By Steve Rhodes
Talking back to the TV as the returns roll in.
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Cliff Kelley is on CLTV! With Al Salvi. Both are rehashing partisan nonsense. What’s the point?
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Garrard McClendon: His blog commenters are “on fire.” He thinks this shows that the Constitution is alive. Seriously.
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Don Rose! Let’s trot out all the old warhorses. Certainly Paul Green is on somewhere!
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“Weather is brought to you by RedEye.”
No it’s not!
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Enough with Pat Quinn’s lucky tie, please. There’s no such thing.
And do we really want a governor who believes so? (Does he wear it to budget negotiations?)
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Jack Ryan! How many disgraced pols can they get on the set at once? Is Rosty busy?
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Emil Jones!
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Kelley (D-Stroger) vs. Forrest Claypool on county government. With nary a journalist to separate fact from fiction.
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Over at WBEZ’s live blog, Pat Quinn is in the room. Or a surrogate. Nobody’s really sure. Whoever it is, he or she is avoiding every real question and apparently cutting and pasting from the campaign’s website on the rest.
I don’t know who Tim Mata is, but it’s very important to him that everybody be real nice to the governor lest he get mad and log off.
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And we’ve lost the governor!
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And the governor is back, saying this is we we need a better broadband policy. But a better broadband policy can’t make him actually answer the questions.
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Terry O’Brien concession speech: “This campaign has been about family and friends.” Mine, Todd Stroger’s . . .
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O’Brien blames his loss on the shortened primary season – even after noting he began his campaign on July 24.
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Reader publisher Jim Warren says that O’Brien basically got every one of his votes “for one simple reason: That he’s white.”
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Kelley agrees, but anchor Mike Suppelsa notes that a lot of white voters went for Preckwinkle, too. They split the white vote!
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Kelley re-alleges that O’Brien and Dorothy Brown were working in concert. “One was the shill,” he says.
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“Top Daley Ethics Aide Resigns.”
In the middle of primary night.
Well played, Mr. Mayor.
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Nagging thought: Anyone who voted for Quinn or Giannoulias simply isn’t paying attention. There’s no excuse for it. McKenna too, really. You could easily justify every other Republican in that race more than him.
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Quinn supporters are stuck in their minds with who they think he is, and who they think Hynes is. You don’t have to like Hynes, but if you are going to enter the Democratic primary and make a choice, he’s the only sensible choice you have. Quinn would get creamed in the general election by anyone but McKenna. That’s where both parties have proved, again, their mediocrity. We lurch from one to the other but neither is capable of governing.
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Even I would rather have alleged Madigan guy Hynes in the governor’s mansion than a Burke and Berrios guy. Or is it the same thing?Then I would prefer a competent Machine person to a guy who is being supported because he can be rolled. Don’t you think that’s why the Establishment suddenly decided to line up behind Quinn? He has no chance of ever establishing his own power base and is going nowhere beyond Springfield. Hynes would gather power unto himself and be competition for everyone else in the state, with the possibility of multiple terms and maybe something like the U.S. Senate in his future. Think, people!
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Preckwinkle campaign manager Scott Cisek is good.
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Preckwinkle: She’ll repeal the sales tax and show us how it’s done. Let’s see who she finds out is right once she gets in there, Claypool or Stroger.
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Preckwinkle victory speech: “Now is the time to end patronage. Now is the time to cut waste while protecting health care, human services, public safety and our forest preserves. Now is the time to bring economic development and jobs to Cook County.” [
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Kirk vs. Giannoulias? How depressing.
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Kirk victory speech: “Illinois has the second lowest credit rating in America.”
After mine.
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Kirk: “We must choose leaders who do not become criminals.”
And then political analysts.
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Kirk: ” . . . [choose someone who is] unafraid to fight corruption, backs prosecutors . . . ”
That line of argument wouldn’t work with former inspector general and federal prosecutor David Hoffman.
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Kirk gave an impressive speech – and one clearly aimed at Giannoulias, noting the fight against those who made “bad investments” and “deceived families.” He’ll be though. He name-checked Blago and Burris and is now in a position, unlike a year ago, to actually run against Obama, too.
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He just played the Navy card.
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What did you do during the war, daddy?
I made loans to Tony Rezko.
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Kirk: “Duty, honor, country are not just words.”
Jessup: “We use words like honor, code, loyalty. They’re the backbone of our lives.
You use them as a punchline. I haven’t the time or inclination to explain myself to a man who needs my protection but questions the way I do it. Better just to thank me. Or pick up a gun and stand a post. But I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
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Over on Channel 5, Jesse Jackson Jr. didn’t really answer Allison Rosati’s question about whether he would support whoever won the Democratic senate nomination.
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Todd Stroger’s worst quality may be that the guy is actually arrogant.
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Fox Chicago’s Robin Robinson wonders aloud if Stroger’s campaign is disconnect with reality, given the reported confidence they showed earlier this evening.
They read polls the way they read budgets.
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PR guy Thom Serafin is on the Fox set. I dare you to ask him about this, Robin.
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Back to CLTV: Dawn Clark Netsch supports Hynes. “I want somebody who can get a hold of the finances of the state and get us back on track . . . he really is the one who sounded the warning bell a long time ago.”
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Stroger is giving his concession speech: “The handful of people still here are applauding.” Crowd estimate: Less than 100.
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Stroger: “We ran a very good race . . . all of you who have worked on the campaign, and worked in the county for three years . . . ”
Sometimes at the same time!
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Stroger: “People don’t understand the role that county plays in their lives.”
Except Preckwinkle people.
“This is a bump in the road.”
The road to where?
“I know county government better than anybody in this room.”
Now that the crowd has thinned out.
“Thank [my wife] Jeanine because I wasn’t home a lot.”
He reportedly leaves work every day around 4:30 to go to the East Bank Club, so maybe Jeanine should check his cell phone.
“I’m going to work with our Democratic nominee.”
By leaving the country?
“We have to educate our African American people.”
Like Preckwinkle?
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Cliff Kelley is mad because Todd’s daddy supported Daley over Harold Washington “because he believed in the party.”
Washington wasn’t a Democrat?
“The [Stroger] family has given so much to the party and the party hasn’t shown any loyalty.”
So now you are defending a family that gave its loyalty to the Daleys, Cliff? You can’t have it both ways.
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Kelley: “We also heard Mr. Claypool not able to answer any questions about where we could cut.”
We did? Claypool has been answering those questions for years.
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CLTV is at McKenna campaign night headquarters and you can see on the giant screen there that they’re all watching Fox.
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The Republican race for governor has tightened into a three-way battle between McKenna, Kirk Dillard and Bill Brady. Boy, I really underestimated Brady. Maybe an upstate bias.
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Jack Ryan: McKenna played whack-a-mole with his opponents but never smacked down Brady because he didn’t come up until the end.
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Kelley, when asked which Republican would be toughest for Quinn: “I don’t think any of them worked for [Harold] Washington, so I don’t know what his strategy would be.”
So you’re supporting the guy that Washington fired and defending the family that chose the Daleys over Harold. Nice, Cliff.
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Thanks to all the TV folks reporting from each campaign night headquarters and assuring us how enthusiastic supporters of this or that particular candidate are and how they like the numbers they are seeing so far. Especially when all I see on the screen is a few bored people milling around with overpriced, watered-down drinks in their hands.
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And thanks to all the TV “reporters” for once again failing to come up with any decent questions to ask at any of these headquarters’. It’s not like you haven’t had time to think about it.
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Now Claypool is on Channel 5 explaining why he didn’t endorse anyone in the Cook County board president race: He thought Preckwinkle was the best candidate, but hesitated endorsing her because she supported “all of Daley’s tax increases and spending binges.”
Maybe Claypool didn’t run because the mayor would have lined up his forces against him.
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Hoffman is conceding, down by 4 percent with 84 percent of precincts reporting. He is offering Giannoulias his full support, though that doesn’t extend to opening an account at Broadway Bank.
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Jack Ryan: “I thought Hoffman was a much more challenging candidate for Kirk . . . I think Mark Kirk got a real gift by having Alexi win this primary.”
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I have to say that Jim Warren is actually displaying insight along with wide and deep knowledge about an array of races and issues.
Garrard McClendon monitoring a CLTV chat or blog or something: “It’s red hot!”
Now he’s reading content-free comments from anonymous people we don’t care about.
McClendon reiterates that this shows how engaged voters are despite the low turnout.
Right.
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At 10:05 p.m, I received an invitation from lieutenant governor candidate Scott Lee Cohen to attend his Election Night rally, scheduled from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. RSVP by Monday.
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Ald. Emma Mitts is for Quinn.
You know, the Emma Mitts that once put a down payment on a Calvin Boender home and, more recently, said of proposed reforms to the city’s dysfunctional police board: “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
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If Quinn wins this thing, the Republican nominee will have a field day highlighting his ties to Burke, Berrios, Mell and the rest of the state’s most appalling political figures. And I haven’t even mentioned Blago yet.
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Dawn Clark Netsch is now on Fox.
Q: Does Hynes have enough gas to catch Quinn?
A: Does anyone really know?
She should have been governor.
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Memo to Alexi: You’re right, you’ll have plenty of time to finally explain your actions at Broadway Bank. About nine months.
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John Kass: “[The primary season] was too short for David Hoffman.”
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Mary Mitchell is now on Fox. All the winners are out tonight!
“Cheryle Jackson was getting national recognition for the things she had done with the Urban League.”
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Giannoulias victory speech: “Tonight the voters of Illinois sent a message, loud and clear.”
We don’t read!
“Congressman [Kirk], come November, your days as a Washington insider are over.”
And my days as a Washington insider will begin!
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Who is more of a Washington insider, a North Shore congressman in the opposition party or a Chicago insider who is a friend of the president?
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At 12:08 a.m., Quinn does his George W. Bush impression:
“The time for fighting is over. The people have won and we have won this election!”
Um, it’s actually too close to call.
“It was a close election, but one more than the other guy is a landslide in my book.”
Um, that explains a lot.
“I think it’s important to understand that the primary is over.”
Stop begging.
“When the winning candidate emerges from the primary, we unite behind that candidate for the cause of Illinois.”
Well, that’s what Hynes has always said. You were the one who refused to commit to supporting the primary winner if it wasn’t you.
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“All of us together, we have to make the will of the people the law of the land.”
Except when it comes to the seating of Roland Burris, the jobs of University of Illinois trustees, the recommendations of the Illinois Reform Commission, and the will of Joe Berrios.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on February 3, 2010