by Author Name Withheld 96

Created on: January 23, 2009

With one man who cut his political teeth in inner city Chicago getting sworn into the White House and another Chicago politician getting impeached by the Illinois state legislature the politicking in the city of Chicago never ends. I am referring to the race to fill Rod Blagojevich's old seat in Congress which is the fifth district of Illinois which contains some affluent Chicago suburbs and plenty of diversity as far as views, general philosophy and overall background.

This district is also partially represented by Chicago City Alderman Dick Mell who happens to be the Governor's brother-in-law. It has been noted by several media outlets that the Alderman and Governor Rod Blagojevich are not on speaking terms and have not been so for years. For what it is worth Rod Blagojevich does appear to have the support of his sister in law Debbie Mell who was considering running for this congressional seat until her brother-in-law's arrest and subsequent impeachment.

To be perfectly honest this Congressional seat has not been help by Blagojevich since 2003 when he was replaced by Rahm Emanuel, an aide to President Clinton and a former private in the Israeli Army. Rahm is now leaving Congress to become the new White House Chief of Staff for Barack Obama. Rahm reportedly still harbors dreams of becoming the first Jewish Speaker of the House so it would not surprise me if he wished whoever replaced him in the Fifth Congressional District will be a short term fix.

The question is and I write this sardonically, it being Rod Blagojevich's former Congressional District before he ran for Governor, do you think he might sell his endorsement to the highest bidder? Wouldn't it be gutsy for Blagojevich to offer an endorsement? How quickly would someone run away from away from that train wreck? If he offered an endorsement how much money do you think he could get for it? As a political pundit I will have to predict that the seat is likely to stay in Democratic hands despite this being a special election. I say this because Rahm Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich before him would consistently receive seventy to eighty percent of the vote when they ran.

There is an extensive list of candidates who met the filing deadline of today for this special election. The primary election will take place on March 3rd.

Overall twenty six candidates filed for the race as noted by WGN News. This list includes fifteen Democrats, six Republicans and five Green Party members. The front runners on the Democratic side appear to be Sara Feigenholtz who has raised the most money, picked up several high profile endorsements and appears to be the most well known legislator in the race. Mike Quigley, a Cook County executive appears to have taken the populist route having called for property tax freezes and corruption investigations in the past as a man of the people. A dark horse candidate in the Democratic field may be Justin Oberman who runs Nexa Capital and has been an adviser to Barack Obama on transportation issues due to his time serving in the Department of Transportation.

The front runner on the Republican side appears to be attorney Tom Hanson. Hanson ran against Rahm Emanuel in 2008 and stressed the need for school choice and lower property taxes within the district. I apologize if my reporting seems a little lacking on the Republican candidates, many of them do not have websites or campaign literature as of yet.

The Green Party front-runner appears to be publisher and former Chamber of Commerce member Alan Auguston.

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