EXTRA: It will be interesting to see who takes Latino vote come Tuesday

Much of the political attention to be paid next week to the Latino share of the electorate likely will go toward Florida to see if that state’s significant Cubano population will go for hometown boy Marco Rubio, or will dump him for Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders paired up with Jesus Garcia

But in Illinois, we’ll also have to see how things turn out. Not that many Latinos (who comprise just over a quarter of Chicago’s population) will care much about Trump or Rubio or Ted Cruz or any of those Republican goofs.

HERE, IT WILL be a battle to see how Latinos turn out and who on the Democratic side will they care about.

Will Hillary Clinton win Illinois because she’s able to keep a sizable share of the Latino voters who backed her in so many past campaigns (including in 2008 for president. If it had been up to Latino voters, Hillary would be finishing her eight years in office – and we’d have never given Barack Obama much thought).

Or can Bernie Sanders manage to swipe Latino voters away from Hillary? Will he manage to convince Latinos that Hillary is way too comfortable with the Wall Street types? And that the only ones of us who’d vote for Hillary have some sort of self-hatred streak in them?

Except for those few Latinos (I’ve met a couple) who seriously plan to cast ballots for Trump himself! Talk about knuckleheads.

I GOT REMINDED of this in my mail – a campaign flyer reminding me that the senator from Vermont is also the child of immigrants who had to work his way up through life.

Sanders and the other Jesus

And also made sure to include photographs taken from that Chicago appearance Sanders made with Cook County Board member (and failed mayoral candidate) Jesus Garcia. Not that we need any wisecracks now about those fliers touting comparisons between Sanders and the son of God himself.

They do remind us that there’s at least one Mexican immigrant who’d rather see Sanders as president compared to the return of the House of Clinton to the White House. While subtly pleading for more Latinos to join on board.

CRUZ: GOP establishment fave?

It might get a few votes.  But I’m still wondering how many Latinos who take the time to be politically aware are so anxious to be a part of the establishment that the idea of the Socialist label will be too much for them to contemplate.

EVEN IF THEY’RE the types like my late grandparents who worked in factory jobs and weren’t unfamiliar with the concept of paying union dues.

We have one more week to go before all of this becomes a moot point, and I have to admit that the concept of increased Latino political empowerment does cause me to chuckle at the thought of the Governor’s Dinner to be held Friday at the Palmer House Hilton.

The event is meant to be a fundraiser to back Republican Party campaign efforts in Illinois, and all the presidential dreamers were invited. Thus far, the only one to accept is Cruz. (Trump will be busy with his University of Illinois-Chicago rally that day).

Cruz (Cuban on his father’s side of the family) is expected to “give remarks” at the GOP event, and could be the focus of the Republican elite who bother to pay for their plates. While the bulk of Latinos are more likely to take Sanders seriously than Cruz.

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Is this cheap shot deserved?

I kind of feel sorry for Republican gubernatorial nominee William Brady, who on Friday got dumped on because of the boorish behavior of somebody who ranks so far beneath him on the political evolutionary scale that it is hard to believe they’re even of the same species.

That is how low the concept of a Chicago Republican is. Nobody within the party pays them much mind. Democrats rarely bother to attack them, because it would give them more attention than they’re worth.

YET BRADY WAS put in the position of having to try to defend himself because of a Chicago GOPer who it seems likes to get a little handsy whenever he is around women.

Several female officials, including state Sen. Iris Martinez, D-Chicago, and state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, held their own press conference on Friday at the Democratic Party offices downtown to demand that the state senator from Bloomington who is running for governor in the Nov. 2 elections answer for this situation which he probably didn’t know a thing about.

So there is a part of me who wants to think I’m being high-minded and idealistic by thinking that Democrats are wrong to try to make this issue about the gubernatorial campaign.

It just seems to me that any action by a Chicago Republican is so out of the party’s mainstream (so far off their radar screen) as to be irrelevant.

WHEN I READ The statement issued by the women who went on the attack against Brady, I see it as the tactical move that it is – trying to deflect much of the pompous rhetoric we have heard and will continue to hear for the next three months about how corrupt all Democratic Party loyalists are.

“After two governors who betrayed the public trust, Illinois cannot afford a repeat of the problems of the past,” the women said. “Women and all voters should be concerned that a cover up of this magnitude was perpetuated by Illinois Republicans.”

So what is at stake here, aside from these public officials trying to force a report into the campaign mindset that has bopped about various websites and got some serious attention from the Huffington Post site, but was in danger of turning into something obscure that only the most pathetic of Internet geeks would know about.

The former president of Chicago Young Republicans, a person named Jeremy Rose, wound up having to give up his positions of authority (he was a director for the Cook County Republicans at one point) when it was learned that a complaint existed that claimed he couldn’t keep his hands off a woman he met at a party function back in 2009.

THE WOMAN GAVE the Huffington Post site an e-mail containing details of her memories of being with Rose that night, but she does not seem to want to pursue this issue much further. I don’t know her name, and personally I don’t care enough about this incident to try to find it out.

Some people would argue that somebody acted like a goof, got caught, and got a punishment. They would claim that the Democrats are now trying to exploit this issue for their own gain. That literally is the tactic employed by state Republican Chairman Pat Brady, who came out with his own response to the women by saying, “this is a political stunt straight out of the Democrats’ playbook,” adding, “this is being doen at the expense of a young woman (who) … believes that this issue has been dealt with appropriately in the manner in which she requested and the issue is resolved.”

Literally, that statement is true, except for the part about the Democrats having a playbook that includes this type of tactic. This kind of cheap stunt is included in the “playbook” of any campaign that wants to do more than fight the good fight in going down to defeat.

Which ultimately is why I can’t feel too sorry for Bill Brady for having these female politicos try to bring his name into the mess, which by the way was avoided by having Pat Brady (no relation) do the actual responding.

BILL GETS TO remain above the fray, except for those moments when he decides it is worth getting trashy in dishing out dirt against opponent Pat Quinn, or the Democrats in general if it suits his political needs on that particular day.

Friday becomes one of those days that reminds me that there is a certain sordidness to the act of political campaigning. There is a degree to which no one should listen to literally to any rhetoric that comes from any campaign, because there is a certain spin to it all.

We got a bit of Democratic spin, which makes up for much of the Republican spin that we have heard for the past few months. This will be a back-and-forth process carrying us all the way to Nov. 3.

That is the “day after” Election Day when we (hopefully) will know the victors, who will then get to write their version and have it recorded as “history.” Except for the Brady campaign, which reportedly this week tried having their people re-write the Wikipedia entry about Brady in ways meant to eliminate the impresson that anyone ever disagreed with him about issues.

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