and Gov. Edward G. Rendell have
embraced. Now Ms. Madigan has flatly turned down Mr. Obama's request to
take his old Senate seat.
Meantime, while the Illinois Senate race suddenly has become a
more competitive contest with Ms. Madigan out and Mr. Kirk in, a number
of questions "need to be answered" before its direction becomes clear,
Ms. Duffy told me. "Does Kirk get a competitive primary? Can Democrats
avoid a bruising primary?" she asked.
"One thing to remember is that Illinois has a very early filing
deadline, the first week in November, and an early primary in March.
This means Democrats might be less concerned with the fallout from a
primary and more with making sure that a viable general election
candidate emerges from that contest," she added.
Nevertheless, as things stand now, Mr. Kirk's candidacy may in
the end benefit from what is turning into a perfect Democratic storm
that has badly damaged the state party's credibility. Mr. Blagojevich
has been impeached and faces a corruption trial. His former chief of
staff has pleaded guilty to having had a hand in the scheme to sell Mr.
Obama's Senate seat. Mr. Burris has been an embarrassment to the state.
Sounds like Illinois Republicans may be borrowing one of Mr. Obama's old campaign lines next year: "It's time for a change."
Hmm. It seems that I, for one, owe a wee apology to
former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. I blamed most of the paralyzing toxicity
in Springfield in recent years on him. Many of my columns have hammered
on Blagojevich's stubbornness, his confrontational style and his
tendency to grandstand rather than lead.
He
and his fellow Democrats had it all. Solid majorities in both chambers
and, since 2006, every statewide office. Yet all we got was one long
sandbox fight.
So now Blago's gone. Arrested. Impeached. Removed from office. Indicted. Exiled to his home in Ravenswood Manor.
We
have a new governor -- the good-hearted Pat Quinn. For good measure we
also have a new Illinois Senate president -- John Cullerton --
replacing Emil Jones, who was Blagojevich's main enabler in the
legislature. And what are we seeing in Springfield?
Another
round of paralyzing toxicity! Name-calling. Infighting.
Finger-pointing. Dueling accusatory news conferences about who's to
blame for a budget stalemate that put the General Assembly into an
overtime session for the third summer in a row.
The
constant in this equation has been House Speaker and Illinois
Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan. Blagojevich seemed to be in
a perpetual blood feud with Madigan, and even used Madigan's
intransigence as an excuse for why he had to raise such eye-popping
sums of campaign cash -- an effort that got him into legal trouble.
Now
another governor is vexed and stymied by the speaker, reduced to making
populist threats. Another Senate president is standing helplessly by
and shrugging. And Blagojevich is having the good sense to lie low for
once and let the news itself do the talking: "Toldja so!"
Therefore a wee apology. Not a full one. Blagojevich was
a turkey, and the bill of particulars against him runs far longer than
the federal indictment that alleges he crossed the line into
criminality. Frustration is no excuse. But it does look to be an
increasingly plausible explanation, one that I now regret not giving
more credence to at the time.
The question looking forward is what excuse,
what explanation, what apology the Democratic Party can offer voters
for making such a mess of things yet again, even with the ostensibly
rogue ex-governor out of the picture. Democrats asked the voters for
power in Illinois. And the majority of voters -- including me, I should
say -- said OK. The result reduced legislative Republicans to
decorative-plant status
. But with this
power came full and admittedly awesome responsibility -- to address the
impact of the nationwide economic crisis and balance the state budget
in a time of declining revenues. This responsibility didn't exactly
creep up on the Democrats. We all saw it coming.
What
did the Democratic leadership do to address this admittedly knotty
problem? They bickered. They hemmed. They hawed. They quailed at making
decisions and taking ownership of decisions that will inevitably prove
unpopular among some segments of the population. Eventually, they ran
out the clock at the end of last month and forced an overtime session.
(See:Chickens playing a game of chicken: What's really going on in Springfield
Now,
in overtime, when the rules call for supermajority votes to pass a
spending plan, Republican votes will be on whatever potentially
infuriating combination of program cuts, tax hikes and accounting hocus
pocus gets us into next year.
"If voters
can't trust the Democrats to get the job done, then they should look
elsewhere for solutions in the next election. Letting the process go
into overtime was a political decision and had nothing to do with the
best interests of the people of the state."
That's
not me talking. That's Democratic state Sen. James Meeks of Chicago. He
knows that his party owes an apology to those who put them in power.
