Rahm Emanuel and I share something in common: we both used to live in Illinois' 5th Congressional District on Chicago's Near North Side. I've moved on to IL-4, where Luis Gutierrez is my Representative, while Rahm has moved on to the White House.
But it looks like a clear favorite has emerged to take Rahm's seat in the Congress, and that favorite is State Rep Sara Feigenholtz. Feigenholtz has two distinct advantages in a wide-open primary field: firstly, she's raised the most money, and secondly, she has the endorsement of the SEIU -- a modest surprise as the scuttlebutt I'd heard was that the unions would be reluctant to endorse in this race given the number of "acceptable" progressive candidates. Although portions of IL-5, such as the Lakeview/Wrigleyville neighborhood, are rather well off, the district extends westward and encompasses a number of poorer Hispanic and "white-ethnic" working class communities; the SEIU's endorsement is a pretty big one in a district like this. FiveThirtyEight, in its excursions around Chicago, has also noticed a small proliferation if Feigenholtz signage/bling in the district.
The most interesting alternative to keep an eye on remains Tom Geoghegan, a labor lawyer and author who has been endorsed by the Cook County nurse's union and has many connections within the netroots. This is one race, indeed, where an endorsement of Geoghegan by some of the major left-of-center blogs could make a fair amount of difference. But if Feigenholtz (certainly no conservative herself) is consolidating establishment support, his road is largely uphill.
2.17.2009
IL-05: Feigenholtz Looks Like Favorite in Emanuel's Old District
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Does this mean rahm will not be getting his old seat back after he leaves the White House? Is a Senate run in his future?
Some fluffy sensationalism here since the Palins insist on it,
Who out there thinks that Bristol Palin is Trig's mother? I'm still wondering? Their story just doesn't add up to me. Of course I could be wrong.
Though I, like Nate, live in IL-4, I've slightly preferred Feigenholtz since learning about the candidates, so this is good news. I only hope someday I can vote in a semi-contested election in my district.
You're right about the Feigenholtz signage, though I've probably seen just as much from Charlie Wheelan.
Where is the polling on this? What are you basing this on?
I live in IL-5 and have seen little Feigenholtz material. I see a ton of John Fritchey stuff and met Mike Quigley as he was getting signatures on the Addison Brown Line stop.
I'm personally not sure who I will be backing.
Would you stop with the "first" crap? No one cares. All it does is makes you look like a fool. Nothing is accomplished by being first to respond, especially when you don't add anything to the discussion. There's no award for being first. Seriously, stop acting like you're five.
This is a reply to Tony C. in the previous thread. I partially agree with him.
IIRC, it was Aesop who noted that necessity is the mother of invention. Given the importance of invention (not just of products, but of business models, services, etc) to the economy, I suppose we can say that necessity is the mother of a healthy economy as well. A fine example is the invention of agriculture some millennia ago. It did not and would not happen until people found themselves living in an area where the old hunting and gathering thing wasn't working out so well. Perceived necessity is as important as real necessity, hence the robust business in ringtones.
Aesop only got part of the story. A mother is not sufficient for producing offspring. If necessity is the mother of invention and a robust economy, then competition is it's father and profit motive is the sex drive that brings the two together fruitfully. We can see all three in the old adage about building a better mousetrap. Without necessity (here, troublesome mice), there is no advantage to need to buy any mousetrap, better or otherwise. Without competition, there is not better to a better mousetrap. And without profit motive, why would we want the world beating a path to our door?
The three elements make up a three-legged stool. Knock one out, and the stool collapses.
From what little I know about Marxism, it seems to focus excessively on necessity. Conservatives focus excessively on profit motive. Neither narrow focus is good for the economy.
For all the lip service paid to competition, it seems to me that its role as a driver of the economy is all to often underestimated. So I was quite happy to see Tony C.'s post. But he should not make the the same mistake as the Marxits (as I perhaps incorrectly understand them) and the conservatives. Competition is necessary to a thriving economy, but more than competition is needed.
Your post made me go look up where IL-4 was. Talk about a gerrymander! There may be better examples but I'm not aware of them.
Along the lakefront, how far north and south (street boundaries) does IL-5 extend? I lived in the area at one time and am just curious.
That's just what Congress needs is another Jew! They are so unrepresented in the halls of power in this country.
I attended the candidate forum at DePaul a few weeks ago and was less than impressed with Feigenholtz. I want to like Geoghegan, but am not completely won over by him either. At this point, I'm torn, but have no plans to vote for anyone who holds a current Illinois/Chicago/Cook County office (Sara, Quigley, etc), and am strongly against the machine candidates (Fritchey, O'Connor, etc).
Haven't seen any Feigenholtz signs - just Fritchey, Wheelan, and a few Bryar.
Emmanuel apparently talked to Fritchey about wanting to come back and retake his seat, and Fritchey told him he'd be happy to run against him should he be lucky enough to win the seat this year. So I wouldn't count Emmanuel out quite yet. He'll have some heavy hitters behind him should he decide to come back to Chicago politics when he's done with the Obama WH.
It's an interesting race with no clear front-runner, despite what Nate's post indicates.
I'm gonna echo Don's question about where all this is based. So far, there hasn't been a single poll that shows Sara in the lead. In fact, Mike Quigley has been consistently up 5-8 points...granted, with still a rather large percentage of undecideds, but it's not as if her ground game numbers show much chance of winning those over either. Quigley and Wheelan have both contacted more voters than she has, and with much smaller staffs to boot. Feigenholtz continues to post high numbers of "volunteers," but the voter contact number suggest that those may just be event attendees and not anyone doing real legwork.
Virtually no candidate - and certainly no frontrunner - has any name recognition away from the lakefront, but this race will be won or lost in the vast west end of the district. With no online outreach in Spanish or Polish, and with the fact that Feigenholtz finds it necessary to go negative on the lesser-known and -funded Polish populist doctor Victor Forys, her internals must not be showing much headway in that community, SEIU endorsement or no.
I'd like to see a more detailed, numbers-oriented analysis of this race...typically, the candidate who's behind in the polls and in the ground game two weeks out from the election doesn't fare too well in the end.
hopemonger...
That's just what this country needs is another Bigot! They are so unrepresented in the halls of power.
Sara Feigenholz is my state rep, and I haven't seen any signage at all in my Lakeview neighborhood. I have seen Wheelan signs, though.
I attended the same candidate forum as Sarah P. above, and I wasn't impressed at all with Feigenholz. She didn't seem to have much passion or conviction in her introduction or answers to the posed questions. I got a (possibly incorrect) sense of entitlement from her: "well, I've been a state rep for a few years, so I guess being a Congressperson is my next career move." There seemed to be a lot more passion in Mike Quigley and John Fritchey, another two professional pols.
Right now I'm down to Tom Geoghegan and Charles Wheelan. Whichever of those two impress me more and show better organization and actual chances of winning the primary (and probably the election, considering how Democratic the district is) will get my vote.
No mention of your fellow economist, Charlie Wheelan?
Nate, I'm disappointed...!
God, it's not like I'm saying we should put some Zyklon-B in his Fruit Loops. What I'm saying is that relative to the overall population of this country, Jews are overrepresented in Congress, much like old white men are. Jews make up 12% of the Senate, while they are just less than 2% of the national population. We need more Muslims and Hindus and atheists and agnostics in Congress. You can resort to knee-jerk claims of antisemitism if you want, but I'm just pointing out the facts.
We need more smart, educated, ethical and compassionate people in Congress, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
What a curious sin of omission by Nate. The seat was once Blagojevich's and Rahm was his handpicked successor.
It has been only scantily reported that Obama and Emmanuel together with two other cronies were the masterminds behind Blago's re-election campaign as Governor.
Folks like to make a mockery out of Blagojevich, but in fact he was a powerful man in Illinois politics, some might say the most powerful until just a few weeks ago. Only an ignoramus would believe that Obama could have risen to being a US Senator from Chicago without being beholden to the corrupt machine there.
Why do you think Blago smiles so easily and without much guile? Remember: Rahm Emmanuel took over Blago's seat in the House. That was a “fucking valuable thing” and you don't give that up for nothing! (In the immortal if profane words of the disgraced former governor and erstwhile Obama supporter.)
Blago will keep his freedom -- you mark my words. Fitzgerald is a nothing compared to these people. The best he could do was get Scooter Libby for perjury. You really think he is going to be allowed to get that close to Zero and his felonious friends?
Tony Rezko dines on oysters and champagne tonight.
Hopemonger - many of the Jews in congress probably ARE atheists.
If you get elected, you get in. Those are the rules. Introducing ethnic quotas to democratic parliaments doen't sound like a great idea to me.
SEIU in Chicago is a big deal. Unlike most of the midwest, Chicago still has strong union organizations that will turn out voters and volunteers en masse. SEIU is always number one or two in the state - the other being AFSCME, which is generally more important in state-wide races since they represent more state employees scattered everywhere. The nurses' union makes some big noise in Chicago, but I can't imagine their membership is as influential as SEIU's.
SEIU was the first major union to back Obama nationally (AFSCME went with Clinton initially, although locals in both camps broke with the nationals). And didn't we all learn our lesson from Obama about the disconnect between signage and victory?
Feigenholtz's problem is that once she opens her mouth, it becomes pretty much impossible for anyone to vote for her. I'm not sure how any group could endorse her unless they don't talk to her.
Not sure who is going to win this thing... Wheelan and Quigley wouldn't be bad choices. I think I'd like Fritchey... but it looks like he's Blago Part II considering his family connections.
Don't dis Quigley just because he's won an election. He's one of, like, three genuinely independent voices on the Cook County Board. I think he'd challenge Todd Stroger to single combat if the law allowed it.
I'd be skeptical of trying to make any real predictions about this race. Polling in this sort of wide field special election primary can be all over the place, and turnout can be impossible to predict. And as Sean wrote an awesome rant about last summer, signs don't vote. (Although I will concede they have a bigger effect in primaries with low name recognition.) Ultimately, there will be perhaps 2-4 candidates who go into election day with a real chance at it, and it will come down to GOTV.
The Prez signed his stimulus bill in CO and rode in on Air Force One to do so. In this he was enabled by his trusty Vice President who rode in separately on Air Force Two.
Man! Talk about your carbon footprint! And the expense! And we castigate the Detroit CEOs for taking their private planes while Obama pours an ocean of red ink onto the deficit???
WHAT HYPOCRISY!
Off topic: The new University of New Hampshire poll shows high approval ratings for Obama in the state, with 66% of New Hampshire adults approving of the job he is doing as President, with 21% disapproving and 14% neutral. 619 adults betweem 2/5 and 2/9 with +/-4%. Doesn't appear to be likely voters.
I think this is interesting, as New Hampshire is said to be full of fiscal conservatives of both parties and independents. Either Obama is getting off scott free on the so-called "irresponsible spending" of the Stimulus Bill or New Hampshire is no longer as fiscally conservative as it is made out to be. Given our Democratic governor's stance on no new taxes and drastic spending cuts to meet budget, I can be certain he does not think it's the latter. If it's its the former, then the Republican messaging on this bill has failed miserably. If there was any place that the Republicans should be able to make up ground on a fiscal conservatism platform, it should be here in New Hampshire.
Fivethirtyeight.com has unequivocally jumped the shark. Nobody cares about this site anymore. It's the same shit, different day. Nate (or Sean, when they really want to mix it up) posts on the topic du jour, scatters in a couple of charts, tables, or other data points to make his case, all with snarky liberal commentary, and the same partisan hacks follow day-after-day-after-day with a perpetual stream of comments about how conservatives suck dick, are all scumbag liars, or should all DIAF (die in a fire) - yes, I've seen that wished by someone here!
Occasionally, a PeteKent or Jack-be-nimble or maybe some other of a conservative or moderate ilk steps in and breaks the monotony with a protest of their own, but otherwise, it's the same ol' thing.
How sad and truly pathetic. This is nothing more than DailyKos with numbers, with Nate simply being an adequate purveyor of stepwise regression and data dredging, and often putting out dubious consclusions as a result, and rarely providing any true insight or keen understanding or expertise in ANY topic area.
Your star has faded already, Mr. Silver. I hope you enjoyed your fifteen minutes of fame. Nobody likes a fringe liberal lunatic, especially one proselytizing with a load of cherry-picked statistics. And to those of you who litter the comments section with garbage day after day - well, there's not much to say, but just know your groupthink orgy on these pages is as far as it goes, as your bullshit is not tolerated in polite society.
Good day!
Average Citizen,
I don't think Nate's star has faded or that he cherry-picks statistics. Nate's number-crunching is invaluable and there is no other free source I've seen that does it better.
There's a nugget of truth here, though; besides predictive statistical analysis regarding elections and the commentary that follows, there are better sites for political commentary from any point on the political spectrum.
Jeez Louise...somebody's having a bad day
Since there has been nary a word on 538 recently about the Coleman v Franken fight I thought I would add a link to an article about the latest…
I strongly disagree with Average Citizen's assertion that Nate and this site has jumped the shark. Sure, I only stop by daily now, whereas during the election it was hourly, but that's to be expected, as election season is over. Personally, the only time I felt this site had jumped the shark was Sean's pretend conversation with the president, which did remind me of a DailyKos diary, and not in a good way. Still, that was only one post and if I remember correctly, Nate's next post made up for it.
I'm in the 5th in Ravenswood Gardens (across the river from Rod's R.wood Manor), and it's all Fritchey all the time over here. He is our State Rep. My precint captain's been by THREE times. Someone canvassing for Sara only once.
From the Department of Totally Off-Topic Shameless Self-Promotion...
Prompted by a discussion I watched last night on Charlie Rose about the future of American involvement in Afghanistan, featuring veteran CIA operative Milt Bearden, among others, I came up with an idead of how to possibly address, if not solve, some of the problems there.
Nate: With the new orders from tne court in Minnesota it's time for a new analysis of the Senate race. It appears that all of the recent decisions are breaking in Franken's favor. What are you showing.
@ hopemomger
That's just what Congress needs is another Jew!
Jews make up 12% of the Senate, while they are just less than 2% of the national population.
So you're keeping a count are you? One sign of a bigot!
@ Average Citizen: Jesus Christ, who lit the fuse on your tampon? Seriously, if you don't like 538, here's a novel idea: start your own damn blog. We promise we'll read it. Pinky swear.
@ PeteKent: If you're not gonna take the time and effort to pick one baseless smear against the Obama administration, I'm not gonna waste my keystrokes pretending you have a valid point that needs to be debunked.
@ Average Citizen
Opinions and assholes: everbody's got one.
Don't like 538 anymore? Find something else to do with your time other than hanging out here bitching.
It might not mean too much, but here in Albany Park/Ravenswood/Andersonville neighborhoods-- O'Connor has 100% of the signage.
I live in IL-5 (Norwood Park), and there's precious little signage in our area. However, Quigley has far more literature coming through the mail (six glossy pieces in the past two weeks) than any other candidate.
Quigley is a fantastic reform-minded public servant (see today's Tribune endorsement) and he'd be a great representative. If he wins, my only regret will be that I'll have to put up with whatever Stroger-backed schlock takes his place on the Cook County Board.
Nate: I've got to agree with a lot of what's been said in the comments. What the heck are you basing this on? I think you are losing more than a little creditability with this post. If you want to formally endorse Sara, that's your constitutional right but your voice carries some sway and you ought to disclose that's what your doing. If not, please tell us what you're basing this on.
As a staffer for one of the campaigns, I'd agree that Feigenholtz is on the top tier of candidates, but so are Quigley and Fritchey and possibly Wheelan. Those of us who have been attending forums, knocking on doors, organizing events and preparing policy statements have a slightly different perspective on Sara's lead and none of us think its as insurmontable as you seem to think, Mr. Silver.
Oh, and while it's true that Sara has a lead in overall fundraising, Fritchey is VERY, VERY close and has actually raise MORE money than her since 1/1/9 and has done it without Women's Groups endorsements. Also your post said nothing about Fritchey's labor endorsements, receiving nods from AFLCIO and AFSCME.
....oh and did anyone see the Feigenholtz ad on American Idol tonight (my guilty pleasure)? What a waste of her campaign cash! Ha! Special election = low turnout = American Idol viewers will stay at home.
I'm in the 5th and have received the most number of mailings from Quigley, Bryar, & Feigenholtz. Signage in my area is largely (and I do mean large signs as well as large number of signs) Fritchey.
I'm doing volunteer work for Geoghegan but considered voting for Quiqley & Feigenholtz prior to that. I was told by more than a few people in her district(and saw Don Rose's column) that Feigenholtz is in Madigan's pocket, and is on a short leash.
Quigley sounds like a good choice but he reminds me of Rudy - every sentence for him seems to be a noun, a verb, and Todd Stroger.
Nate, thanks for your first report on this race. Hope we get more in the next couple weeks. It's a pretty fascinating race with old style pols, self styled reformers, red dog Dems, a progressive, and first timers all mixing it up to become the next Rahm ... or Blago, or Rosty!
Just saw Fritchey's "adult in the room" tv ad (during TRMS rerun on MSNBC). Pretty funny. I wonder if "Sara" & "Quigley" will fire back.
Geez oh pete, lawn signs don't vote people. You are going to freak all the candidates I work for out.
I've seen that Fritchey ad before. Nate check that out.
I live in the district, I'm voting for Feigenholtz. I want to support more women out there stumping for progressive change. Also, I was an early supporter for Obama, and it is my make up woman candidate vote.
Here's a link to the Fritchey ad:
http://publicaffairs2point0.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/fritchey-down-but-dont-count-him-out/
Looks like the big money folks are lining up behind Feigenholtz.
JC, I agree with you that more progressive women should be in elected office. The US Congressional representation is stunning - what an old boys network. I'm hoping that Jan Schakowsky makes a senate run in 2010.
Oops, forgot to include the link to Jim Warren on Hardball tonight. He alludes to the fundraising in this race (at about 5:25 mark):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29266861#29266861
I should mention here, that not only does Feigenholtz have the extremely important backing of SEIU, but also Emily's list. While I think that Emily's list has floundered a bit at statewide elections, they are effective in Congressional races. Although, you could probably say that for many large organizations based in DC.
I live in the district and am leaning toward Quigley largely based on the Trib and S-T endorsements. Final decision will probably come late in the race. There may be other candidates I like more, but want to send my vote to someone I like who actually has a chance of knocking out the machine candidate.
I've eliminated Fritchey due to his squirrely support of Burris - and didn't he just put forward a similarly squirrely school day moment of silence bill in the Illinois Legislature?
Polish community is solidly behind Forys and I agree with poster above that SEIU's influence (among its Polish membership) won't outweigh ethnic blood ties.
Perhaps there are too many reformish articulate candidates here that will split among several reformish articulate candidates; and Feigenholtz will pick up sizable machine vote and lakeshore Jewish vote. That may be Nate's reasoning.
I'd love to see the polls, though.
I too am very disappointed that Nate fails to mention U of C PhD and economist Charlie Wheelan. He would seem to be the ideal candidate for you, Nate. Could you explain why you give such a slight? I think Charlie is clearly the best candidate of the bunch.
Demockracy.com
Any Democrat who thinks that what we need in Washington is someone willing to publicly criticize President Obama should definitely vote for Mike Quigley. Then again, you might just want to vote for the Republican.
And anyone who thinks that yard signs are an indicator of where this race is going is deluded.
Nice of a couple of assholes to spend a few precious minutes of their lives letting us know how they feel. Death inches that much closer.
Anyway, I reckon this one's a free for all along the lines of the Dem primary for Cook County State's Attorney last year --any of several on the ballot could win it, and while I don't think that 26 percent will get anyone past the post first as was true of the State's Attorney primary, I can see it not taking much more'n that to come out atop the pile.
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