Newman for Congress – trying to get a head start? Or an act of desperation?

We’re almost a full year away from the 2020 election cycle primaries. We haven’t even inaugurated the new mayor that a third of Chicagoans voted into office.

NEWMAN: Will her 'time' finally arrive in 2020?

Yet Marie Newman is already thinking in terms of wanting to be like Mr. Smith and go to Washington – where her goal remains the same as it was in 2018. She wants to dump decade-long incumbent Dan Lipinski from his post on Capitol Hill.

NEWMAN, WHO LOST to Lipinski by a narrow margin last year, has already begun her active campaigning for office on the grounds that Lipinski is far too ideologically conservative to represent a part of Chicago and surrounding suburbs in Congress.

It was the same strategy she tried employing the last election cycle – only to have it fall short as long-time Chicagoans who remember back when Lipinski’s father, Bill, was their representation in Congress stood fast and firm behind the Family Lipinski.

He won, no matter how much Newman reminded us over and over how Dan was amongst the most conservative of Democrats in Congress. An abortion opponent, not a backer of measures meant to reduce gun violence by restricting firearms access, and the kind of guy inclined to think that focusing attention on protecting the rights of gay people is a waste of everybody’s time.

About the only thing that makes Lipinski line up with Democrats, rather than just switch political party alliances, is that he can side with much of organized labor and unions – at least up to the point when they start getting all floofy on social issues.

IT’S OBVIOUS THAT Newman plans to run her same campaign strategy, while hoping she can make up the few votes she would have needed in the 2018 Democratic primary so as to put her ahead – where she likely would have walloped Republican (alleged, that is) Art Jones just as bad as Lipinski did in last year’s general election.

Hence, the fact that Newman felt compelled to inform us Monday of all the endorsements her second-chance campaign of 2020 has received.

EMILY’S List (female candidates), Move On, NARAL (abortion), Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. It’s almost like an All Star team of sorts of political activists who’d be inclined to oppose anything ideologically conservative.

LIPINSKI: Is the 'old' Chicago alive?

For all I know, this puts the Newman campaign on an enemies’ list put together by those people inclined to support this Age of Trump our society is now in. But also on the side of those people who were in the majority who voted against Trump in 2016 but could not generate enough of the Electoral College vote to defeat him.

BUT UNLIKE THE presidency, there is no Electoral College for members of Congress. Newman will have to gain a majority of the vote in the Illinois 3^rd Congressional District come March of 2020 – if she’s to prevail at having a shot at the Congressional seat.

And seeing her endorsement activity, she’s certainly hoping that getting such an early campaign start well before anybody is seriously thinking about the congressional seats will give her the electoral advantage towards victory.

There is just one thing – some people are inclined to think that Newman was a “sore loser” when she was defeated by Lipinski. Or else they’re the ones ideologically inclined to think that Danny is a remnant of the old days of the “Chicago Machine” that made sense to their way of thinking.

Will Newman give us material for 21st Century sequel?

Will the thought of all these endorsements with liberal leaning (take Move On, a group created in the wake of the Bill Clinton impeachment efforts by those who opposed that political exercise), it makes me wonder how many people will now regard a vote against Newman as a vote for political sanity!

CAN LIPINSKI CONVINCE a majority of the congressional district’s electorate that he’s still more aligned with their views – that he’s not too extreme to call himself a Chicago congressman (even though he lives in suburban Western Springs)?

Or has even the Chicago Sout’ Side that still worships the memory of Hizzoner himself Mayor Daley (the elder) progressed enough on social issues that Newman’s “time” has come for “Mrs. Newman goes to Washington” to become a reality!

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Will Election ’19 create lasting grudge between Preckwinkle, Mendoza?

It was 1992, and Bill Lipinski and Marty Russo wound up having to run against each other for a seat in Congress – the Republican-drawn boundaries for that decade wound up pitting the two in a head-to-head brawl.

MENDOZA: Prevailing in fight thus far

Lipinski of the Southwest Side and Russo of south suburban Cook County actually had a reputation as political colleagues who also shared a friendship. Yet that election cycle saw the two engage in such hard-core politicking that the friendship did not survive Lipinski’s eventual victory.

SO IT CERTAINLY wouldn’t be unheard of if tensions arise sufficiently that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza wind up despising each other by the time Feb. 26 (Election Day) arrives.

Preckwinkle and Mendoza, of course, are among the nearly two dozen people with dreams of becoming Chicago’s new mayor. Preckwinkle is showing just how hard-core a politician her time as county board president and alderman have made her – she’s trying to get Mendoza kicked off the ballot.

Because the perception is that Preckwinkle and Mendoza could be the two most legitimate candidates. Preckwinkle’s chances benefit if Mendoza is removed from the political equation.

But the investigators looking into Toni’s allegations that Mendoza’s nominating petitions had way too many invalid signatures of support to be legitimate are finding that they’re not anywhere near as flawed as she’d have us believe them to be.

NOT THAT MENDOZA is totally in the clear. A hearing officer may have dismissed one of Preckwinkle’s allegations, but three other charges are still pending. An Elections Board hearing officer is giving the Preckwinkle campaign a chance to produce evidence to back up her claims against Mendoza.

Another hearing is scheduled for Sunday, and eventually the Elections Board will render a ruling. Which is going to wind up in court – with Mendoza fighting for survival if she gets kicked off the ballot, and Preckwinkle battling if Susana survives.

I found it interesting to learn that the hearing officer dismissed the charges related to a pattern of fraudulent behavior by the Mendoza campaign. If any legitimacy had been found, it could be the basis of criminal charges against the campaign.

PRECKWINKLE: Playing hardball politics

Meaning that any of the continuing allegations are likely to be pure partisan politics. Considering that Election Day is purely political, that’s natural. But it’s not like anybody’s in danger of going to jail because of any of this.

IF ANYTHING, THE challenge process is about political harassment. Because all of the time and money that Mendoza has had to spend on defending herself and justifying her presence on the ballot is taken away from efforts she could have engaged in to try to convince people that she ought to cast their mayoral vote for her.

Considering that she had to wait until after her Election Day victory for Illinois comptroller before she could start campaigning for Chicago mayor, she already had a strike against her.

Build up enough strikes, and you could wind up taking down the Mendoza campaign before she can make it to a run-off election come April 2.

The Eddies, both Burke … 

Which means Preckwinkle is playing hard-ball. She’s engaging in tactics that are bound to create hard feelings. Are these bound to turn the Preckwinkle/Mendoza relationship into one of political people who wind up despising each other? Of course, Mendoza isn’t the only person Preckwinkle is playing politics with – she’s already said she’ll fire the police superintendent AND greatly restrict long-time Alderman Edward Burke when she becomes mayor.

NOT THAT SUCH tactics would be unheard of. It’s not uncommon for people in politics to detest each other when they think nobody’s paying attention. In fact, that may be the reality that many people don’t understand when they complain about too many Democrats in government.

… and Johnston, could face Toni's wrath

The Democratic establishment has so many cliques that can’t stand each other. They’re nowhere near as united as Republicans are.

In fact, I once had a Republican political operative explain to me that all these cliques are the very reason it was pointless to try to cooperate with Democrats.

Although I’ve also heard some speculate that the Preckwinkle/Mendoza rivalry that is developing could very well be what costs both of them a serious chance of winning – and what could wind up giving us Mayor Daley III.

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Is it finally Danny Boy’s time to leave Congress, or will he gain another term?

Dan Lipinski has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 14 years, and by all rights ought to have all the political benefits of incumbency when it comes to getting re-elected.

Does Dan Lipinski wish he could be ...

Yet the realities of partisan politics may have changed enough that Lipinski is now at risk of losing the Congressional seat he inherited when his father, William, retired following a political career that saw him rise from the ranks of a South Side alderman to a member of Congress.

OR MAYBE HE isn’t going to lose. That is the big unanswered questions on the Chicago political scene this election cycle.

Every cycle, Lipinski has to answer allegations that he’s too conservative to be a Chicago-area congressman, and in fact has so many ideological leanings to the right that he has no business identifying himself as a Democrat.

Not that it has worked in the past. There are many people who  have tried challenging Dan Lipinski since he gave up a university teaching position in Tennessee in 2004 to return to the Chicago area and replace his father on Capitol Hill.

None of them put up a serious challenge. To the point where I understand why Lipinski, the younger, would go into this election cycle feeling confident that he could beat off yet another “misguided liberal-type” of political dreamer.

BUT THIS ELECTION cycle is turning out to be the one in which a liberal-type might actually win the primary election to be held Tuesday. Which, of course, would result in a Nov. 6 general election victory, since even the Republican Party is openly appalled at the thought that they’re likely to nominate Art Jones, a white supremacist, to run for them.

So will Marie Newman, a small businesswoman, manage to elevate herself to Congress by the benefit of running at the right time? Or will Lipinski manage to gain himself yet another two-year term representing Chicago’s Southwest Side neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs?

... same old-school Dem as his father, Bill?

Is Lipinski, a Democrat with a significant voting record in line with Republican partisan interests, truly out of line with his constituents?

That is a question I have been pondering for several months now.

BECAUSE THE DISTRICT is one that is pretty much the remnants of the old South Side of Chicago – one that was ‘white ethnic’ in composition and one that most definitely didn’t think of itself as sympathetic to the interests of African-Americans.

A part of me jokes that the people who support Lipinski in Congress are the children and grand-children of the same Chicago residents who, back in 1968, cheered for the Chicago police officers who beat up the ‘hippie freaks’ who protested in Grant Park during the Democratic National Convention and who were offended when the resulting investigation classified the incident as a “police riot.”

As though the rest of the world was out of whack with their sense of morals. Just as I’m sure Lipinski-backers feel about Newman and her supporters.

Personally, I’ve always understood Lipinski’s Democratic Party identity is tied to his support for issues related to organized labor and unions. I have no doubt that someone like Gov. Bruce Rauner, with all his ideological rhetoric on such issues that he tries to bill as “reform” probably thinks of Lipinski as being just as much a part of the “problem” as Michael Madigan.

TO THE POINT where I don’t expect the hard-core Republicans think much of him just because on abortion or many other social issues, he sympathizes with their political party’s platform. There are those who have no problem thinking of Dan Lipinski as a Democrat. They're the ones who are the target for a Twitter campaign trying to portray Newman as anti-Catholic -- so Vote for Dan!

NEWMAN: Will she bring Ill. 3rd into 21st Century?

Newman is trying to inspire the people whose political leanings are influenced primarily by those very social issues to rise up and vote for her. Dump Dan Lipinski, is their battle cry. Many Democratic-leaning national organizations are offering up support to her.

But will it work. Is the motivation amongst many progressive-minded voters to dump anyone perceived as not openly hostile to Donald Trump capable of providing enough voter support to enable Newman to beat Lipinski?

Or is there still enough of the old spirit of the Sout’ Side remaining to send Dan back to Capitol Hill? We’ll know better come Tuesday night.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I happened to read through some of the old copy published at this weblog when I found this Feb. 3, 2008 commentary about Lipinski being challenged by Mark Pera (remember him, I don’t). It amazes me about how some realities of Chicago and its political scene haven’t changed one bit during the past decade.

Could Lipinski face congressional challenge? Will Trump be an '18 issue?

Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., has served in Congress ever since his father, Bill, retired from electoral politics back in 2005. He got the seat because his father maneuvered the process so that Dan could be appointed his successor – and has faced weak challenges ever since.
 

LIPINSKI: Facing first serious challenge?

In some ways, he is the exact opposite of Todd Stroger, whose father, John, famously retired as Cook County Board president, orchestrated his son as a successor – and the voters rebelled so harshly that they dumped “the Todd-ler” when they got the chance in 2010.

BUT LIPINSKI, THE younger, has continued to be sent back to Washington to represent the city’s Southwest Side and surrounding suburbs – although the shifting of populations has resulted in the son representing a district that is largely suburban.

Unlike his father, who pretty much concerned himself with white ethnic issues and concerns in Chicago and didn’t pay much attention to anything else. He kept himself locally focused.

But the Chicago Tribune reported Monday that the 2018 election cycle could be different. Unlike the last couple of bids where Lipinski ran unopposed, he’s going to have a challenger.

Unless political operatives figure out a way to kick her off the ballot, LaGrange marketing consultant Marie Newman says she wants to challenge Lipinski for the Democratic nomination for the congressional seat.

“ON ISSUE AFTER issue, Dan Lipinski hasn’t been there for us. He is out of touch with our district,” she said in an e-mail message to her would-be constituents.

 

LIPINSKI, BILL: Still a part of political scene

Not that it’s any surprise to people who look at the local political scene. Lipinski is a politico using the Democratic Party label even though there are those who wonder why he isn’t a Republican.

With regards to abortion, he’s vehemently opposed to the concept. During health care reform debates, he was never an enthusiastic supporter of the Affordable Care Act or of former President Barack Obama’s efforts.

Although anyone who remembers his father, Bill, who served in Congress from 1983 to 2004 after having previously served a stint as an alderman (and where he still serves as a Democratic committeeman, even at age 79) knows he was a pol who identified with Dems because of his support for organized labor.

HE WASN’T ONE to get all worked up over the social issues and causes that are the reason many people identify with the modern-day Democratic Party.

 

CLAAR: Lipinski (as in Dan) helped him

His son, who was a political science professor at the University of Tennessee prior to becoming an actual government official, has similar views. He likely is among those Democrats who, these days, think the party ought to think more about working white people and less about those “others” if they want to go back to being competitive in presidential elections.

The point being Dan Lipinski isn’t the typical Democrat, He may, or may not, represent the wishes of his suburban district – which quite frankly isn’t exactly an area filled with people desiring the social liberal agenda.

Heck, many of the southwest suburban types chose to live there to escape such attitudes.

SO IT WILL be interesting to see just how well Newman – who has never held elective office herself – can compete. Particularly since she’s likely to let us all know that back when Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar was being challenged seriously for his post because of his verbal support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, Lipinski sent over his own operatives to help out Claar.

 

TRUMP: Will enough of us still care in '18?

But in the end, Claar won! A Trump tie didn’t turn out to be politically fatal.

Illinois may have been a state that swung over readily to Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations because of her domination of Chicago and its suburbs, But this could become an election post where we learn just how stubborn and resistant we are to the concept of “President Donald J. Trump.” Could we take it out on Lipinski?

Or is it more likely that a majority of the district’s voters will decide they have more immediate problems to address and will wind up returning the “Blue Dog Dem” to his seat on Capitol Hill??

  -30-

Lipinski really among 20 most corrupt?

I’m starting to wonder if Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., is going to become some sort of poster child for political nepotism. No matter what he does with his career as an elective officeholder, he’s going to be singled out as a hack for who his daddy is.

I’m inclined to think that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is engaging in political hyperbole when it releases a list this week declaring 20 members of Congress to be the “Most Corrupt” – and includes Lipinski on the list.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, Lipinski is the only Chicago-area politico who made the good government group’s list – which includes some political heavy-hitters such as William Jefferson, D-La.; Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

By comparison, Lipinski is a fairly anonymous part of the Washington set, although I knew a political science professor who always claimed that the quietest political people were usually the most corrupt – their meekness was an attempt to draw as little attention as possible to themselves.

Yet for Lipinski, he’s going to be the political person who can never truly be anonymous because there are the people who will always be offended at the way in which he gained elective office.

His father, former Chicago alderman and later Rep. William Lipinski, garnered a local reputation in Congress as a mass transportation expert who used his influence to get much federal aid for the Chicago Transit Authority and other mass transit programs.

YET WHEN HE decided to retire from electoral office, he waited until after he had already won a primary election. That allowed him to orchestrate the proceedings so that his son (then a political science professor at a Tennessee college) could move back to the Chicago suburbs (Western Springs, to be exact) and take the seat in Congress.

He got elected, and has managed to win re-election in the past couple of election cycles on his own, which means he likely has built up the kind of seniority (and the perks that go with incumbency) that he can no longer seriously be challenged at the voting booth – unless he does something incredibly stupid.

That is what is behind the activist group’s inclusion of Lipinski on their “most corrupt” list – they’re trying to create the perception of “something stupid” that could be used as an issue in future elections. Not this one – I don’t know of anyone who seriously thinks Republican challenger Art Jones (a one-time would-be Nazi sympathizer who now calls himself a “white racialist”) can win come Nov. 4.

For the record, the good government types are offended by Lipinski’s hiring of Jerry Hurckes to be his chief of staff.

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, Hurckes got the job because he had also worked for the elder Lipinski as the retired member of Congress’ district director. Which means he knew the home district on the Southwest Side and surrounding suburbs, and Dan was likely comfortable with him.

Yet Hurckes is also a member of the village board in southwest suburban Oak Lawn, and he has made statements about how his hometown does not need a lobbyist because he can act as a “de facto lobbyist.”

Kind of a stupid boast for Hurckes to make, and it drags Lipinski into the muck of good government types who would like to believe in an idealized civics textbook approach to government – possibly similar to what Dan Lipinski once taught his students at the University of Tennessee.

In a prepared statement, the activist group implies that Dan Lipinski is deliberately paying Hurckes a salary at a specific level to avoid having to comply with government disclosure rules.

“GIVEN THAT MR. Hurckes is the most highly paid staff member in Rep. Lipinski’s office, that his position is a full-time job and is generally considered a ‘senior staff’ position, the fact that Mr. Hurckes’ salary is just under the figure that would make him ‘senior staff’ suggests that Rep. Lipinski is paying Mr. Hurckes a slary under this limit precisely so that he can earn a substantial outside income,” the group wrote.

They would love it if a House Ethics committee were to investigate the congressman.

What is more likely is that this issue will continue to come up in future campaigns, out of some hope that it will eventually stick.

I don’t know that it will. The Lipinski name seems to carry some clout in those South Side neighborhoods where jet noise from Midway International Airport is a reality of daily life. In fact, anyone who has ever read the Mike Royko book about Richard J. Daley entitled "Boss" remembers the portion of all the "begats" by which dozens of families were multi-generational Chicago politics. So this trend is not limited to the one congressional district.

IT EVEN SEEMS to overcome the fact that Lipinski himself has little influence yet in D.C. circles. One study by the Roll Call newspaper that covers Congress ranks Lipinski as the 227th most significant Democrat in the House of Representatives, and the 359th most significant member overall).

That’s pretty low.

But this also comes at a time when people seem to be thinking more and more about what had become an accepted political practice in Chicago and Illinois – passing along political influence to one’s children, creating many multi-generational families that have been involved in electoral politics.

Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, and his Republican allies are pushing for a measure in Springfield that would require special primary elections if someone retires or drops off the ballot for other reasons. Currently, party committeemen in the district back home get to pick the replacement, and they have often picked the political child.

COULD DAN LIPINSKI become the guy who takes the ultimate hit from people who are determined to keep the kids of politicos from having any kind of career in public life? It would be ironic if his case gets cited by proponents of this measure (which is a long-shot to go anywhere, since Republicans currently are irrelevant to the Statehouse Scene).

As a federal officeholder, he technically would not be impacted by a law designed for state and municipal officeholders.

But it would be sad if Lipinski, when the day comes that he is finished with electoral politics, never gets any more significant legacy than who his father was.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I don’t know that I consider “corrupt” to be the most appropriate word to describe Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill. (http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/node/428), but this deal does raise questions.

How significant a figure (http://congress.org/congressorg/bio/id/151645) under the Capitol dome does Lipinski cut? And where (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00027239) does he get his campaign finances from?

Although the Illinois General Assembly may consider measures to make it harder for retiring political people (http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=28784) to pass along their offices to relatives, that would not have impacted Lipinski since he is a federal office holder.