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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (371721)	2/23/2008 6:56:06 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573924

"The big changes just come down on earth like a bomb and so far nobody can explain that." What is amazing is that some people don't see the danger of politicizing every facet of government.

To: tejek who wrote (371721)	2/23/2008 10:40:02 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573924

You know, if Obama is the Dem candidate, I expect he would bring a lot of independent voters to the Dem side. And that might bring a stronger Dem majority to both houses. Another rason to hope Obama pulls it off... ---------------------------------------------------- Dems Now Favored in Key Illinois House Race, as GOP Nominee Quits By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff Fri Feb 22, 5:58 PM ET House Republican campaign officials -- already hindered by a big disadvantage in the number of "open" seats they have to defend this year -- suffered a blow Friday in their efforts to hold one that already was particularly vulnerable to Democratic takeover. The GOP now faces an emergency recruiting job in Illinois' politically competitive 11th District after local officeholder Tim Baldermann, the winner of a competitive primary just two and a half weeks earlier, unexpectedly declined the nomination. In light of Baldermann's withdrawal, CQ Politics has changed its rating on the Illinois 11 race to Democrat Favored from No Clear Favorite. Baldermann's dropout -- which he attributed to the problems he faced juggling the responsibilities of his local positions with an intense campaign for Congress -- is a setback to the Republican Party's already uncertain efforts to retain control of the district. The Democrats are fielding state Sen. Debbie Halvorson, one of their strongest open-seat candidates in this year's House elections. Halvorson is running to succeed retiring seven-term Rep. Jerry Weller. He is one of 24 House Republicans who are either voluntarily retiring or running for other offices, compared with just five Democrats who have voluntarily left their seats open. The Republicans do have the opportunity, though, to make a more competitive contest out of it by November -- if they can persuade a strong candidate to make a prompt decision to enter the race. That is because Illinois law allows party officials plenty of leeway to replace nominees who drop out after winning primary contests. Republican officials have until early April to select a new candidate. Though the 11th District, a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas south and west of Chicago, isn't exactly a Republican stronghold, it has enough of a GOP lean that the party's planners will strongly resist the idea of just surrendering it to the Democrats. President Bush took 53 percent of the district's votes in the 2004 election. Although Weller slipped a bit to 55 percent in his 2006 contest, he generally won his races by more comfortable margins. Finding a new, strong candidate from scratch this late in the campaign may be difficult for the Republicans, though, especially since Halvorson has a sizable head start on fundraising and could benefit from the increased possibility that the presidential candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket may be Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. It is possible that GOP officials will consider one of the two Republicans who also ran in the Feb. 5 11th District primary: Terry Heenan, an airline pilot, and Jimmy Lee, a former executive director of the White House Initiative for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But both lost decisively to Baldermann in the primary. According to the Web site of the Herald News in Joliet, Ill., Baldermann said in a statement that he could not balance a congressional campaign with his responsibilities as the mayor of New Lenox, a suburb 35 miles southwest of Chicago, and as the chief of police in the community of Chicago Ridge. "I have reached the conclusion that I cannot ably serve the citizens of those two municipalities while also running a full-time campaign for Congress," Baldermann said. Baldermann also badly lagged Halvorson in campaign fundraising, a process he publicly admitted to loathing. Through Jan. 16, the latest date for which official figures are available, Baldermann reported raising just $104,000. That was less than one-fourth of the $428,000 in total receipts reported by Halvorson. Halvorson had an even wider advantage in campaign cash on hand -- $394,000 to $50,000 -- because she was unopposed for the Democratic nomination while Baldermann had to spend money on his primary campaign. For the moment, Halvorson's only remaining opponent for the November ballot is Jason Wallace, the Green Party nominee.