Who you gonna vote for? Do you or I really have much of a candidate choice?

It’s that time of year again. People can start casting their ballots Monday through Early Voting Centers for the March 18 primary elections.

I can't envision lines like this one from decades ago gathering at polling places this year across the state.

 

The public will get their say as to who should run the state government (and represent us at the federal level) come that date. And it’s likely that I will cast my own ballot sometime this week (allowing me to spend Election Day proper being a reporter-type person).

IN ACCORDANCE WITH my past policies, the Chicago Argus will make its endorsements (which are really nothing more than who I will vote for). I’ll take a Democratic Party ballot, which means I’ll be voting for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to have a fourth term in the U.S. Senate.

There also will be ballots cast for the pairing of Gov. Pat Quinn and Paul Vallas to be his lieutenant governor running mate, along with state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Secretary of State Jesse White, state Treasurer nominee Michael Freirichs and state Comptroller nominee Sheila Simon.

Which is about as unsurprising as things can get.

Because aside of the fact that Quinn is being challenged on paper by Tio Hardiman of suburban Hillside, none of these people have a challenger.
 

QUINN: Won't coast to win!

TAKING A DEMOCRATIC primary ballot this time around doesn’t really amount to having much of a choice. It largely is a sign of showing that we have less faith in the Republican ranters to do anything positive about state government than we do with the Democratic establishment that got us in our current state of affairs.

Although if we’re honest about things, the people who decide to pull a Republican Party ballot in the primary don’t have much more of a choice. Their Attorney General nominee (Paul Schimpf), Secretary of State pick (Michael Webster) and Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka are unopposed.

One-time Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross (who wants to be state treasurer) has a challenge from Bob Grogan, while would-be U.S. Sen. James Oberweis must get past Douglast Truax. Neither Grogan nor Truax appear capable of putting up much of a challenge.
 

RAUNER: Probably thinks he will!

And when it comes to governor, it really is a pick between two past losers (in William Brady and Kirk Dillard), a no-name candidate with no money (which is why the only thing we know about Dan Rutherford is that he’s facing a sexual harassment allegation) and a no-name candidate (Bruce Rauner) with so much money that he can buy an image. The Illinois Federation of Teachers' backing of Dillard is more a matter of him being the lesser of evils -- from their perspective.

WHETHER THAT IMAGE will stand through the Nov. 4 general election so as to get Rauner elected as governor, or whether the experienced politicos on the Democratic Party side can shatter it to pieces is really about the only real question to be decided in this year’s election cycle.

That, and whether Hardiman or Truax will suffer the bigger defeat from the March 18 primary.

My point is that the results of the upcoming primary seem to be fairly straight-forward. We might as well be focusing now on the general election cycle – and I’m sure there are certain individuals who wish we could just get the whole thing over and done with on March 18 – rather than having to endure nearly eight full months of more campaigning between the two parties.

We’ve got enough headaches just from the electioneering that has taken place between the GOP governor types to last us this campaign cycle. Rauner, in particular, seems to be about nothing more than voting against the incumbent – rather than anything he would try to achieve as governor.

WHICH IS TO say that anybody who thinks they’re going to mock me for picking a Democratic Party ballot this time around ought to be looking at the lackluster choices the other party offers up.

I usually am quick to criticize people who don’t bother to vote. I argue that casting a ballot is the price one must pay for the right to complain about their government.

Although with this particularly uninspiring field of candidates, this time I may have to admonish myself a time or two before I set foot in the voting booth.

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It's all about the name recognition

The Chicago Tribune gave us its traditional polls every campaign season, giving us as thorough an understanding of where the major campaigns stand in the primary elections coming up just a month from now.

RAUNER: Bought the primary?

If those polls are to be taken seriously, it will be Bruce Rauner and James Oberweis at the top of the Republican ticket, challenging Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Richard Durbin, respectively, and leading the efforts of all Republicans across Illinois trying to get elected to government office.

NOW I’M NOT terribly interested in writing about whether Rauner and Oberweis really are the best bets to seriously challenge Quinn and Durbin in the November general election. There will be plenty of time to do that in coming months.

It’s just that reading the details of those polls, it becomes quite apparent that despite all the talk amongst Republicans about how voters are energized by their candidates to clobber Dems come November, the opposite seems to be true.

I don’t think anybody in this candidate field has really captured the public’s love and affection, so to speak.

Rauner, the venture capitalist whom some GOPers think is too close and personal to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is the one who has used his personal wealth to advertise his existence.

WHICH MAKES IT very likely that to many would-be voters who probably just now are starting to pay any attention to the election cycle, Rauner is the only one they may have heard of.

The other three candidates may well be unknowns – which is a blow to the 2010 campaign between Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard, who don’t seem to gain anything from having run before.

OBERWEIS: On way to a win?

And as for Dan Rutherford, he’s only now starting to get public recognition – but for a subject matter that makes decent people squeamish! Something that only the sleaziest amongst us takes any pleasure in observing.

Rauner may well succeed in buying enough name recognition early on that there just isn’t enough time for the opposition to catch up. Since if the Tribune poll published earlier this week turns out to bear any resemblance to reality, nearly all the undecided voters would have to swing to Brady for him to prevail.

RUTHERFORD AND DILLARD are just too far behind to catch up to Rauner, it would seem.

Will Hardiman do worse ...

This may well become the gubernatorial race between a pair of Chicago residents – a concept that is bound to repulse many among the voters from rural parts of the state who are determined to dump Quinn because they think he’s too urban in his perspective on life.

The same seems to be holding up in the Senate primary, where Oberweis has such a large lead that he’s already the Election Day winner – provided that the poll results turn out to be real.

Then again, Oberweis is the guy who has run past campaigns for governor, senator and representative – before finally winning a seat in the Illinois state Senate.

AFTER ALL THAT, he had better be known to more voters than just about any other candidate (the Tribune poll indicates he has 88 percent name recognition). Although there are those who wonder if his recognition is for such negative past activity that it will kill him – and other Republican candidates on the ticket – come November.

What it does mean is that Doug Truax, a business executive from suburban Downers Grove, hasn’t done much in the way of getting his name out to the public. Because there are those who would like to have an alternative to vote for March 18.
 

... than Truax on Election Day?

Although what may become the most interesting aspect of the primary is one that will be of interest only to political geeks – will Truax become the biggest political nobody of the day? Or will he get topped (or should it be bottomed) by Tio Hardiman – who is the token challenger against Quinn.

Nobody seems to give Hardiman any chance to actually beat Quinn. Although I wonder if he winds up getting more support in that campaign than Truax does against the man whose dairy company, admittedly, does make some fine ice cream.

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Election cycle (ugh!) is now underway

With the Labor Day holiday now past us, we’re technically in the time period in which candidates for electoral office can be campaigning without appearing to be tacky or self-serving.

TRACY: Vote for her, Dillard comes along

We’re 155 days away from the March primary (less if you choose to use early voting). It’s time for the candidates to start circulating the nominating petitions that actually get them on the ballots for March 18.

WE’RE GOING TO learn who the candidates for governor will choose to have as running mates – although two of them have already let their choices out of the bag of secrets, so to speak.

Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale has chosen a state representative from Quincy – following the concept of some sort of regional balance (suburbs and western Illinois) – to be the Top of the Ticket for the Republicans.

Unless the voters decide to choose the Dan Rutherford option. The Illinois treasurer has let it be known that he wants Steven Kim, the would-be politico who four years ago ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general.

Rutherford is touting the idea of an ethnic balance, since Kim would be the first person of Korean (or Asian, in general) ethnic background to get elected to a statewide office – if the Rutherford/Kim ticket were to prevail in the primary AND in the Nov. 4 general election.

NONE OF THE other gubernatorial dreamers have come up with running mates – although they are likely to do so in the near future. After all, if they’re going to run as a pair, they have to submit nominating petitions identifying them as a pair.

And if they’re starting to circulate them in coming days, they need to know in coming days who they’re being paired up with.

I’ve hinted before that this could be a significant factor in the gubernatorial race because the actual candidates themselves aren’t the kind of people who can inspire people to want to turn out and vote for them.



Steve Kim (left) is going from a failed attorney general bid to a gubernatorial running-mate slot. No word on whether anyone thinks failed secretary of state candidate Robert Enriquez is beneficial to the GOP in 2014. Photograph provided by Steven Kim for Attorney General 2010

 

There aren’t any “Barack Obama-like” candidates running for office in Illinois next year.

I REALLY DO believe this will be an election cycle in which (particularly for governor) people will be voting against people. They’re going to make their pick based on who they detest the least!

Voters will walk into the booths at their polling place, see a batch of names whose very existence annoys them to no end, and will cast their vote for whoever happens to be left.

And while I’ll be the first to admit that having an incumbent governor who has generated approval ratings as low as 26 percent doesn’t make things look good, I see all the other declared candidates for governor as having significant segments of the populace who can’t stand the thought of them, either!

That is why I go into this election cycle being completely unsure who should be thought of as the favorite. Each of them will have their hard-core followers – along with people who would symbolically slash their wrists at the very thought of that person becoming the resident of the Executive Mansion in Springfield.

THIS ELECTION CYCLE might be less annoying if there were another office up for grabs that would have serious competition. But Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is going for his fourth term in the U.S. Senate being challenged by Doug Truax and Chad Koppie.

FRERICHS: Wants to replace Rutherford

Truax has a military background, and is likely to try to appeal to the hard-core ideologues of Illinois. Which might be a problem since those are the same people that Koppie usually tries to appeal to during his perennial bids (all unsuccessful) for elective office.

Which is typical of all the other statewide offices within Illinois government that are up for grabs in 2014 – the most competitive will be for Illinois treasurer, where state Rep. Tom Cross, R-Oswego, and Bob Grogan of suburban DuPage County both want to challenge state Sen. Michael Frerichs, D-Champaign, for the right to replace Rutherford.

They might all be hardworking, earnest public officials. But let’s be honest – none of them are going to inspire Illinois to want to turn out to vote on March 18.

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