Republicans the key to Chicago electoral victory? Wilson thinks so!

I have known Republican partisans who live in Chicago who privately will admit it to be a complete embarrassment that their preferred political party is so irrelevant in the Second City.

Gov. Bruce Rauner is said to have won a major electoral victory last November when he took about 21 percent of the Chicago vote – which as I see it means that Rauner was more irrelevant to Chicagoans than 2012 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was to Latinos.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of the fact that mayoral hopeful Willie Wilson made an appeal to those Chicagoans whose ideology is so intense that they refuse to call themselves Democrats (you have to be dedicated to partisanship to be a Chicago Republican, since you get nothing for it in return).

I don’t know how successful a tactic it will be – although I comprehend that Wilson merely wants to get enough votes to finish in second place. He doesn’t care if he comes anywhere close to the roughly 42 percent support that various polls show Mayor Rahm Emanuel to have for the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

Republicans don’t win city elections all that often; they don’t even come close to it. The fact that Chicago is so overwhelmingly Democratic is why party officials think they can ignore the rest of Illinois when it comes to state elections or for elections to federal office.

Heck, the only time in our lifetimes that many local voters paid attention to the Republican candidate for mayor was when racial considerations were a factor and certain people just couldn’t accept black candidates as fully legitimate of the Democratic Party.

WOULD ANYONE HAVE even thought of Bernard Epton if not for racial hang-ups?

Although perhaps this is the evidence that Chicago has changed in recent decades if the real Republicans are willing to turn to a black man as a chance to take down a Democrat as Chicago mayor.

Because I don’t doubt that GOPers would love to be able to say they defeated Emanuel, even if it meant giving votes to Wilson.

Although it should be noted that the political parties have changed enough that I suspect these days, Epton (a Jewish person of liberal political leanings) could not get the Republican nomination to run for anything!

FOR THE RECORD, I’m bringing all this up because Wilson was to appear Sunday night at a Chicago Republican Party gathering held in the Greektown neighborhood.

Which means a few dozen Republicans (out of the 2.7 million city residents) got together at a restaurant and enjoyed a meal together while trying to convince themselves that they’re not miniscule and irrelevant.

Wilson told the DNAinfo.com website that he’s not seeking the GOP nomination – he still considers himself a Democrat in this officially nonpartisan election where Wilson and three other Dems are taking on Emanuel.

Perhaps Wilson thinks he can get the Republican voters to consider him because they don’t officially have a candidate – just like they didn’t have any candidates for Cook County offices in last year’s election cycle?

I’M JUST TOO convinced that there are too few Republicans to make a difference – and that this could still turn out to be an April 7 runoff election for mayor between Emanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

The polls have consistently shown Wilson to have about 7 percent support – usually behind everybody except for William “Dock” Walls, who will be lucky if he garners 1 percent voter support.

The key to a Wilson second place finish is for him to find some segment of the Chicago electorate that’s now being ignored by these polls; so he can have a surprise surge in support come next Tuesday. Although I don’t think there are enough Republican partisans in Chicago to do such a thing.

So excuse me for being skeptical that Wilson accomplished much of anything Sunday night – other than freezing in those 10-degree temperatures that felt much worse due to wind chill! Let’s hope for his sake the GOP at least gave him a decent meal.

  -30-

What would Lars Daly think?

Robert Marshall is a physician from suburban Burr Ridge, and he once served a four-year stint as a village trustee in his hometown.

Yet to political observers, Marshall will be remembered for something else. He’s a perennial candidate. Every four years, his name turns up as he runs for an elective office.

WE, THE PEOPLE of the great state of Illinois, have had the chance to choose Marshall to be our state’s governor, our senator in Washington, and one of our congressmen (if we happened to vote in the west suburban district that includes Burr Ridge).

Marshall has not even limited himself to a single political party. Most of his campaigns have sought the Republican Party nomination. Yet of late, he calls himself a Democrat. Perhaps he sees the same trend that most other Illinoisans do and doesn’t see a point to being a Republican.

This election cycle won’t be any exception.

Marshall is one of several candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate, wanting to replace Roland Burris after his term ends next year.

SO THOSE PEOPLE who are so disgusted with the mainstream candidates that they can’t bring themselves to vote for any of them (in this case, Cheryle Jackson, David Hoffman and Alexi Giannoulias) can now pick Marshall, whose views on social issues are somewhat to the right of center, but apparently not so far right that he identifies any longer with the GOP.

This isn’t even the first time Marshall has sought the Senate. He ran in the Republican Party primary in 1996, getting 5 percent of the vote in losing to Al Salvi, who ultimately lost the general election that year to now-Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

Admittedly, Marshall has his bragging moment – the one time he ran in a general election (1998 for Congress from the Illinois 3rd District), he got 27 percent of the vote. Now-retired Rep. Bill Lipinski, D-Ill., took the remaining 73 percent.

But Marshall is likely to run the same type of campaign this year as he has in the past. He’ll pop out of the woodwork on a couple of occasions to claim that our elected officials are negligent on certain issues, and he will serve to hold the more serious political candidates accountable.

PERSONALLY, I’M CURIOUS to hear what Marshall will say about the bumbling manner in which officials are handling health care reform. I’d expect it will be his chief talking point as he works his way to another 5 percent of the vote come the Feb. 2 primary election.

Not that Marshall is the only perennial candidate who filed nominating petitions with the Illinois State Board of Elections to get a place on the 2010 primary ballot.

William “Dock” Walls III is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, for those of us who don’t like the idea of Pat Quinn or Dan Hynes.

His actual experience was a job on the Chicago city payroll (“Confidential Assistant to the Mayor” was the actual title) back in the days of Harold Washington as mayor.

IN RECENT YEARS, he has run bids for Chicago mayor and for Congress, challenging Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. Rush kicked Walls’ butt, which means that Walls has one thing in common with Barack Obama – who also once got an Election Day beat down from the one-time Black Panther.

Candidates like Marshall and Walls are on the ballot every year, using the access to Election Day ballots to give themselves a chance to express their views on the issues. Once the election passes, they go back to their daily lives until the next election cycle.

There’s also another type of perennial candidate – one who takes on the same opposition every Election Day.

That is the category in which one should place Rev. Anthony Williams. The resident of suburban Dolton has run several campaigns against Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. He has run in Democratic primaries and as a Republican.

THIS TIME, HE has filed nominating petitions to be the Green Party’s nominee for member of Congress from the Illinois 2nd District.

Williams’ line has been consistent through all his campaigns. He does not like the idea of Jackson as his member of Congress, and he wants to give people who live in the far South Side and surrounding suburbs district a chance to vote for somebody else.

It helps that in past elections he had the support of the Shaw brothers, of whom Bob is now running for Cook County assessor in the next election cycle. He claims to no longer have their active support, but he’s still an outspoken Jackson critic.

Another potential perennial is someone like Daniel Seals of Wilmette, who in recent elections has challenged Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who has indicated he wants to move up this time to the U.S. Senate. Seals, who gave Kirk a competitive campaign last time, now wants the to-be-abandoned seat, but faces a serious challenger in the form of state Rep. Julie Hamos, D-Evanston.

THEN, THERE ARE candidates like Patrick J. Ryan of Chicago, who is running for an Illinois House of Representatives’ seat from the Southwest Side. He has run for the same seat in several recent elections.

The occupant of that seat? Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago.

Which means that Ryan is likely to remain a perennial candidate even after the 2010 elections, just like Williams and Marshall and all the rest.

But of course, all of these people pale in comparison to Lars "America First" Daly, the Illinois native who ran for so many offices during the mid-20th Century, including president, usually on the Tax Cut Party ticket. None of the 21st Century perennial candidates is about to don an "Uncle Sam" suit on the campaign trail like ol' Lars used to.

-30-