What is Vallas thinking?

It has always been rumored that Paul Vallas, the one-time Chicago Public Schools boss who exiled himself from Illinois after losing a 2002 Democratic primary bid for governor, would someday return back home and try to make himself relevant on our city’s political scene.

Yet the man who has in recent years headed school systems in Philadelphia and New Orleans (and now is head of the Louisiana-run Recovery School District) seems to have a funny way of trying to make friends who would enable him to return home someday to a position of significance.

MOST PROMINENTLY, VALLAS contemplated running for the Cook County Board presidency – as a Republican – in the upcoming Feb. 2 primary.

As things turned out, Vallas elected not to turn himself into a member of the GOP (I wonder how many Republicans would have ever trusted him, but that is subject material for another day’s commentary). Earlier this week, it appears that he now thinks of himself once again as a Democrat.

It was on Wednesday that Chicago’s former inspector general, David Hoffman, made it known that he has Vallas’ endorsement in the same Feb. 2 primary – Hoffman wants to replace Roland Burris in the U.S. Senate.

Which means Hoffman is the candidate who thus far hasn’t gained much traction among Democratic primary supporters – most seem to be favoring the candidacies of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias or Chicago Urban League head Cheryle Jackson. (Jacob Meister may have his name on the ballot, but his campaign has become so fringe I have trouble seriously acknowledging it).

IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who seem to take Hoffman’s candidacy seriously are those Republican sympathizers who like the idea of someone with a record of rooting out improper activity at City Hall.

Not that any of those people would actually deign to vote for Hoffman come next month – they’d rather have “one of their own” from the Republican Party, perhaps one whose ideology will more blatantly apease their conservative-leaning thoughts on issues.

So that is where Vallas has put himself. He’s backing the candidate that doesn’t seem to have much backing amongst his so-called partisan allies in the Democratic Party.

It makes it seem that Vallas is engaging in some sort of political hissy fit – still bitter about losing to Rod Blagojevich (who if I recall right won that ’02 primary because he convinced a significant number of rural Illinois Democrats that he was the best choice to be Illinois’ chief executive rather than Vallas or Burris).

IN FACT, HOFFMAN played off the memories of that ’02 primary when Democrats were trying to pick their first successful gubernatorial candidate in 26 years.

“I doubt I’d be standing here today running for the U.S. Senate if Paul Vallas had become governor of Illinois in 2002 instead of Rod Blagojevich,” Hoffman told reporter-types earlier this week. “Pay-to-play, the culture of corruption, the stain on this very Senate seat, we would not be talking about these things had we elected … Vallas.”

Instead, we get the sense of a person in Paul Vallas who is more interested in getting some sort of petty grudge settled by refusing to back other candidates who might be a bit more credible in this particular campaign.

Now I realize that every person has the right to support whomever they want and to make that support as public (or private) as they so choose. It would be un-American for me to say that Vallas ought to be silenced on who he wants to support in this election cycle – even though I’m not sure if he can even vote in our elections this time around.

AFTER ALL, HE is a former Illinois resident, even though I understand his family remains in the Chicago area and he has always made it clear he plans to return to the metropolitan area some day.

But for now, he’s the guy who’s trying to make sense of the school system in the New Orleans area, which was devastated along with the city back in the days of Hurricane Katrina (did that really occur more than four years ago?)

I’d like to think that his interests would be better served by focusing on his current circumstances, rather than trying to influence our circumstances before he’s fully relocated himself back to our midst.

Paul Vallas, who once was a budget director for Mayor Richard M. Daley, built himself a local legacy for the work he did in the 1990s to revamp the struggling Chicago Public Schools system

WHILE IT WOULD not be accurate to say he totally fixed the system (no one man could do that), he definitely gave it some seriously-needed kicks in the heinie to get it moving in the right direction when it comes to trying to provide the city’s schoolchildren with the tools they’re going to need if they’re going to take our city forward in future decades.

If Vallas were to depart this Earth, so to speak, in the near future, that would be the lede of his obituary. I’d hate to see him turn that legacy from one of an educator to one of a political crank with a few unwisely-chosen words such as these expressed this week.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas says he supports David Hoffman for U.S. Senate from Illinois because of his (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/chi-vallas-backs-hoffman-31dec31,0,2073274.story) “refusal to be bullied and intimidated.” Some interpret that as not quite (http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/12/31/paul-vallas-endorses-david-hoffmanthen-points-out-his-flaws-and-praises-his-opponents) a positive.

Vallas still has some work (http://www.rsdla.net/Home.aspx) to complete before he returns his focus to home.

With his big bucks, Giannoulias is in a “tie” for next year’s Senate election

There are those people who want to believe that “guilt by association” with now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich will cause many Democrats to go down to defeat come Election Day, but a pair of surveys make me wonder if continued screeching of Milorod’s name will be enough to benefit the GOP.

All the people who typically give cash to political campaigns are making the U.S. Senate bid of Alexi Giannoulias the biggest-funded of the field. Some of it is people playing it safe, but it also shows a significant sense that Alexi’s mind is not the only place where Giannoulias ought to be regarded as the front-runner.

THERE ALSO WAS the latest poll conducted by the Rasmussen Report, which shows that Giannoulias is in a tie with possible Republican frontrunner Mark Kirk.

Even if Giannoulias were to somehow lose the primary in February and run against one of the other Democrats with dreams of being a United States senator, Kirk only has a slim lead – the kind that could easily wither away on account of the fact that there is more than a year until the November 2010 general election.

Could it be that Illinois, with its two-thirds of the population that lives in the Chicago area, has just become so urban and Democrat leaning that no one should be thinking of the GOP congressman from the North Shore suburbs as some sort of political big shot?

It was the thought that popped into my head after learning of a pair of surveys of sorts.

THERE WAS THE Rasmussen Report, that showed Kirk and Giannoulias each getting 41 percent of the vote, if the election were to be held now. Thirteen percent said they had yet to make up their mind, while the remainder were people who are so devoted to another candidate that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for either.

But then there also was an Associated Press survey of the leading Democratic candidates for the Senate seat now held by Roland Burris.

Giannoulias’ campaign is coming up with the big bucks that will make it competitive, regardless of what is thrown at it. In short, unless Giannoulias turns out to be a complete incompetent, he’s going to have the resources to define himself – instead of being defined as a corrupt banker (which is the image that Kirk and GOP partisans would like to see become reality, similar to how Judy Baar Topinka in 2006 was nothing more than the kook who danced the polka with George Ryan).

According to the wire service, Giannoulias raised $1.1 million between July and September, while only spending $345,000. On Sept. 30, his campaign fund reported to the Illinois State Board of Elections that its balance was $2.4 million.

NONE OF GIANNOULIAS’ primary challengers even come close to being able to produce that kind of money. In fact, the only other candidate with a balance exceeding $1 million was attorney Jacob Meister, a fringe candidate who came up with $1.04 million by taking out substantial loans.

The two significant challengers to Giannoulias in the Democratic primary raised about one-third the total of what the Illinois treasurer came up with.

David Hoffman, the former Inspector General for Chicago city government, took out a $500,000 loan to give himself an $837,000 campaign fund, while Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Robinson Jackson raised $367,000 during the summer months, and had $318,000 on hand.

What will be the end result of all that money?

HONESTLY, I CAN’T get past the idea that the two are in a tie, despite the presence of Blagojevich. If it were truly as big a factor as hard-core Republican partisans dream about, I’d think polls would be constantly showing Kirk as a leader.

The Rasmussen Report survey taken prior to this latest survey only showed him with a slim lead – 41 percent to 38 percent, so close that it falls within the “margin of error” and deserves to be called a tie.

Now, we get a poll that shows a literal tie.

When it comes to breaking down the results, it seems like the standard partisan breakdown. Women prefer Giannoulias while men prefer Kirk. But didn’t women prefer Barack Obama in 2008, compared to men thinking more of John McCain?

IN FACT, WHAT may be the most interesting part of this study is the one that shows Jackson gaining on Kirk, if it were to turn out to be a general election campaign between the two, with Giannoulias getting to enjoy a few final months as state treasurer before lingering in political retirement for at least a couple of years.

In that potential campaign, Kirk would beat Jackson 43 percent to 39 percent if that election were held today. But the same 13 percent remain undecided, and that same 5 percent thinks so little of both that they’d seek somebody else.

He used to lead Jackson by 17 percentage points in Rasmussen Reports polls. Could it be that there are a significant number of people in this state who will reject the Republican label, regardless of who runs under it?

Or could the only real truth to all this political prognosticating be that at 13 months prior to the general election, it’s still too early to be trying to figure out who will win?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Alexi Giannoulias won’t lose the 2010 election cycle due to a lack (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=35841&seenIt=1) of campaign cash.

The existence of Rod Blagojevich may make next year’s Election Days close, but is (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/illinois/election_2010_illinois_senate_election) Illinois too “blue” for Mark Kirk?

Will Barack Obama become a help or hindrance to Giannoulias’ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701427.html) Capitol Hill aspirations?

Has Democratic Senate primary in Illinois devolved to no-name candidates?

Am I losing my memory, or was there once a time when we political observers who are Illinois-oriented were talking about how our state’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010 could wind up being a fight between a Kennedy, a Jackson, and maybe even a Madigan?

So what happened?

IT SEEMS NOW like we’re going to get a scrap between a Giannoulias, a Hoffman and a Jackson. And by the latter, I mean Cheryle, not Jesse Jr.

The decline of the field for the U.S. Senate race is likely even bigger than the dropoff for Illinois governor – which some of us thought could be a fight between a Quinn and a Madigan, but at least has remained a battle between a Quinn and a Hynes.

Democrats are still going to have to go through a fight for the party’s nomination for the right to live in the publicly-owned “mansion” at 5th and Jackson in Springfield.

There’s no such fight for the seat held by the junior senator from Illinois.

NO WONDER SOME Democratic operatives are wondering if the field of Mark Kirk and a few no-name Republicans may actually produce a more competitive campaign for the U.S. Senate seat.

All of this setup is meant to let you know in no uncertain terms that the idea of David Hoffman getting himself into the campaign for U.S. Senate doesn’t do a thing to intrigue my intelligence level.

For one thing, he’s probably as big a no-name as any of the Republican hopefuls – even though he has a nice job title.

Inspector General for Chicago city government. In theory, that means he’s in charge of ferreting out corruption within city government, and there are those people who think that Hoffman was an annoyance to Mayor Richard M. Daley because of the way that his office pointed out that the leasing out of city parking meters to a private company became a public mess.

BOTTOM LINE AS far as most people are concerned – Hoffman has an incredible grasp of the obvious. Some might want to argue that corruption doesn’t appear to be on the decline due to Hoffman, so how much could he have succeeded?

Anyway, Hoffman is now unemployed. He quit his post on Wednesday so he could devote his full time to a campaign for Senate.

Not that he can be blamed. The field of Senate candidates for the Democratic nomination is so weak that some reportedly are considering asking Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart (the man whom Time magazine adores so much) to give up his post to run for the Senate.

So why should Hoffman feel intimidated by Giannoulias or Jackson? He probably has as good a chance as either of them to actually get the nomination.

SO WHAT IS wrong with the Democratic field of candidates (assuming that Dart does not give up his chance to be Cook County’s top lawman – as well as the unofficial Chief of Police of suburban Ford Heights)?

Personally, I’d feel more confident about Giannoulias if he weren’t so eager for advancement. There’s just something about a 33-year-old who couldn’t even finish his first term in an elective office before he decides he wants to run for one of the Big Four posts of Illinois politics (the two Senate seats, Chicago mayor and Illinois governor).

It’s not even the so-called misjudgments that he has made in his professional life that Republican candidates will go out of their way to highlight next year if he gets the Democratic nomination.

While I know it is possible to use rhetoric that makes it seem like Giannoulias is lucky to not be serving time in prison for his acts, they amount to too little in my mind to take all that seriously. But I’m also not going to get all enthused about him just because he has played pickup basketball with Barack Obama.

EVEN DAN HYNES waited until his second term as state Comptroller before he tried running for U.S. Senate (back in ’04), and seems to realize he is better qualified to seek governor now by having three full terms as the head of a state constitutional office among his experiences.

Then, there’s Jackson, whom I almost feel guilty thinking of as a lightweight. But the one-time Amtrak official who also was Rod Blagojevich’s public face (his press secretary) before becoming head of the Chicago Urban League isn’t exactly a household name. And the fact that “Blagojevich” is in that last sentence is going to be enough to scare some people off – even though it shouldn’t.

To me, the question about the seriousness of Jackson’s candidacy will come down to race. If people start to sense that the Democratic Party ticket has a potential to become virtually all-white and if Cook County Board President Todd Stroger really does get dumped by a white challenger, would there be those people who would vote for an African-American woman for the Senate seat – just to avoid the inevitable (and hypocritical) Republican rhetoric that the Democrats aren’t representing their black supporters?

Think about it.

YOU MAY WANT to say you won’t take race into account and that you will always vote for the “best qualified person” (however you define that), but can anyone really say Jackson has any less a resume than either of her two challengers at this point?

And maybe “Roland, Roland, Roland” isn’t being totally absurd when he has his delusions of taking back his retirement announcement and seeking a full term for Senate after all.

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