Schakowsky Announces She's Not Running For Illinois Senate Seat
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who had been publicly mulling a 2010 Senate campaign for the seat formerly held by President Obama -- and currently held by Roland Burris -- has put out this YouTube, announcing that she will not be making the race, after all:
Schakowsky said that her polling and travels around the state convinced her that she could have won -- but the pressures of raising enough money would have distracted her from her work in progress on issues like health care. "I feel confident that I could raise the $10 million dollars needed for a primary race -- and the $16 million plus needed for a general election campaign," she said, "but to do it I would have to become a telemarketer five to six hours each day."
State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is currently running in the Democratic primary, and businessman Chris Kennedy -- a son of Robert Kennedy -- is expected to get in soon. Roland Burris has not announced whether he will run.
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Brian
She would have made a great senator, but probably better to have a guaranteed great member of Congress than what realistically would have been a less than 50-50 shot at the Senate. Plus, in a statewide race, her ex-con husband would have been a liability.
June 8, 2009 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
This makes me sad, Jan is awesome.
June 8, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
How much do we believe her when she says she would rather work on passing health care in Congress than try to raise money? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm honestly asking. Because if we can take her word for it, then that's really too bad. It sounds like she would have run a classy campaign.
It's sort of like the old line about how the best politicians are the ones who don't want to be elected in the first place.
June 8, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is too bad. I agree with Lux that Jan is awesome and the senate continues to be in desperate need of some diversity.
But she has her house seat for as long as she wants it. I think her predecessor (Sid Yates) was in his 90s when he finally retired. Lakefront Liberals are loyal!
June 8, 2009 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
She's right when she says she'd have to be a full time telemarketer run for senate. I think that's the major sticking point for her, she'd get nothing done in the house while she spent all her time raising money and running for senate. Jan is one of our best, she would have made a great senator.
At least I don't have to hide under my desk next year like Rahm in 2008 with Barack and Hillary. I like Alexi a lot too. It would have been a nightmare choosing between the two.
June 8, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Schakowsky would get crushed statewide. I fear Mark Kirk, he has the same profile superficially (moderate Republican, clean-scrubbed Boy Scout-type white guy) as the last Republican who managed to serve as governor and not get convicted while doing so, Jim Edgar. He also has no problem sounding moderate enough to win in the north suburbs while never bucking the Repub party line.
Except for Chicago and parts of the North Shore, IL is a moderately conservative state. We had a Republican in the governor's mansion for almost thirty years until the George Ryan implosion.
Schakowsky's husband was also convicted on charges of financial improprieties, and the Republicans and the Tribune would probably make that the central issue in the campaign. I like a couple of actions Giannoulias has taken as treasurer, but he's compromised by virtue of his family bank's association with mob money, which could also blow up in the campaign.
Bottom line, I'm worried that IL will be the R's to lose in 2010. My only hope is that their brand is still so damaged by GWB that we squeak this one out, and maybe we'll actually get the much-needed income tax increase and can start providing real benefit to citizens of the state shortly thereafter.
BTW, I'm in Schakowsky's district, and would enthusiastically volunteer for her run for the Senate if I had the opportunity.
June 8, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
C'mon that's BS. In August 2005, Schakowsky's husband, Creamer pleaded guilty to one count of failure to collect withholding tax, and bank fraud for writing checks with insufficient funds. U.S. District Judge James B. Moran noted no one suffered "out of pocket losses," and Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs.
Giannoulias family's bank lent money to people with good credit ratings who it turned out were in the mob. That doesn't make them the outfit's bank.
The only bringing up any of that stuff these days is you.
Kirk is a run of the mill wingnut tool. As an incumbent he barely held on to this house seat twice even though he raised tons of money and was a golden boy of the NRCC. He has no name rec outside of his district. He'd be lucky to get 40% of the vote.
June 8, 2009 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
You missed where I said I supported Schakowsky. If you don't think the Republicans would and will make hay out of these issues, well I guess you have a higher opinion of them than I do.
As to Kirk, all I know is that the Chicago media is fluffing him every chance they get and he fits the political profile of previous Republicans that were successful statewide. He also won an increasingly blue congressional district by a healthy margin twice.
I'm just relaying my gut feelings here, and I'm pessimistic by nature. I hope you're right, but we'll see how it goes next year.
June 8, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well maybe it's just your pessimism showing brewmn61 but except for parts of the collar counties Illinois has been getting increasingly Democratic for years. Last August at our state convention we had over 1500 delegates show up in Springfield from the top to the bottom of the state. The next day the Repubs held theirs and about 150 showed up.
June 9, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink