EXTRA: A bizarre little twist

Could we be seeing the concept of “state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago” once again in the near future?

SMITH: Will he be back?

I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that the political powers-that-be on the West Side have picked a replacement to finish out the rest of Smith’s term – which runs through January.

EDDIE WINTERS, WHOSE career is as a Chicago police officer who has run token campaigns for the Legislature, was picked to be the Illinois House 10^th District state representative. Not that it’s going to take up much of his time.

He’ll have to be in Springfield come November when the General Assembly reconvenes for a couple of weeks for the fall veto session. Then, he’ll have to show up in January for the last couple of days of the current legislative session.

Then he gets to go back home, and will be able to add the line to his resume that he was an Illinois state representative – albeit one that no one will remember years from now.

What is strange about this is the fact that this is the campaign where Democrats in the district are throwing their backing behind an independent candidate to try to keep Smith from winning re-election on Nov. 6 – just three months after he became the first legislator to be expelled in more than a century.

THAT CANDIDATE IS Lance Tyson (a former aide to Todd Stroger when he was Cook County Board president), and it would have seemed ever-so-logical for Tyson to be picked as the replacement legislator so as to give him the image of incumbency.

Any advantage that would allow Tyson to actually gain votes from people in a district that goes knee-jerk Democrat (and likely won’t put much thought into the idea of Smith being too tainted by the federal indictment pending against him to get their vote) would have seemed natural. And yes, the only token Republican was too weak to even stay on the ballot.

Besides, picking the desired replacement to complete a predecessor’s term is the way it often gets done in Springfield. When Constance Howard resigned her seat months before her planned retirement, it was a no-brainer that Elsie Sims would get to add the “state Rep.” and “D-Chicago” to his name five months earlier than he originally anticipated.

Could there be some serious hesitation about Tyson getting too comfortable? Or could it be clueless political operatives who aren’t too clear about what they’re doing?

WHICH WOULD MAKE me wonder if they’re really up to the task of letting the voters of the legislative district to vote a nearly-straight Democratic ticket on Nov. 6 – all except for the state representative candidate?

All in all, it makes me incredibly pleased to be of South Side origins, rather than coming from the West Side. It would be headache-inducing for me, at least, to have to cope with this voter decision personally.

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Springfield-based political people should follow the lead of “Mr. Burns”

Will the entrenched (and sometimes juvenile) culture of the Statehouse Scene be able to accept that one of their "freshmen" members has a good idea?

To fans of the long-running animated television series “The Simpsons,” the idea that Mr. Burns is a force for good would be an absurd idea. But as it turns out, the Illinois version of Springfield has a “Mr. Burns” who may have a truly worthwhile idea with regards to the picking of a successor to Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, we’re talking about Will Burns, not C. Montgomery. Burns is a newcomer to the Illinois House of Representatives (he takes his seat as a freshman legislator come next month) who says he wants to make one of his first actions in the General Assembly to sponsor a bill changing the way that Illinois picks replacements for the state’s senate seat.

UNDER HIS PROPOSAL, Burns would have the Illinois governor continue to make his selection for who he thinks should represent Illinois in the Senate.

But instead of having the authority to make the pick all by himself, the governor’s selection would then have to be submitted to both the Illinois House and the state Senate for confirmation.

In short, every single one of the 177 members of the General Assembly would have a say, and would get to represent the interests of their constituents (some of whom are clamoring for partisan reasons that Illinois should conduct a special election in order to pick a replacement for Obama – who resigned the post more than a month ago.

Variations on this idea had been suggested by political observers, although Burns is the first person of any authority to publicly take the idea seriously.

I LIKE THE idea because it would allow Illinois to move forward with the selection of an Obama replacement, regardless of what happens to Gov. Rod Blagojevich or how long his legal travails stretch out.

Should it turn out that Blagojevich has a say, he would have to make concessions to come up with a candidate who would truly be acceptable to a majority of the General Assembly. Because in the political climate that exists now, I have no doubt that the Illinois Legislature would veto any proposed senator whose candidacy would do nothing more than serve Blagojevich’s personal interests.

So much for the idea that Blagojevich would pick retiring Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, for a seat in the U.S. Senate so as to create the concept of a political ally amidst a sea of political people across Illinois who can’t stand the man.

I will always be convinced that Jones would have been the recipient of Blagojevich’s “Christmas present” to finish the remaining two years of Obama’s term in the Senate.

TREATING THE ISSUE of an Obama replacement similar to how the federal government allows a president to pick Supreme Court justices who still need the confirmation of the U.S. Senate is good. In fact, it might be worthwhile to make the change permanent – instead of just a one-time measure for an Obama replacement, which is the way Burns says he would structure his bill.

If it turns out that Illinois gets stuck with a political hack for the next two years, all of the Statehouse crew would have to share in the blame. Blagojevich would not be in the position of using the Senate appointment process for his own benefit – which is what caused the U.S. attorney’s office to rush their criminal case and seek a criminal complaint against him earlier this month.

For what it is worth, Burns is not just another rookie in the General Assembly.

Burns is the new state representative from Obama’s home Hyde Park neighborhood, and he also served as a campaign manager during one of Obama’s bids for the state Senate and also was chief of staff to Jones and the Illinois Senate as a whole.

THIS IS A newcomer who understands the political process in Springfield and also has a feel for the man whom any new Illinois senator would replace in Washington.

Despite that background, people should not get too hung up on Will Burns himself. Because if by chance the General Assembly does go so far as to adopt this idea for picking an Obama replacement, there’s no way Burns will be the bill’s sponsor.

The mindset surrounding the Statehouse Scene would never allow a new legislator to sponsor a bill of such magnitude. Freshmen legislators are the ones who get heckled and harassed during debate on their first bill, and have every single one of their colleagues vote against it – only to have that 0-117 vote turn suddenly into a vote of support at the last possible second.

If it sounds like the General Assembly reeks of a high school mentality at times, it does. The only thing that’s missing is a prom queen.

THE PROBLEM WITH that attitude is that some legislators will refuse to take the Burns proposal seriously, just because he’s a freshman.

Others will only go along if someone of higher stature were to sponsor the bill. In fact, it often happens that when a newcomer comes up with a worthwhile idea, someone else will copy his proposal onto their own bill, and the General Assembly will then consider dueling measures on the same idea.

Personally, I don’t care who gets credit. All I know is that Burns has latched onto a good idea. It would be nice if someone in the General Assembly were to follow up on the idea and guide it through the legislative process to become law – the sooner the better.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: A newcomer to the Illinois Legislature would like to come up with a method for the state (http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=31125) to progress beyond the current political stalemate.

Is Will Burns truly a political intellectual, or (http://www.friendsofwillburns.com/) is he merely an opportunist who realizes that this measure will make him stand out amidst the other newcomers to the General Assembly?

A University of Chicago education apparently has not knocked all common sense out of (http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2008/10/24/uncommon-interview-with-will-burns) Burns’ mind.

Replacement lists too parochial to take seriously

They already have been popping up in newspapers and broadcast news programs, and they will continue to occur throughout the campaign season.

“They,” in this case, are stories that speculate about future political maneuvering that will take place, if such and such a politician is successful in his or her bid to win a higher office.

SPECIFICALLY, WE IN Chicago are subjected to the stories of who would replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, should he actually succeed in being elected the 44th president of the United States.

For those of us who live in parts of Chicago or Illinois near the Great Land of Hoosiers, we get their overflow stories, most of which are trying to tout the concept that a President Hillary R. Clinton would want Evan Bayh – the former Indiana governor and current senator from Indiana who also is the son of a long-time Hoosier politico – to be her running mate.

I’m going to reveal one of the great “secrets” of political reporting – such stories are a crock. They fill newspaper space or broadcast airtime, and they appear to be filled with substance. But they are little more than lucky guesses. Hoosier voters would like to believe that this is the face of the next vice president. Photograph provided by U.S. Senate.

Should it turn out that Bayh does become vice president under President Clinton the second, or that Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes does move up to the U.S. Senate to be an ally of President Obama, there will be reporters who will tout out their yellowing clips as evidence that they somehow knew way before everybody else what was going to happen.

IN REALITY, NOBODY knows how these maneuvers are going to work out because it is way too premature to be seriously expending brainpower on such issues. You could come up with just as accurate a guess on how future political succession would take place by merely throwing a dart at a board with the names of various politicos written on scraps of paper.

Whoever you hit is the person you can say you’re predicting for greater things (or maybe you want to use your dart points to “kill” the political aspirations of government officials you can’t stand).

What got me going on this topic was the big story in Monday’s editions of the Munster, Ind.-based Times of Northwest Indiana, which wants to think that one of the next great politicos in this country will be someone they have been covering for years.

Their story touted the work Bayh has done to push the Clinton campaign across Indiana, with the possible end result that Clinton (not Obama) would actually win the Hoosier primary on May 6 (deadline for Indianans to register to vote was Monday). His reward, the newspaper would like us to think, would be the V-P slot for the next four years.

TO HIS CREDIT, Bayh isn’t trying to claim the political prize (which really requires nothing more than a pulse, on the off-chance that the president ceases to have one). He told the Times, “She should be totally focused on winning the nomination. It would be wrong for me to even speculate about anything like that.”

Of course, Bayh as V-P would be a moot point should Obama manage to keep his delegate and popular vote leads and ultimately go on to claim the presidential nomination for himself at the Democratic convention in Denver.

But a “President Obama” would create his own set of political speculations – who would replace him in the U.S. Senate?

A Senate seat in Washington is one of the top political prizes for a government official whose focus is on Illinois (Chicago mayor and Illinois governor are the others). Getting the right to finish up the last two years of Obama’s term in office and go into the next election cycle as an incumbent would be a significant career boost.

UNDER STATE LAW, the Illinois governor gets to pick the successor – and there are no set guidelines he must follow for picking an Obama replacement. He can go for whomever he wants, for whatever reason he thinks is worthy.

I’ve heard the speculation of Hynes or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan getting picked by Blagojevich. Both hold high-enough ranking posts within Illinois government that tabbing either for the U.S. Senate would not look like a Blagojevich joke, and it also would have the bonus for Blagojevich of eliminating potential rivals for the gubernatorial post.

Particularly in the case of Madigan, that would be a factor, since political observers have long speculated that the reason her father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, groomed her so carefully for political office (an Illinois Senate seat for a few years, then the attorney general’s post) was so she could someday be Illinois governor.

Of course, there’s always the possibility of promoting an Illinois politician who already is a part of the Washington scene – one of the members of the House of Representatives could be shifted over to the Senate, which would then lead to speculation about who would be the new U.S. House member from Illinois.

REPS JESSE JACKSON Jr. and Jan Schakowsky (the latter of whom knows Blagojevich from when both served in the Illinois House in the mid-1990s) are considered the favorites there. Either would make a qualified senator, and the advantage of a Jackson selection is that picking the namesake son of the civil rights leader would stir up the anger of many a social conservative who would see it as the ultimate evidence that Illinois politics is little more than a sewer.

If I had to pick who would get sent to Washington to replace a “Senator Obama,” I literally would put those names on the dartboard, then start throwing with my awkward right-handed motion that quickly reveals why I never got to pitch for the New York Yankees.

It really is too soon to seriously speculate about this. We really have to wait until after the nominating convention in August before we can seriously guess who might get picked. Anything before then is just a wild guess.

In fact, there’s only one possibility that has come up in recent weeks that I will go so far as to comment on definitively – anybody who seriously thinks that Rod Blagojevich is going to pick himself to serve as U.S. senator from Illinois is delusional – quite possibly from not taking their medications.

IT’S TRUE THAT Blagojevich theoretically could pick himself. But it makes no sense.

A post in Washington, to the Chicago political mentality, is a move “up and out.” In other words, it is a “promotion” to a political world that has little to no say in the day to day operations of Chicago politics. These are the reason why Rod Blagojevich would never seriously consider appointing himself to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, should Obama succeed in winning election to the presidency. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

Why would a governor give up his post to move to Washington? He already ranks among the Top Four politicos (currently, Richard M. Daley, Richard Durbin, Obama and Blagojevich – all Democrats) from Illinois.

There’s also the fact that Blagojevich has already done the “D.C. Scene.” He served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives from Chicago’s Northwest Side, and gave up any chance of moving up in the Congressional hierarchy in large part because he and wife Patricia wanted to live in Chicago.

BLAGOJEVICH ALREADY GETS enough grief for being the governor who doesn’t want to live with his family in Springfield – even though the state provides a fully funded and staffed residence for its governor.

There’s no way he could ever get away with being the Senator who won’t live in the District of Columbia. And his wife (the daughter of Chicago alderman Dick Mell) would kill him if he seriously tried to move the family to the D.C. suburbs.

So, sorry folks. For those of you who despise Blagojevich and were hoping an Obama victory could be an excuse to get rid of him, it just won’t work that way. You have a better chance of getting a “recall” election for Blagojevich, than you do of someday seeing “Senator Rod.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., already has a place to live (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/880337,CST-NWS-senate06.article) in Washington, unlike Lisa Madigan or Rod Blagojevich. She’d like to move up to the Senate.

Some Hoosier political observers would like to see if they can reduce Birch Bayh from a long-time D.C. powerbroker in his own right to nothing more than the father (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/04/07/news/top_news/doca7a5ca844213521486257423007ec4a5.txt) of a vice president.

Rod Blagojevich wasn’t exactly the most anonymous politico Chicagoans have sent to Congress (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/b000518/), but he wasn’t exactly a Washington power hitter either.