The Illinois primary is Tuesday, and candidates are vying for the opportunity to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Roland Burris (D-IL), who won’t be running.
The Washington Post has a good primer on the state-of-play right now. Republicans appear poised to nominate U.S. Representative Mark Kirk (R-IL). They feel he gives them a very good chance to win the seat once held by President Obama.
The Senate race in the president’s home state will be among the most symbolically important and expensive races in the country this year. After Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts this month, the GOP sees a clear path to victory in this Democratic state — and his name is Mark Kirk.
Kirk, 50, a moderate five-term Republican House member, appears to be the man of the moment. As the likely GOP nominee to emerge Tuesday, Kirk is seen as a formidable, well-funded candidate, a Navy Reserve officer who has done two tours in Afghanistan and who can withstand the weight of a White House set to defeat him.
Democrats weren’t able to get a top-tier candidate. Lately, there is some new uncertainty as to who will win their primary race.
The party’s leading contender — state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias — has spent these last precious days before Tuesday’s primary scrambling to explain why regulators have targeted his struggling family bank for greater oversight. Giannoulias, once a senior lending officer at Broadway Bank, is being pressed relentlessly by his Democratic rivals and the media about his role in the bank’s woes.
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Although Giannoulias is leading the fractured Democratic field with about a third of the vote, according to independent surveys, national Democrats have privately expressed concern about his relative inexperience and the fact that he hasn’t developed a commanding lead over his rivals. “Why hasn’t he stepped up and put this away by now?” asked one congressional aide from the state.
Some Democrats think Giannoulias, 32, may not even make it out of the primary. Former city inspector general David Hoffman, 42, has been moving up in the polls over the past few weeks, while Giannoulias’s numbers have stayed about the same, suggesting undecided voters may be moving to Hoffman in these final days. A known anti-corruption former prosecutor, Hoffman has been endorsed by most state newspapers — the Chicago Tribune called him “an incorruptible man who speaks truth to power” — and he has seen contributions soar this week. (“We just got $2,400 from Tom Daschle!” a breathless aide shouted, bursting into a room where Hoffman was being interviewed.)
Democrats and the White House had “openly courted state Attorney General Lisa Madigan to run, even bringing her to Washington to meet with Obama.” Despite not getting their first choice, they feel they have a line of attack against Mr. Kirk in the general election.
Kathleen Strand, an Illinois consultant to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Democrats will portray Kirk as a Washington “insider” and a “flip-flopper” who veered to the right to satisfy conservatives to win the primary.
(credit image – flickr)
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