Will Lt. Gov. pairings resolve anything?

For a position that some people think means little and perhaps ought to be abolished, that of lieutenant governor often comes into play come Election Day.

QUINN: One of few to move up

Perhaps the true role of a second-in-command of state government (which in many ways overstates the position's place in electoral politics) is merely to muck up the election cycle and create headaches.

THE CLASSIC LIEUTENANT governor mess of Illinois government involves the 1968 election cycle when Republican Richard Ogilvie was elected governor. But back in the old days, there was no effort to pair up the top two positions in any way.

Which is how Democrat Paul Simon managed to get elected lieutenant governor.

People joke about how Rod Blagojevich went for years without speaking to his lieutenant governor (and now our current governor, Pat Quinn). But the Ogilvie/Simon years weren't exactly a warm, loving relationship either.

Some people bring up the most recent statewide elections, in which Scott Lee Cohen got the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor to run along with Quinn -- only to be pressured by the political powers-that-be into renouncing the post.

THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS when a divorce gets ugly and the stories start flying about -- as they did with regards to Cohen (who tried to run an independent campaign for governor later in the 2010 election cycle, but that went nowhere).

All this has our state's political people thinking that perhaps a change in policy needs to be made from the current status -- where a lieutenant governor hopeful runs on his own in the primary, but then gets paired up with the governor candidate of his party come the general election.

That change was made following the Ogilvie/Simon fiasco, when the candidates used to run separate all the way through.

The change being considered is that governor candidates would have to follow the lead of presidential hopefuls -- they would have to declare a running mate during the primary, then have that person's name appear on the ballot alongside theirs come Election Day.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY actually slipped this change into state law with few people noticing. In fact, I have to confess that I didn't catch on to the change until I happened to notice a recent column in the Springfield State Journal-Register newspaper that mentioned the change.

I'm sure some people think there is a logic to this change. A running mate is declared early on -- and everything is nice and clear.

Except,!!!!!!!

I'm curious to know where we're going to come up with enough people to fill all the lieutenant governor candidate slots that inevitably will be created. Would we wind up with ballots with so many names on them that they'd resemble the chaotic mess of 17 names that currently exist on the Democratic primary ballot for the special election to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr., in Congress.

IN THE DEMOCRATIC primary, there's already talk that both Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and former White House chief of staff William Daley will challenge Quinn -- along with any other ambitious Democrat -- come the 2014 election cycle.

For the Republicans, we're likely to get a repeat of the half-dozen candidates who tried running for governor in 2010. Are there enough people willing to tie themselves to a specific candidate for a political position whose only duty is to be on hand to serve -- in the rare event that the "big guy" gets incapacitated, or impeached like Blagojevich?

Although such a change would eliminate the confusion of the 1994 Democratic primary when two women (Sheila Smith and then-state Sen. Penny Severns of Decatur) ran for lieutenant governor, with three major candidates going for governor.

Two of the governor candidates chose to align themselves with the women (Roland Burris and Smith, Richard Phelan and Severns), only to have the third major candidate, Dawn Clark Netsch, win the primary.

AMONG THE MANY problems that Netsch confronted during her eventual general election loss to Gov. Jim Edgar was that she was never able to shake the thought among many that her running mate Severns couldn't truly be supportive of her -- if she had aligned herself with the Cook County Board president's gubernatorial aspirations first.

Perhaps this change would eliminate the headache caused by such a result. But I can't help but wonder if this "remedy" is the equivalent of treating a headache with a baseball bat to the forehead?

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News judgment “errors” stealing attention this week from more worthy issues

It is a common question among reporter-types when it comes to news judgment. To what degree should we play down a story because its premise is, for lack of a better word, stupid?

BLAGOJEVICH: Too late to surrender



Some people argue that is an abuse of authority on a reporter’s part, to be making judgment calls that something being said by someone somehow makes no sense. Who are we to judge what is practical and feasible? Just report, and let people realize how stupid someone is being on their own.

NOW A LOT of times when this argument is made these days, it is from conservative ideologues who want to promote a certain idea, and are willing to give their credibility to questionable facts or details that make their cause look good. I have no problem weeding those stories out of my mind. They come off as so tainted that I can’t envision anyone of sense taking them seriously.

But there are other instances where I don’t detect an ideological bias. I just detect a reporter-type person being so lazy that they don’t want to take the time to figure out something being said or proposed makes no sense.

To me, there were two stories that popped up on our local news scene this week that fall into that latter category. The end result being that I believe Rod Blagojevich and Scott Lee Cohen both got far more news coverage than either man deserved.

In the case of our state’s former governor, Blagojevich had a court appearance meant to prepare the scene for his second trial, beginning next month in U.S. District Court. It shouldn’t have amounted to much, except for the fact that Blagojevich has the ability to be absurd at virtually any moment.

HE DIDN’T LET us down this week. His attorneys came up with a legal motion that proposed their client should just be sentenced for the one measly “guilty” verdict that prosecutors were able to get out of the first trial.

No second trial. No more of anything. Just send Blagojevich off to receive his “Oxford education” for a couple of years, and the whole matter will be over. Blagojevich himself is willing to give up the legal fight.

COHEN: New senator? Not likely!



What a compromise! What a deal! To listen to the tone of some news coverage, particularly the broadcast type that is hampered by time constraints (my typical commentary on this site contains about as many words as an entire five-minute radio newscast), this whole issue was going to end soon because Blagojevich himself was on the verge of compromise.

That’s nuts.

WE SHOULD HAVE been ignoring this legal rhetoric big time, because it is not for Blagojevich to say whether federal prosecutors drop the 20 counts they still have pending against him. There is nothing to indicate that prosecutors are in any mood to do anything that could be perceived as showing sympathy for the former governor.

Now because I read some more detailed reports, I understand that the real intent of this offer by Blagojevich’s attorneys is to ensure that they are compensated for their work. They don’t really expect a quickie sentencing for their client.

But I realize many people relied on those quickie headline services, which may well give them the impression that Blagojevich has any say in what happens to him. He doesn’t.

Almost as ridiculous are the reports that have cropped up in the past couple of days saying that Scott Lee Cohen is on the verge of serving in the Illinois Senate. To believe the reports, he will be the replacement picked for now-former state Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, who quit last month for health issues and partially in disgust for how irrelevant his influence had become.

NOW I DON’T doubt that Cohen would be interested in the post. It would make relevant again the former Democratic lieutenant governor nominee who became an independent candidate for governor after da Dems dumped him shortly after the primary – after the sordid, sleazy details cropped up concerning his divorce and other women he had been involved with.

Sadly enough for him, the only way he’s ever going to get a political post is by buying it (he had the wealth to overcome the campaigns of the preferred lieutenant governor candidates, and to force Gov. Pat Quinn to pay attention to him during the general election cycle.

There is no way our state’s political establishment voluntarily picks him as a replacement for Hendon – not even if they were anxious for that Near West Side legislative district to have an outspoken lawmaker who would make “Hollywood” look downright meek and timid by comparison,.

Look down to (magnified) corner for Amazon Tax story



So Cohen as a member of the Senate Democratic majority? I doubt it, particularly since I could also see the Legislative Black Caucus causing an uprising of its own if that majority African-American district were handed over to a “white” candidate – albeit one who is as far from a WASP as one can get.



ALL THIS ATTENTION paid to Blagojevich and Cohen makes me wonder what stories got downplayed as a result (there is limited airtime and/or space)? I can’t help but think that the “Amazon Tax” got short-changed, since much of the coverage I have read centers around the people who want to complain that making Internet-based businesses charge the same sales taxes in Illinois as other businesses is somehow downright un-American.



I realize the reason this change in state law got approved was because of business interests desiring protection from what they perceived as Internet businesses being allowed to operate under different rules.

I can’t help but agree with them. Maybe more attention paid to this issue would make us realize that business is business, and that what these Internet companies have been trying to do is operate under differing rules of their own creation. Why not let all business do the same?

As for those people who now complain that it is our “right” to shop on the Internet so as to avoid paying sales tax, I say that perhaps Blagojevich and Cohen are part of the reason that we don’t just see those people for what they truly are – using sanctimonious rhetoric to cover up the fact that they’re cheap.

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Cohen camp tops opposition w/ mailings

I'd like to know the Cohen camp's postage bill

What should we say about a political campaign that tries to appeal to Latino voters by “celebrating” Hispanic Heritage Month, but manages to look ridiculous by sending their mailing out so late that they miss the month-long holiday?

That is what has been accomplished by the independent gubernatorial candidacy of Scott Lee Cohen, who wants to give people an alternative to the two major party candidates running in this year’s general election.

TO DATE, COHEN seems to have accomplished one thing. He is running a campaign that deserves to be taken more seriously than that of Rich Whitney – the Green Party nominee. Let’s not forget that the Greens in Illinois are an officially-recognized political party theoretically equal to Democrats and Republicans.

Cohen’s legacy to Illinois politics could be that he sucks up so much of the third-party energy in this cycle that the Greens won’t get a single candidate to reach the 5 percent minimum vote required to remain as a legitimate political party.

I have been paying extra attention to the Cohen campaign’s mailings in large part because he’s about the only candidate who is burdening me with his leaflets – all of which play off his mediocre image of stick-figures labeled as “career politicians.” Scott Lee is portrayed as the alternative to the faceless mass.

The reason that he’s the only one who is sending me anything is because I live in a relatively boring part of Cook County. By that, I mean the area is politically solid enough for the Democratic Party’s candidates that campaigns rarely feel the need to include us in the areas they target with controversial mailings.

WITH THE EXCEPTION of one home a couple of blocks from me where the owner has erected a dozen lawn signs touting every single GOP hopeful (from the big boys of Brady and Kirk down to the county board president hopeful Roger Keats) he can think of, my neighborhood isn’t exactly flooded with political signage.

So most of what I have seen is Cohen spending that $5 million that his campaign is estimated to have on hand for this general election cycle (along with the $2 million of his own money that he spent back in the primary election cycle).

I have to give him credit. These aren’t cheap mailings he is putting together. They are easily of the quality of the political pieces I have seen being sent out on behalf of Quinn or Republican William Brady.

If one didn’t know any better, they might think that Cohen himself is a major party candidate for governor of Illinois who deserves to be thought of in the same class as the major party candidates – instead of a guy who consistently gets about 5 percent of the voter support in various polls – better than the 3 percent that Whitney usually gets in those same polls.

NOW I REALIZE I have followed the campaign cycle much more closely than real people do. So I am aware of the personal problems Cohen has had that make political observers think of him as someone who is too much “damaged goods” to be taken seriously as a candidate.

Yet I look at his mailings and I look at the advertising signboards and television spots airing on the various cable channels, and I realize this man is getting his name out to the public. It must be nice to have about $5 million to spare (the figure that I have seen estimated that Cohen will spend on his general election gubernatorial bid) on a campaign that has no chance of actually winning.

Maybe some of us don’t think Cohen has what it takes to deserve to be taken seriously. But that kind of attitude probably misses the point. Cohen has the potential to snatch votes from people who might be so disgusted with this year’s electoral cycle.

Which is why I feel the need to nitpick him, particularly for the mailing I received Saturday that says Cohen celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month. Written in both English and Español, it includes a list of historic dates, along with photographs of such Latino luminaries as golfer Chi Chi Rodrigues, United Farm Workers founders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and guitar player Carlos Santana.

IT WOULD HAVE been nice, except I received it on the day AFTER the end of Hispanic Heritage Month (which runs from Sept. 15-Oct. 15). Somebody on the Cohen campaign deserves a kick in the culo for sending this mailing out a month late.

It is even worse, in my mind, than the mailing Campaign Cohen sent me that told me of Early Voting Centers, and even included a blank where the card was personalized with the address of the voting center located nearest to my home. Except that the facility the Cohen people picked for me really isn’t the closest.

I realize that in the larger scheme of things, these gaffes are downright trivial. So before I sound like a total grouch, I must also credit one piece of political mail I received from Scott Lee. Headlined, “Politics as Usual,” it shows cartoon depictions of Cohen’s major party opposition.

A confused-looking Quinn pocketing cash for his “staff” while handing us a “higher tax bill.” The alternative? An angry looking Brady tearing to shreds a “minimum wage law” and a “humane care for animals act.”

COHEN CAME UP with an image that summarizes what many people think of the two major candidates. This may be the piece I save for my own personal collection from years past of campaign buttons, fliers and bumper stickers (perhaps I’ll put it up next to my “Schmidt Happens” from 1998).

Because at the very least, the Cohen campaign has come up with the slickest operation of any batch of political amateurs destined to take less than 5 percent of the vote come Election Day.

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EXTRA: Superficial, or not?

How does gubernatorial candidate Scott Lee Cohen seriously expect to win come Election Day when he still has all those awful stories about his personal life (which he can’t honestly deny) swirling about?

The strategy seems to be to ignore it to the point where he hopes that the electorate has such a short memory that they won’t bother to recall it on their own, while also getting his name out to the public in so many ways that some voters may well walk into the voting booth on Nov. 2 and recognize his name before any others.

I HAPPENED TO be driving along Interstate 80 near the Illinois/Indiana border on Friday, and noticed several of the billboards were advertising the Cohen for governor campaign. What caught my eye is that these were the digital billboards, meaning they weren’t just some poster pasted up that the weather would eventually pick away at.

My point being that this kind of advertising costs money, serious campaign dollars. Which means Cohen is likely paying for this out of his own pocket – which was the strategy he used during the primary for lieutenant governor to outspend (just over $2 million) all the other Democratic campaigns for that office put together.

It’s not like there are just a few cheap posterboard yard signs being erected for Cohen on front lawns (although I must admit when I was at U.S. Cellular Field on Sunday to see the Chicago White Sox lose 2-1 to the New York Yankees, I was more amazed at the number of Cohen campaign signs I saw throughout the Bridgeport and Armour Square neighborhoods).

Which means I won’t be surprised to see Cohen on television soon, using campaign ads to further peddle his name to the public and make it appear that he is the equal to either Pat Quinn or William Brady. And yes, if his website is any indication, he’s going to keep letting us know how he has organized job fairs, which does create the superficial image of a person trying to help others find work.

AT A TIME when many people are concerned about the economy, it may play better than Quinn trying to remind us that his Republican opponent is the one favored by the conservative ideologues who truly would think nothing of trying to impose their own social agenda through a series of partisan bills.

I still remember 1995, which is one of the most whacked-out years the Illinois General Assembly and state government ever experienced. It took the Illinois Supreme Court the next few years to strike down the most ridiculous of the measures that got passed into law during that brief era of Republican domination of Illinois state government.

Personally, I don’t think Cohen can win the gubernatorial election. But he may create the climate where a Brady campaign can win with less than 50 percent of the vote, all because Cohen is putting up the veneer of a legitimate candidacy, which means I (once again) have to say that political people disregard Scott Lee at their own risk.

The only difference is, this time people won't be able to blame news-gathering organizations for their lack of knowledge about Cohen.

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Cohen is ignored at one’s own risk

It became official Friday – Scott Lee Cohen will be one of the candidates whose name gets printed on the Nov. 2 election ballot as a candidate for governor.

Cohen, of course, is the man who won the Democratic party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, then had to drop off the ticket within a couple of weeks because of indignation over his personal past – which includes a record of boorish behavior toward his ex-wife.

IN SHORT, HE’S a cad.

But that has never excluded anyone from holding elective office in the past. And it seems Cohen isn’t giving up on his dreams of becoming a public official. Pat Quinn gets punished for not sticking by Cohen in the days following the February primary by now having to run against Cohen – who seems determined to take advantage of the fact that many black voters in Illinois these days are disenchanted with the Democratic Party.

Personally, I wasn’t surprised by Cohen’s electoral victory in the primary. Too many political observers seem to forget that the rank-and-file legislators who were running for that lieutenant governor’s post are only known to the people who live in their immediate district.

Probably most people in Illinois have never heard of Art Turner, who was supposed to be the favorite to win that primary. If anything, they probably heard the name and guessed he was some distant relation to the singer and guitar player Ike Turner (whom we all know has his own record of mistreatment of his ex-wife).

SO WHEN I heard during the primary season that Cohen was willing to spend his own money to come up with a few million to advertise himself, and also was scheduling events staged as job fairs to help people find work, I figured there was a good chance that the typical voter who picked a Democratic ballot would see the half-dozen names running for that office and HIS name would be the only one that jumped out at them.

Combined with the fact that people I encountered who actually knew Cohen personally all said he is a down-to-earth guy who doesn’t come across as a professional politician means there is a chance that the types of voters who find electoral politics intimidating might think he is a refreshing change of pace.

Those same factors are all the same reasons why we shouldn’t count out Cohen as having a chance to take a significant number of votes come Nov. 2. Perhaps even enough to become the factor that deprives Quinn of a victory and gives the people of Illinois four years of “Gov. William Brady.”

I’m sure the same people who thought that Art Turner or Mike Boland, or perhaps even Rickey Hendon, were the natural favorites back in February are now presuming the fact that Cohen’s personal problems and borderline sleazy behavior make him damaged goods.

WHICH MEANS THEY’RE underestimating him, which is what I’m sure is exactly what Scott Lee wants.

For I can’t help but notice the types of appearances he is making in recent months. All very low-key, and ignoring anything where he gets confronted by a mass of people. It’s almost like he wants to reach voters one at a time, and give them a personal dose of his personality.

He also seems to be seeking out the off-beat news media outfits (cable access programs, small-town radio stations, dinky circulation newspapers that rarely get a crack at a “real live candidate for governor.”

The one constant is that he has not been facing questions about his behavior and his character and his qualifications for the job, which I question because I personally am skeptical of any business owner who thinks that having his own company qualifies him to run government. They are just two different breeds of animal.

WHICH MEANS THAT the appearance that Cohen gets to put on is one of his charm scaled back to the small-town level. Since I don’t think he expects to win come Nov. 2, I honestly believe he is merely trying to knock about a few of those people who wouldn’t back him, and instead have given us the noble, if not quite exciting, concept of Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Sheila Simon.

It’s not just Quinn. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if he could help shift enough votes away from Democratic candidates for the Illinois House of Representatives so as to turn Michael Madigan into a “minority leader” for the first time in 14 years.

I know some pundits who are paying attention to Cohen are concerned about his impact on the black vote, which various polls are showing is not as solid for Quinn as should be expected. Not that they’re going for Brady – many are undecided, and may just decide this election doesn’t mean much.

Personally, I wonder if it is going to be a fight among all the malcontents on the ballot for that black vote. Since the Green Party’s LeAlan Jones is a black man running on that party’s ticket for the U.S. Senate seat, and he is leading an effort by the Green Party to strengthen its status as a political party by getting disenchanted African-Americans to shift their Election Day ties.

WHICH MEANS IT could be the Green Party gubernatorial hopeful Rich Whitney who winds up benefitting from any black voters who decide they just don’t want to back Quinn.

Although in the end, I do believe many African-American voters will wind up with The Mighty Quinn, if for no other reason that the Greens and the Cohen camp have the potential to be so weak that those voters would gain nothing by backing them.

But for that to happen, Quinn is going to have to take the Cohen candidacy seriously. I only hope that such action will kick in in those days following Labor Day. Otherwise, this election cycle could turn deadly brutal because of a man too many people are underestimating as politically bloodied and buried.

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COHEN CAPERS: Is Baxter Swilley the Illinois equivalent of Admiral Stockdale?

“Who am I? Why am I here?”

-0-

Those were the “immortal” words of Admiral James B. Stockdale, the man whom political observers initially thought could become something along the line of John McCain (both were POWs during the Vietnam War), but wound up becoming a doddering old man seriously out of his element in the world of electoral politics.

For those of you to whom 18 years is too long a time period to remember, the admiral was the man Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot turned to during his 1992 presidential campaign as a political independent when he needed a running mate.

STOCKDALE WAS THE vice presidential hopeful who wound up making then-Vice President Dan Quayle look downright competent by comparison. (By comparison, Perot made Stockdale look competent, but that is a story for a different day).

Now why am I bothering to recall that campaign from two decades ago that, while it managed to take 19 percent of the actual vote, was unable to win a single vote in the Electoral College?

It’s just that I’m wondering if we in Illinois are destined to see something similar with the way in which Scott Lee Cohen is determined to think of himself as a gubernatorial candidate.

Which means he needed a running mate. If one wants to think of the eccentric Cohen as a modern-day Ross Perot, then that makes Baxter Swilley the 21st Century equivalent of the admiral.

SO HOW LONG will it be until Swilley gives us some quotable line showing us his ability (or lack thereof) to comprehend the reality of electoral politics?

Swilley has never held electoral office. But he does have a little more political experience than Stockdale did. He was, after all, the guy who worked as a staffer on the Cohen campaign that actually managed to beat five other Democrats who were running for the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor.

For what it’s worth, Swilley is a native of suburban Maywood (Stockdale was a native of downstate Abingdon) and is an African-American male, which Cohen hopes adds a sense of diversity to his campaign – assuming that Cohen/Swilley are able to get the 25,000 valid signatures of support required of any independent political candidate in Illinois to get a spot on the ballot.

On a more serious note, he’s “staff,” not “candidate material.” He worked as a political director in Missouri for the 2004 presidential dreams of John Edwards, and also has worked on the campaign staffs of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Jackson, Miss., Mayor Harvey Johnson.

SWILLEY ALSO WAS one of the people who worked to try to get the International Olympic Committee to put the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Chicago.

Which means he may know how to stage a campaign event for Cohen. But can he be the focus of those events? We’re talking about a newcomer to Illinois politics, which some people think is exactly what the state needs. Of course, I can’t help but wonder how clueless these people would be if they ever actually got elected to office, which is why I have a tough time taking seriously any political “movement” that wants to dump all incumbents.

In fact, Swilley has such a limited background that much of the coverage of Cohen’s choice of a running mate had to focus on whether or not he truly was Cohen’s top choice. Is this really what Scott Lee thinks is a qualified person to serve as governor of Illinois, should he happen to get on the ballot, win the election, then die or otherwise become too incapacitated to serve out a four-year term?

Depending on which report one reads, Cohen makes general statements saying Swilley was his ideal pick, or was his second choice after being turned down by state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago – who began his own political career by getting elected to the state Legislature as a political independent.

THERE EVEN WERE some reports indicating that Cohen would have liked to have had a woman at his side in the role of lieutenant governor – in hopes that her presence might force constant repetition of all those stories about his past involvement with prostitutes and his falling behind on child support payments to his ex-wife to go away.

Either that was not the case, or he couldn’t find a woman willing to work with him for the next month-and-a-half (the period during which he must get those nominating signatures of support).

To me, that is the key to this whole issue.

Swilley may very well be a lieutenant governor “candidate” until June 21, at which time the campaign will die before ever getting started because it could not get sufficient support to force the Illinois State Board of Elections to put it on the ballot along with Quinn/Simon, Brady/Plummer or Whitney/Crawford (can’t forget the Green Party, although I’m sure most Illinoisans will).

IS SWILLEY GOING to be the guy who in the lieutenant governor debate makes Jason Plummer look a little less vaccuous than his 27-year-old inflated resume would otherwise be?

Then again, there might be one area where Swilley could never hope to beat Admiral Stockdale. He got turned into a caracature on Saturday Night Live by the late Phil Hartman (who could bark out, “Who am I? Why am I here?” with such a harsh snarl and a glazed look in his eyes that he made the admiral appear completely insane.

Somehow, I doubt that Kenan Thompson will ever devote the time to portraying Swilley (he’s too busy preparing for his next Roland Burris impersonation).

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Cohen thinks he’s back; I’ll believe it when I see nominating petition signatures

“Illinois needs honesty more than perfection.”

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Moreso than the stories of holding a knife to a prostitute’s throat or being a deadbeat who fell behind on child support, that line ought to be the political legacy left behind by Scott Lee Cohen, the man who for two weeks was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor.

By now, anybody who cares has heard that Cohen staged himself a press conference Monday outside the Thompson state government building to announce he is running for governor as a political independent.

SO WE NOW have people getting all worked up that Cohen is in this campaign to wreck his revenge against the Democratic Party for not standing behind him by scuttling the gubernatorial hopes of incumbent Pat Quinn.

Is Cohen, the CEO of State Pawners (the pawn shop founded by his father) the type of guy who would give the people of Illinois “Gov. William Brady” to make himself feel better about the fact that his political career ended before it ever began?

It could be. People who run for electoral office are capable of being that petty.

And it’s not like Cohen was ever the typical political person. He came out of nowhere to run for an office with such a low profile that he figured he could slip into a position where he could then catapult to the top. This isn’t someone who is interested in working his way through the ranks of government and learning about public policy.

WHICH IS WHY I find it laughable that he now portrays himself as the pillar of political honesty.

That particular quote came in response to questions about whether his personal past that caused the Democratic Party to dump on him for lieutenant governor could be overcome in the minds of the voters when they decide Nov. 2 who to pick for governor.

The line that Cohen backers (they do exist, they like the idea that he ran a small-scale business and is unpolitical so much that they will ignore any sordid details about his life) tout is that it wasn’t Cohen himself who ever tried to cover anything up. Some people go so far as to try to blame newsgathering organizations for not thoroughly exposing every sordid detail of Cohen’s life, although I have to wonder how much any outfit would have been laughed at hysterically had they spent any time worrying about the lieutenant governor’s race.

After all, there was a Senate campaign on the Republican side and a gubernatorial fight for the Democrats. Plus, Chicago-area reporter-types were absolutely determined to dig up every detail possible so as to ensure that Todd Stroger didn’t pull off some sort of upset and manage to win the Feb. 2 primary for Cook County Board president.

BUT LET’S BE honest.

People didn’t pick Cohen to be the lieutenant governor nominee because they thought he had any special qualifications. He won because he ran in a field of nobodies (political observers tend to forget that real people had never heard of the so-called front-runner, long-time state Rep. Art Turner, D-Chicago) and used his personal wealth to run enough campaign advertising that his name was probably the only one many people sort of recognized.

Cohen is correct in one regard. We should get more honesty from our political people. In some ways, Cohen isn’t any more sordid than anyone else who runs for political office. I’m not even sure he’s the official with the worst reputation.

Seriously, how low do many people regard Rod Blagojevich? Or has Cohen the alleged wife-beater managed to sink even below Milorod on the Illinois political scum scale? (Which, by the way, contains people of all the major political parties).

BECAUSE OF THE fact that Cohen’s reputation is just so low, I can’t say I take seriously the idea of any independent campaign he might run.

A part of me will be amazed if he can get the 25,000 valid signatures of support required of any political independent (compared to 5,000 for someone running for an established political party’s nomination) to even get on the ballot.

Which means that Cohen’s campaign may have reached its peak on Monday, a month-and-a-half before it officially began.

How many people are going to be willing to sign one of his nominating petitions, except as something resembling a gag (just like all the people who vote for “Mickey Mouse” for president – come to think of it, didn’t he win in ’00 and ’04?).

SOMEONE WHO ISN’T convinced how hard it is to get valid petition signatures for a populist movement ought to ask the League of Women Voters what ever became of their petition drive on behalf of reforming the means by which we redistrict legislative and congressional district boundaries every 10 years.

Their deadline came and went without them even getting close. I could see the same thing happening to Scott Lee. If, by chance, it appears that he will hit the 25,000 figure, I could envision all kinds of people aligned with the Democratic Party crawling out of the woodwork to challenge his legitimacy.

He could wind up having to engage in a massive legal fight for the right to get 1 percent of the vote come Election Day.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Scott Lee Cohen will attract a certain type of person who resents government and will want to vote for anyone who thinks just like they do. People with any sense will, and in fact already are trying to, distance themselves from him.

Are we Cook Co. voters in for the ‘Battle of the Independents’ this election cycle?

I can think of one person who will be absolutely disgusted at the notion of Scott Lee Cohen trying to revamp his political reputation by running a candidacy for electoral office independent of the political parties.

That person would be Forrest Claypool – who himself is running an independent campaign for electoral office come the Nov. 2 elections.

I’M SURE THERE is a part of Claypool who wanted to claim that his independence of any political party in his bid to become Cook County assessor made him high-minded and worthy of our respect. The ultimate goo-goo who would lead a “revolution” of sorts against the Democratic Party hacks and the conservative ideologues who have taken over the Republican Party.

The problem is that Cohen is now also talking about taking the “independent” route – deciding he wants to use it to challenge Gov. Pat Quinn and GOP nominee William Brady.

If he couldn’t have the Democratic Party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, he’s willing to muck up the chances of the two major party nominees who are seeking the office of governor.

Which means we have someone who seems to be more interested in messing with the political people who didn’t back him when he legitimately won the Democratic lieutenant governor nomination.. He may even get a chance to rehabilitate somewhat his reputation – which causes many Illinois residents these days to think of him as nothing more than a pawnbroker or a deadbeat who owes his ex-wife alimony.

WHAT I THINK will happen is that Cohen will add a third label to himself – the highest-profile candidate who made absolutely NO impact on a campaign season.

It also will mess with Claypool in that people will think of the two as an informal pairing of sorts – which will make it harder for the outgoing Cook County Board member to take the high road. Too many people will view them as a pair of political people who didn’t have what it takes to run in the regular elections, so they’re trying to slip into office through the back door – so to speak.

Perhaps I am just a bit cynical, but I would think that if Claypool were serious about wanting to be the county assessor (the office that collects all those property taxes that homeowners pay every year and that local governments and schools rely upon to fund their existence), he would have sought a Democratic nomination during the primary season.

Instead, we got Board of Review Commissioner Joe Berrios managing to win the nomination to replace retiring Assessor James Houlihan – despite the views of many political observers that he is exactly the kind of political party establishment type whom voters are inclined to reject in what some see as a “non-incumbent” trend.

COULD IT BE that Claypool, who tried four years ago to become county board President, became wearied of the electoral process that he’s looking for a short-cut of sorts to get into office? If that is the case, then his “independent” bid ought to be enough reason to vote against him – no matter what one thinks of Berrios.

My guess is that he thinks he has better name recognition than Berrios among Cook County voters, and could thus have a chance of actually winning that campaign.

I have always viewed the wear and tear of going through a political campaign (even enduring the more stupid and trivial moments) as a test of sorts to see how qualified someone is for electoral office. It seems to me that Claypool is trying to short-circuit that process.

I’m only glad that he is not trying to use a short-cut to run against county board President nominees Toni Preckwinkle or Roger Keats. That kind of election would result in his downfall, and rightfully so.

SO WHEN CLAYPOOL – who once was one of the many chiefs of staff who have worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley – tries to portray himself as the ultimate good-government type, I am going to be a bit cynical. As far as I’m concerned, his campaign will be closer in character to that of Cohen than it will be anything even remotely Obama-esque.

As for Cohen, I see his campaign as being little more than creating an alternate “final act” than the one he gave us – that of him bursting into tears while announcing he was withdrawing from the lieutenant governor campaign. That resignation took on a taint of tawdriness as many were offended that he would make the announcement in a tavern (on Super Bowl Sunday) with his young son at his side.

Instead, he wants to take “high-minded” stances on issues, and perhaps give us more of the “job creation” rhetoric that (along with the $2 million of his own money that he spent on campaign advertising) led to his Democratic primary victory.

Some might think he will hurt Democrat Quinn. I doubt it. I think the people who are inclined to not vote for Quinn have already made up their mind to find someone else to cast a ballot for.

NOT THAT I’M saying he’s going to take down the Brady campaign. I think many of the ideologues who are inclined to want to back that campaign are going to take one look at Cohen and be incredibly repulsed.

In short, I don’t think Cohen will have much of an effect on this election cycle. He could wind up being the most prominent candidate ever in Illinois politics who barely gets 1 percent of the vote.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: This is the way Forrest Claypool views himself, while this is how many potential voters view him.

Republicans want to fantasize about Scott Lee Cohen becoming a serious campaign issue, even though he’s more likely to remain an afterthought in this year's gubernatorial campaign.

It feels like an Election Day

There is a part of me that wishes I were headed for my polling place to cast my ballot to indicate preferences for candidates for the November elections.

Today is the third Tuesday of March, which traditionally was the date upon which primary elections were conducted in Illinois – a date that in some years can coincide with St. Patrick’s Day (although this year, it misses the great green festival by one day).

BY THIS POINT, I am now ready to make the trip to my neighborhood Lutheran church (which doubles as the local polling place) to cast my votes related to the state government and U.S. senate elections, along with picking all those judges.

The only problem is that it is NOT Election Day. We (or at least the few of us who bothered) all cast our ballots in the primary election held six weeks ago. Although I find a bit of poetic justice in the fact that we didn’t figure out that Bill Brady really won the Republican primary until just over a week ago.

Is that some sort of cosmic sign saying that THIS is the time of the year when we should be deciding things. These District of Columbia residents of 1938 couldn't vote because of the local laws in the federal district. We can't vote Tuesday because our officials foolishly held our elections six weeks ago. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

In one of the few bits of evidence that our politicos aren’t completely brain-dead, Illinois is considering a return to mid-March elections. Just last week, the Illinois House of Representatives gave its final approval to a bill that shifts the elections from early February to this time of year.

NOW, IT GOES to Gov. Pat Quinn, and his aides say the governor, “looks forward” to signing the measure into law. So 2010 will be remembered not only as the title of an awful sequel, but as the final year in which we had ridiculously early elections.

It also is evidence that some of our political peoples’ stupidest gestures can be undone.

I remember thinking that the Illinois Legislature was being incredibly short-sighted when this change was made. Somehow, the desired goal of giving homestate politico Barack Obama an advantage didn’t seem worth it.

In the end, moving the primary in 2008 to early February wound up resulting in exactly what state officials were trying to avoid – our state’s primary that year got lost in the shuffle.

HOW ELSE TO explain the fact that the Illinois primary was held the same day as New York and California? The national attention wound up going to California because it was the one state that wasn’t home to a Democratic presidential hopeful.

Considering how the Democratic primary for the presidential nomination that year turned into a drawn-out fiasco that wasn’t resolved until the whole process ended in June, Indiana with its ridiculously-late May primary wound up having more influence than Illinois.

Some will argue that 2008 was a bizarre election year that should not be used as a standard for analyzing anything. I’d agree. To me, the more dangerous after-effect of an early February primary is what occurred this year.

The early Election Day date contributed to the fact that record-low voter turnouts were registered in many counties across the state. Nobody wanted to be bothered with thinking about voting for anything (not even something as important as senator or governor) at that early date.

IT ALSO CREATED such a short primary season (barely a month of campaigning) that I honestly believe most people didn’t have a clue who they were voting for.

Anybody who looks at the primaries in both major political parties for lieutenant governor would have to admit that candidates with actual records would have had time to get the word out – instead of people picking the candidates who had money to appear often in television campaign ads.

Perhaps we could have avoided Scott Lee Cohen or Jason Plummer if we had more time to study the candidates? Of course, those candidates might have been able to use their financial advantage to burn their impressions so strong into the public conscience that people might have cared more that Cohen could win an election and still get shoved aside by his political party “allies.”

Of course, I’m not saying lieutenant governor was the only affected office by the early Election day this year.

I WONDER IF a few more weeks would have enabled one of the Republican gubernatorial dreamers to do better. Could six more weeks have allowed state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, to find 194 more votes – thereby making him the winner?

On the Democratic side, I will always be convinced that the one big winner of an early Election Day this year was Quinn himself. Six more weeks of having to campaign, and perhaps departing Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes would have overcome the Mighty Quinn.

Hynes versus Dillard, if only we had held this year’s primary elections (and I write this as one who actually voted last month for Quinn) at the right time? It will be one of the all-time Could Have Been issues that our political watchers will discuss for years.

It’s too bad Quinn couldn’t actually sign this particular bill into law on Tuesday. It wouldn’t do a thing to undo this year’s election results (apparently, only Cohen-like behavior can undo an election).

BUT IT WOULD eliminate a significant flaw in the political process that we built into the system a couple of years ago. Now, we can go back to complaining about the candidates themselves being incompetent and out-of-touch.

What could be more “All-American” than that?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Bill Black, a legislator from Danville, always has a knack for being blunt-spoken and honest (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/03/illinois-primary-election-headed-back-to-march.html), particularly his assessment (http://www.sj-r.com/state/x673415277/Later-primary-bill-now-heads-to-governor) that February primaries were “a disaster.”

Snow in Midwest in February. Oh My!

I’m not sure what to think of the possible 10 inches of snow that could start falling on the Chicago area some time later Monday.

Is it some sort of cosmic justice for those of us who snickered at the District of Columbia area residents who had such a bad time of things last week coping with a severe snowstorm? Or is this “the almighty’s” way of letting us know he’s bored with the story of Scott Lee Cohen (seriously, we’re now eagerly taking the word of an alleged prostitute as to who is qualified to be a public official?) and wants us to move on to something else?

WHATEVER THE SITUATION is, there’s a chance that we’re going to get the heaviest snowfall (thus far) of the 2009-10 winter season in Chicago. The couple of times it has snowed to date, the amounts weren’t all that bad and it was more the drop in temperatures that caused problems for many people.

Now, we have the potential for problems with people who just can’t get a grasp on the concept of slowing down their driving below the posted speed limit so that their cars don’t go spiraling out of control and crashing into something (or someone) else.

Of course, these kind of people will think it is someone else’s fault for being in the way of their car that was spiraling out of control.

My serious point is that the next couple of days will be interesting. They will be challenging. But they also are something that should fully be expected by those of us born and raised in the Midwestern United States.

IT’S WINTER. IT snows here. It gets cold. This is the real world, not that wimpy weather you left behind in Arizona or Georgia (although watching The Weather Channel on television in recent weeks, I have been surprised by the amount of snow that has fallen in parts of Dixie – not exactly what is expected). In fact, the one group of locals I will sympathize with are those who rely on public transportation and are trying to learn new routes to get to places, because the Chicago Transit Authority budget cuts imposed Sunday caused their old routes to be slashed.

As much as I don’t care for the slop caused by winter snowfall (the cold I can cope with, you just put on another layer of clothing), what really is going to tick me off is going to be the shock and awe expressed on various news reports from people who are going to want to react as though the fact that we get a few inches of accumulated snowfall in a few hours timespan is somehow historic in nature.

It happens every year.

We expect it. It is the reason why we look down on other parts of the country that let snowfall throw them so far out of whack.

SERIOUSLY, WATCHING THAT Weather Channel video of car after car after car sliding on the ice and careening into each other while the anchors/meteorologists act amazed is laughable. Hearing that government officials in other cities behave in ways that make you think a natural disaster has struck them makes me respect our borderline corrupt political people all the more.

At least they can cope with snow.

In fact, about the most sensible thing I heard out of the snowfall that hit Washington, D.C. last week was the reaction coming from the White House and adopted-Chicagoan Barack Obama. Two feet of snow accumulated in the nation’s capital, which caused first daughters Sasha and Malia to consider pulling out the sleds so they could go riding around the White House grounds.

Perhaps the reality of our situation is that we need some snowfall right about now. Too many of us, including probably many people who didn’t even bother to vote in last week’s primary elections, are now getting all bent out of shape.

THE AFOREMENTIONED COHEN (who was the Democratic Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor until he said Sunday he would give it up) is getting most of the attention, but many of the races ended up with absolutely nonsensical results. Illlinois has become a place where someone who can get roughly one out of five votes can actually win an election, because there were so many candidates seeking office and the reality is that NO ONE truly captured the public spirit.

Maybe we need a snowfall heavy enough that there is a school day, or perhaps someone has to take a day off of work because making the daily commute on Tuesday or Wednesday will be next to impossible.

In short, this snowfall could literally turn out to be what gives us all a breath of fresh air – along with slushy snowfall.

If some people take great joy in the concept of a “White Christmas,” perhaps what we need these days is a white Valentine’s Day (it’s Sunday) to help us relax. Clear our heads by shoveling our own sidewalks. Then perhaps we can stop reacting in such irrational ways.

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EXTRA: We’re in a new world insofar as picking Cohen’s lt. gov. replacement

I don’t have a clue as I write this who will be Gov. Pat Quinn’s running mate for the Nov. 2 general elections for Illinois government posts. But I'd be willing to bet that the process by which a replacement for Scott Lee Cohen is picked is something likely to be more offensive to good-government types than anything Cohen is alleged to have done.

About the only thing I can be sure of is that I doubt any of the five other people who ran against Chicago small businessman Cohen will be able to claim any moral authority to the nomination, even though I’m sure every single one of them thinks they would be the perfect choice for the post of second-in-command who in reality doesn’t do much of anything unless a mishap befalls the governor.

IT AMAZES ME the way all too many people who have been screaming for Cohen’s skull on a pike in recent days seem to think it is just a simple matter of taking Number Two – in terms of just picking the name of the person (state Rep. Art Turner, D-Chicago) who got the second-most number of votes.

Or the ones who think that somehow it will be a simple question of Quinn getting to pick somebody to be in line to succeed him, should he succomb to illness or an act of violence or manage to tick off his legislative colleagues so badly that they impeach him (they’ve got it in their blood now).

I have even heard a few people naïve enough to think that this could mean a special election for Democrats to pick a new lieutenant governor nominee.

Like it or not, this is going to be a question for the party’s state central committee (you know, those positions near the bottom of the ballot that you pay little attention to). That means the party bigwigs (from my congressional district, they're Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and state Rep. Connie Howard, D-Chicago) ultimately are going to get to decide whom they want to have at Quinn’s side. That thought probably makes them very happy.

AFTER ALL, WHILE age seems to have mellowed Quinn somewhat in recent years, he still is the ideological maverick who in the past has been willing to tell the establishment of his own political party where to go. That sense hasn’t totally left him.

I could see where Democratic officials would have been eager to dump Cohen not so much because they cared about his daliances, but because they’d like to have the authority to hand-pick a Quinn successor. At the very least, he’d be a constant shadow to the governor, reminding him that he’d better not get too far out of line for their tastes – unless he wants them to have the Legislature do a “Blagojevich” on him.

At a time when “voters” are supposedly rebelling against the very thought of “professional” politicians having so much control over government, I find it hard to believe that people are so eager to ditch the results of an election (Cohen did get 26 percent of the vote, more than six other challengers) just so that state Democratic Chairman Michael J. Madigan and his allies can handpick someone more to his liking.

Because that is what the situation has now become.

WHEN I CAST my ballot, I actually went for state Sen. Mike Boland, D-East Moline. In part, I thought that having one of the six people running as Democrats for statewide constitutional offices coming from outside of metropolitan Chicago provided a sense of balance – particularly when all the ridiculous rhetoric crops up about Chicago trying to take over the state.

I still think Boland would be acceptable, although considering that he got just under 13 percent of the vote (105,551 votes, or 12.9 percent), I think it might be hard for him to put up any real kind of claim –other than that his presence would help deliver the Quad Cities vote come November.

But then I see that Boland barely finished ahead of Elmhurst electrician Thomas Castillo (12.8 percent of the vote) and that the man I would have bet money on being the front-runner, state Sen. Terry Link, D-Vernon Hills, finishing dead last – at 12.2 percent, or 99,972 votes.

It really was a screwy Election Day last week, and not just because of Cohen or Bill Brady/Kirk Dillard for governor as a Republican.

ABOUT THE ONLY result that truly makes much conventional sense is the outcome of the Republican primary for Illinois comptroller.

Former state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka’s bid for a comeback resulted in her annihilating Jim Dodge and William Kelly for the right to challenge Democratic nominee (and state Rep.) David Miller of suburban Lynwood come November.

In Topinka, we’re not only talking about a straight-talking accordion player, we’re also talking about a woman comfortable enough with herself that she used to be seen wearing big fuzzy slippers designed to look like gorilla feet while walking around her Statehouse office.

Perhaps that blast from the past is what Illinois government could use.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: These people are likely the ones who will decide who the new Democratic "choice" (http://www.ildems.com/StateCentralComm.htm) for lieutenant governor will be.

Who’s more confused?

As much as people want to focus on the political fight for lieutenant governor on the Democratic side, we can’t forget that the Republican Party in this state has his own potential messes in terms of their newly-elected slate of candidates for the November general election.

If it reads like I think the GOP may have its own problems to cope with come Election Day, you’d be correct.

AS OF RIGHT now, I don’t know who I’d consider to be the front-runner for any campaign – even though I have heard the partisan political rhetoric coming from both sides about how they think their side is the favorite.

I look at the Republican primary and see the squabble now taking place all too similar to what happened to the Democrats back in 1998. That was the year that several candidates from Chicago proper were defeated in the primary because the congressman from Southern Illinois – Glenn Poshard – was able to dominate in the parts of Illinois outside of Chicago.

It sounds a lot like what happened this year with the Republicans, where the state senator from Bloomington was the only candidate in the seven-person field who came from outside the Chicago-area.

Bill Brady (who I must admit I get a bit of a kick out of the idea that he comes from my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University - although he graduated from there just a few months before I was an incoming freshman) was the preference of many Republican voters outside of Chicago who like the idea of a state chief executive without political ties to the Second City.

THAT IS WHAT helped him get that 20 percent of the vote that is 400-some votes more than the 20 percent total for state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, who was the reverse image of Brady – he was the preference of the Chicago suburbs voters, although the other Chicago-area candidates were able to pick away at that same voter base to the point where Brady creeped out into the lead.

There have been “Unity Breakfast” events and some attempts in recent days at the rhetoric that implies everybody is kissing and making up. But I can recall the same rhetoric from the ’98 Dems in the days following the primary election.

The bottom line is that many Chicago Democrats that year never got over the fact that they were being asked to vote for someone whose life perspective was so radically different from theirs. His margin of victory in Chicago in the general election that year was pathetic for a Democratic candidate, and he lost in the suburbs by a wide margin.

Downstate Illinois alone wasn’t enough to win an election for Glenn Poshard (now president of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, near his home in Carterville).

ARE THE REPUBLICAN partisans of this year’s election cycle going to find out the same thing? While I realize that Republican-leaning central Illinois can provide more of a voter base than Democrat-leaning Southern Illinois did for Poshard in ’98, there is the strong possibility that Democrats won’t have that much trouble winning the gubernatorial election come November.

As of Friday, Dillard was refusing to accept defeat. While I understand the need to count all the votes when it comes to an election this close, there also is a time to move on with life. Dillard, who is the type of Republican I personally could consider voting for, has to accept the need to move on with his life.

The longer he keeps this up, the harder it will be for GOPers to unite, and the more likely that ’10 is the year that Illinois gets to see the political reincarnation of the ’98 Dems.

Of course, I’m keeping in mind the fact that the Republican opposition to Poshard in ’98 was a fully-funded campaign for George Ryan, much stronger than the ’10 campaign that will be backing Pat Quinn. Ryan that year was a solid lock to beat up on just about anybody he would have faced.

QUINN HAS THE uncertainty over who will be his running mate, although this state has had so many past instances where a governor could not stand the person he got saddled with for lieutenant governor (most recently, Rod Blagojevich despised Quinn and froze him out) that I don’t think the issue matters much to voters.

Scott Lee Cohen may well have won that primary (although with only 26 percent of the vote, it is not a strong support). But the people who are bitter about his defeat of four legislators and an electrician seem to want to find some way to replace him.

While I find some of the things that have come out about Cohen to be tacky behavior (although not necessarily secret, details were known – if not fully paid attention to), what I find offensive is the notion that people who are upset with an election’s outcome think they can bully the winner into backing away.

It just sounds so un-American. Would these same people be arguing just as vehemously if state Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, and his outspoken mouth had won the primary? For all I know, they might.

PERSONALLY, I WON’T blame Cohen in the least if he decides to fight for his right to remain on the Democratic ticket. I realize that kind of chaos would hurt the Dems if it stretched throughout the next nine months until Election Day.

But I can also see the inexperienced lieutenant governor nominee who will face Cohen in the general election suffering from some of the same candidate flaws (both politically inexperienced who think their business experience is superior when it comes to running government) who only got the nomination because they were able to buy more television attention than their better-qualified opponents.

And on a final note, I have to admit I got my kick out of the Chicago Sun-Times’ cartoonist, Jack Higgins, whose editorial cartoon Friday showed two boxers knocked out in the ring, with the referee counting out the “Republican boxer” complaining that his count-down was being drowned out by the “Democratic boxer’s” count-down.

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What should we think of Cohen?

It is the story with sordid angles for all – people of a more progressive mindset can get all worked up about the fact that the apparent Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor was alleged to have committed domestic violence against a woman.

For those inclined to downplay such talk, the woman supposedly had arrests for prostitution. Even the word "steroids" comes up.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of the man involved in this story who someday could be in place to become governor of Illinois – in the event something unfortunate were to happen to Pat Quinn, should he succeed in winning the Nov. 2 general election against what appears to be the GOP ticket of Brady and Plummer.

Some people are now getting all worked up over the thought that Cohen will “drag” down the Democratic ticket come November. I have even seen one commentator imply that Cohen is a 21st Century equivalent of Janice Hart and Mark Fairchild, the followers of Lyndon LaRouche who managed to get the Dem nominations for secretary of state and lieutenant governor back in 1986.

Of course, most of the people engaging in this type of rhetoric are the types who are eagerly looking for something, anything, that can be used to take down the Democratic Party ticket. Forgive me if I think their bias is just a little too big to be trusted.

For one thing, Cohen is not Fairchild or Hart, who were followers of an un-American extremist. If anything, Cohen is something that usually appeals to more conservative Republicans – a business owner who claims his political inexperience is his great advantage.

WHAT I BELIEVE will be important in determining whether or not this Cohen rhetoric sticks is how Cohen behaves today and in the next few days. I don’t have a clue if Cohen or his people will ever read this, but my suggestion would be for them to be incredibly honest.

It could mean a potentially humiliating few days, perhaps up to a week, for Cohen. But if he handles himself right, this could become the issue that is so long forgotten by Election Day in November that most people will have a hard time remembering it ever occurred.

If he bumbles about, then he creates the situation where Republicans can portray him as the pawnbroker woman-beater for the next nine months. They’re going to try to do that anyway, but Cohen’s reaction will determine whether we should listen to the partisan GOP or disregard their campaign rhetoric (which is usually a good idea to do with any campaign’s rhetoric – it’s all an exaggeration).

Part of the reason I am inclined to think this way is not because I sympathize with Cohen all that much or am somehow anxious to ignore the very real problem in our society of domestic abuse, particularly against women.

IT’S JUST THAT none of this is new. For Quinn to now say that Cohen should reject the nomination he appears to have won makes Quinn look foolish (and weak, if Cohen decides to be stubborn and refuse to "resign").

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown is now able to boast about how he wrote about this months ago, only to have people ignore it then because they wanted to believe that a “no-name” political dreamer like Cohen could not possibly defeat the many state senators who ran for the Democratic nomination to be governor-in-waiting.

What they didn’t account for was the fact that Cohen is a business owner (the family has a pawn shop, and Cohen himself has expanded the interests to include the environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies company that he likes to brag about, along with a few rental properties) with enough money that he provided about 98 percent of the funds that paid for his campaign.

It’s the power of television.

ALL THOSE ADVERTISING spots made the name “Scott Lee Cohen” more recognizable to the average voter in Tuesday’s primary, compared to those who actually follow legislative activity and know who people like Art Turner, Mike Boland, Terry Link or Rickey Hendon actually are.

So it shouldn’t be a shock that he got that 26 percent of the vote, which was enough to win.

But like I wrote, this allegation (which supposedly took place in 2005 but did not result in a criminal conviction because charges were dropped when the “girlfriend” didn’t bother to pursue the case) was known and written about somewhat.

He may not have featured the fact in one of his primary season campaign ads, but Cohen hasn’t exactly tried to cover this up. Officially, he tells reporter-types that he thinks it will not be an issue.

IT WILL ONLY become an issue if he bungles it up. This is one case where a political prospect should be eager for the details to come out. If he seems to be letting it all out, most people will get bored with the story.

It is the potential for trying to hide, or diminish, what happened back then that could be used against him. It’s like Nixon – the coverup is what killed his presidency. So what are we going to be able to think of the Cohen campaign?

Is he a woman-beater (who supposedly held a knife to her throat, according to some reports but which Cohen himself denies)? Or is he the small business owner whom some people actually preferred BECAUSE he does not have a lengthy career as an elected official?

We’re watching Scott in the coming days to try to get an answer to those questions.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Some people on Thursday seemed eager to credit the Chicago Tribune with telling us (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/02/new-questions-in-2005-arrest-of-democratic-lieutenant-governor-nominee-.html) the tale of Scott Lee Cohen. But the Chicago Sun-Times had its share (http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/2029016,scott-cohen-arrest-020410.article) of reporting on the issue, both now and (http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/2029178,CST-NWS-brown04.article) in the past.

The first time I ever heard of Cohen’s campaign was on Labor Day of last year when I was doing some work (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_a06e9c9f-5cca-5be6-a0d0-ac5f3571db08.html) for an area newspaper and a local (for that publication) person made it clear that he was a Cohen backer.