CapitolFax.com - Latest Comments in Question of the day

Re: Question of the day

UofCMBA — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:43:21 -0000

Re IL-13, Biggert v. Harper. Harper has come from nowhere in January to mount the only credible campaign I have seen since Biggert inherited the seat ten years ago. As markg8 has said, Harper outraised Biggert last quarter, despite his not taking any PAC money. As for answering questions, I have attended several of his houseparties. He does answer questions, thoughtfully, unlike many politicians I know. I don't know about you, but I want someone representing me who thinks and analyzes but makes a decision in a reasonable amount of time, not one who jumps at the first sound bite. If the election were held today, Harper would probably not win, but if the yard signs I see are an indication, the momentum is in his direction. In 5 weeks, he has a great chance.

The makeup of the district is changing. Besides the immigrants cited, we are also seeing new people from both Cook County and from other blue states. The new arrivals I see think, "Bush-Biggert-Republican-Yuck!"

For the first time I can remember in the 2008 primary, the Democrats fielded a full slate of candidates in my precinct. Also, a local insurgent group, Operation Turn DuPage Blue (OTDB), unseated the incumbent officers of the DuPage County Democratic Party and elected people with real fire in their bellies. The OTDB people work like dogs. They have filled the ranks of precinct committeemen and built a ground game to support the money and volunteers Harper's campaign has built. Look for them to bust a gut to turn out Democrats on Nov 4, unlike what I have ever seen in this county.

And as far as voting for someone who looks like a grandma, the figures don't lie. Most people here are smart enough to see that when Biggert talks, Tom Delay's lips move. Her voting record does not help here when 75+% of people think the country is moving in the wrong direction. People I talk to are annoyed when her voter questionnaires ask which Republican alternative you support, not for a real spectrum of opinions.

And as for Alesch, he drives a big pickup. How green is that? I passed him one day ... on my bicycle. I have not seen him in any of the four parades I marched in or campaigning at my railroad station. At least Biggert turns up at the parades. I tell my friends, "A vote for Alesch is a vote for Biggert."

By the way, the word is expatriate. I was one. Try it sometime. It broadens your horizons.

I give it to Scott Harper, 53%-46%-1%.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:46:47 -0000

Squideshi I'd say you're right at least in the governors race in 2006. A lot of Repubs didn't like Topinka. One even told me she sounded like a southside barfly. But unless you have two really awful major party candidates I wouldn't look for any Green to get 1%. This election is too important and the difference between Dems and Repubs is too stark for most voters to ignore and throw their vote away on a protest vote.

Re: Question of the day

Squideshi — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:51:19 -0000

"I think Jason Wallace has the potential to break 2 or 3% in the 11th and help decide a close race (Ozinga is the likely benefactor but Deb still has an OK shot to win), Greens a non-factor elsewhere."

He's already polling better than that; and you would be wrong to assume that only Democrats vote for Greens--in just about every case, Greens take equally from Democrats and Republicans, with MOST votes coming from NEW and INDEPENDENT voters.

Re: Question of the day

Warren — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:39:10 -0000

10th With Seals winner in a very close race. Kirk has too many ties to Bush -- if the economy is the issue the Democrats will do well.

Harper 52% -- Biggert 48%
Scott has a lot of fresh ideas to replace the old GOP line of spend and borrow. The Joliet Herald News even said 4 years ago that Gloria Anderson would have run better in the 13th if she had given more attention to Joliet. Scott is well informed on the issues and will yield to the insurance companies and CEOs like Judy has done.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:31:21 -0000

Long-time Lurker - a lot of those disenfranchised Republicans (and independents who make up about a third of electorate) are gonna show up at the polls and vote Democratic. Obama, Lisa Madigan, and Jesse White among others have all gotten over 60% of the vote in DuPage alone.

That's a big reason why DuPage Republicans who tried to peddle their ridiculous "recall all the state constitutional officers" petition all year long failed to get even 7,000 of the 21,000 required signatures to put it on the ballot in the county. That of course didn't stop them. The Republican dominated DuPage County Election Commission was going to illegally put the referendum on the ballot anyway until the DuPage Democratic Party cried foul.

That petition drive shows just how weak the Republicans are in DuPage these days. As much as everybody hates Blago out here they couldn't even get 7,000 to sign it in a county with hundreds of thousands of registered voters.

Like Obama says Americans aren't stupid and that goes double for DuPage.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:07:09 -0000

Anonymous I suggest you attend one of Harper's house parties where he answers questions from voters face to face. While he's never been a professional politician and doesn't talk in sound bite platitudes like Biggert he's incredibly knowledgeable.

He grew up in Naperville and graduated from both Naperville North and Wheaton College. He got an MBA in finance at U of Chi. Then like so many others he moved to Chicago to start and build a business and made a lot of money. He took classes at UIC to qualify for the doctorate he wanted and spent two years in England (and last I checked they're a pretty close ally, they even speak English which I'm sure will be reassuring to Biggert's shrinking fan base) where he went to Oxford University, one of the most prestigious learning institutions in the world.

Trying to mock him as some kind of bizarro foreigner like you guys did Tammy Duckworth is not only ridiculous, it's self defeating. In case you haven't noticed there's hundreds of thousands of voters in the district who don't come from DuPage at all, including Judy Biggert and her chief of staff who, horrors or horrors is a native Chicagoan.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:31:17 -0000

And as for money Harper would be glad to compare small donations with Alesch and Biggert any day.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:28:37 -0000

GreenFan I think the Green party did have a booth at the county fair but I haven't seen Alesch or his campaign anywhere. I saw more of him last year than this year.

Re: Question of the day

Silent Majority — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:37:03 -0000

Biggert 48.5%, Harper 51.5%. Judy is linked too much to the president. Most people are voting against 4 more years of Republicans.
I actually live in the 13th and more than half on the people I talk to, around 52%, are for change like in the 14th.
25,000 more people voted for Scott than Judy in the Primary. That is right around 3%. Those 25,000 know they are in a Republican District and are doing something to change it to a Democratic district.
Judy may be a nice person, but she is too close to Bush and as the Country gets into more messes like the financials and losing your nest egg along with your House, she will be dragged down with him.

Re: Question of the day

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:56:22 -0000

This one's easy. All 3 Rs will win for reasons previously stated, so I won't repeat them. Numbers for Kirk and Aaron won't be a high as some have predicted.

Re: Question of the day

GreenFan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:19:39 -0000

Markg, get your story straight. Alesch has been working hard. He has a active campaign, website, and is attending every event he can. Just because he doesn't take big union money and other special interest money like Harper doesn't mean he isn't doing anything.

Re: Question of the day

Heartless Libertarian — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:17:16 -0000

Thanks Gene, for copying and pasting talking points. The first half sounds like and SEIU mailer and the second one of those Barack mass mailings to flood calls anywhere that runs anything remotely bad about Obama. If I wanted to read complete trash, I would be over on the KOS. Thanks again.

Re: Question of the day

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:12:58 -0000

Seriously, has anyone even watched Harperâ€™s interview with Jeff Berkowitz. The guy canâ€™t even answer half the questions. He hasnâ€™t even lived in the district for over two decades. Canâ€™t the Democrats do better than recruiting a clueless ex-patriot carpetbagger that fancies himself a European Liberal? No one has even heard of the guy. Itâ€™s nice that he has wasted all of that money with nothing to show for it. His name id probably doubled just from the posts here.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:01:03 -0000

As far as I know Alesch the green in the 13th isn't even running a race. He's reported no fundraising at all. The only sign I've seen of the green party in the district all year was one guy wearing a t-shirt at a parade in Tinley Park last weekend. If he gets 1% I'll be amazed.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:54:18 -0000

BTW here's another thing Scott Harper is for. He wants to lower the corporate tax rate and offset it by doing away with the hundreds of special tax breaks that major corporations have hired their tax attorneys and lobbyists to bribe the likes of Biggert to embed into the tax code like barnacles on the bottom of a ship. That'll level the playing field for small businesses and start ups, and make the fat cats actually compete. It's time we purge the tax code of loopholes and breaks that make it easier to ship jobs overseas and harder to start a business that can compete with Biggert's big business favorites.

Re: Question of the day

Southern Illinois Democrat — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:49:13 -0000

Seals will pull it ut by a very small margin (less tha 1%). The national Dems are putting alot of money into this one and Obama will help with a larger Dem turnout. Schock will win his race 54-46. He is popular and seems to fit well with the district. Callahan just hasnt seemed to get much traction in the race and Schock gets alot of good press. Biggert should win too. I peg this one at 51-48 with 1% for Alesch. The Dems have targeted this race but she remains fairly popular and I dont think enough Repubs will change and vote for a Dem in this district.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:39:10 -0000

photogram - ever been on one of her teletownhall conference calls? She usually holds these things at 10:30 in the morning so her respondees are 99% white retirees. Invariably the talk shifts to all "the other" people moving into the area. Judy is all too happy to tut tut right along with them as they accuse all "these people" of crowding their big families into small houses, sucking up welfare and services they think they're paying for. Maybe Biggert is just too polite to tell them they're racist. Nah who am I kidding. It's what the Republican party lives on.

Re: Question of the day

McSame — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:27:23 -0000

Demographics are changing everywhere to the chagrin of the GOP, even in our historically republican 13th district. Judy Biggert has never had to fight a serious campaign in this district (she represented another district previously, speaking of carpetbaggers), and has so far been outfundraised by Scott Harper. The race has attracted attention from the DCCC, making the emerging races list, and will attract more funding from a broader base. I predict a tight contest, with Harper edging out the incumbent by a few points. Hinsdale will never go blue, but the majority of our district is solidly middle class, and is not as secure for the cons as once was thought.

Re: Question of the day

photogram — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:36:03 -0000

markg8:
I never heard Judy do any of the "Biggertâ€™s nasty immigration bashing." Got any examples?

In fact, I've never seen her nasty about anything. She's poise and class, all the way.

Re: Question of the day

photogram — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:33:21 -0000

Gene:
Hmm, I don't think Gene understands the gun issue.
Obama has a solid anti-gun voting record, when he votes. You can't just promise that away.

Re: Question of the day

Six Degrees of Separation — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:30:16 -0000

Not a lot of knowledge on the 3 races; they are in traditional R areas (the 10th traditional liberal R, similar to R areas in New England). I think they all go R by 2-15% even in Obama's year. I think Jason Wallace has the potential to break 2 or 3% in the 11th and help decide a close race (Ozinga is the likely benefactor but Deb still has an OK shot to win), Greens a non-factor elsewhere.

Re: Question of the day

markg8 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:29:07 -0000

IL-13 Harper 56 Biggert 44.

Scott Harper, a complete unknown at the time outpolled Biggert and her anti-abortion challenger combined on Super Tuesday by 25,000 votes. DuPage took 133,000 Dem ballots to 109,000 Repub on Feb. 5th too. The district is changing. Biggert's base of retirees is dying off or moving to FL, AZ. There's been an influx of people moving from other parts of the country and overseas like Eastern Europeans and South Asians. Biggert's nasty immigration bashing doesn't play well with them.

Biggert started out with a huge money advantage but Harper has out raised her this year and her fundraising is way off from past years. Probably because the big banks she fought to deregulate on the Finance Committee are in big, big trouble.

She's obviously worried. She opened a campaign office in Downers recently and is mounting a ground game for the first time ever. Too late for that.

Voters out here know she's climbed on board the "drill baby drill" train yet she's taken $88,000 from oil companies. She plays a photo op game at Argonne and businesses in the district who are adopting or developing green technologies. And while she sometimes votes for alternative energy R&D funding when it comes to changing the tax code to take away the fossil fuel companies' subsidies and tax breaks to level the playing field so alternatives can compete in the market she's right there with Bush holding back commercialization of the 21st century energy solutions we need. Her daughter is a pharmaceutical company lobbyist and she's gotten $230,000 from them while voting against healthcare for our kids and veterans.

She's been in lockstep with Bush on the fiasco in Iraq.

As for Harper he's come out of nowhere to move up to the DCCC Emerging Races list (2nd tier), one of 5 candidates in the nation and the only one in IL recently. He's just been endorsed by DAPAC, a big progressive organization. He's one of only 14 challengers nationwide to out raise an incumbent this year. He raised more cash than all 4 of Biggert's previous Dem challengers did combined for their whole races by the end of the second quarter.

He put together a volunteer organization that was able to send Bill Foster 100 activists for GOTV on election day March 8th and over 40 to Lafayette IN the Saturday before their primary. In the middle of July his canvassers knocked on 3200 doors for one big Saturday event.

When the DCCC announced a surprise "100 Days to Victory" contest the Monday afterward while his field manager was sitting on a beach in MD enjoying a much needed long weekend off and the computers were down for two days loading the new VAN his staff managed to pull together over 750 volunteers through out the district and across the country to canvass, phonebank, write letters and deliver yard signs. In four days.

Harper has an MBA in Finance from U of Chi. Last year he was working on his doctorate in Social Ethics at Oxford when several of us convinced him the most ethical thing he could do would be to set it aside to run for congress. He's also been a successful businessman. He and a partner built a business in the city from the two of them up to over forty employees before he sold his share.

He's a sharp guy with a breadth of experience and a lot of great ideas to get this country back on track. Needless to say he's got a lot of people here in the burbs excited about him and his campaign. He'll win surprisingly handily.

Re: Question of the day

Gene — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:41:25 -0000

George Bush and Judy Biggert got us into this mess.

Families around the country are struggling to find work. A bad economy is shrinking what a good paycheck can buy. Our economy is under attack from a Judy Biggert-style of government and George Bush-appointed courts. Our taxes increase, while corporations and their honchos pay almost nothing. Our rights are eroding. Good jobs are flying overseas.
Enough is enough.
Scott Harper will help put more of us back to work, put more buying power in our paycheck while taxing less of it, call off the liberties-attack-dogs in government, appoint rights-respecting judges, make corporations and their fat-cat-CEOs pay their fair share, keep our rights protected and bring good-paying jobs back to the United States.
Do you have concerns?
Scott Harper will not take away your guns or force anyone to have an abortion.
Scott Harper values religion and will respect your right to practice your faith.
There is hope.
Things can change. Your vote for Scott Harper will start us back in the right direction. A vote for Scott Harper will strengthen our economy, put more of us back to work and more money in our wallets.

Union Carpenters around the country are struggling to find work. A bad economy is shrinking what a good union paycheck can buy. Organized labor is under attack from a John McCain-style of government and George Bush-appointed courts. Our taxes increase, while corporations and their honchos pay almost nothing. Making life easier for contractors is more important than job site safety. Union rights are eroding. Good union jobs are flying overseas.
Enough is enough.
After twenty-six years in the legislature John McCain finally says he will change government. Why not in the past quarter-century, when he had plenty of opportunity? It is bull. John McCain will not change anything. He will continue with four more years of rewarding the wealthy and sticking it to the union worker.
Union carpenters need change we can believe in.
Barack Obama will help put more carpenters back to work, put more buying power in our paycheck while taxing less of it, call off the labor-attack-dogs in government, appoint labor-respecting judges, make corporations and their fat-cat-CEOs pay their fair share, keep our job sites safe, our rights protected and bring good-paying jobs back to the United States for our brothers and sisters in organized labor.
Do you have concerns?
Barack Obama will not take away your guns or force anyone to have an abortion.
As a Christian, Barack Obama values religion and will respect your right to practice your faith.
As a man of color, Barack Obama respects the dreams of working men and women, regardless of color, giving no one undue influence or special treatment, because of their race.
There is hope.
Things can change. Your vote for Barack Obama will start union carpenters back in the right direction. A vote for Barack Obama will strengthen our union, put more carpenters back to work and more money in our wallet.

Re: Question of the day

ben — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:10:27 -0000

10th--Seals 54%-46%. Despite the weak numbers posted by the Kirk campaign, I think people will make their minds up in the final weeks of the race, and that the majority of the undecideds will break for Seals.

13th--Biggert 55%-45%. Harper will make somewhat of a dent in her numbers, but not enough to win. This will be a two-cycle race for him.

18th--Schock 54%-46%. I don't see Callahan doing much to win here.

Re: Question of the day

there he goes again — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:50:47 -0000

I'll sail against the wind on the 18th CD and predict a Callahan victory. My reasoning is that be election day, voters will tire of the new kid with blow-dried hair and prefer some substance during these very tough economic times that favor Democrats. The Obama tide will help carry her to a 51-49 victory.