Can ‘da Coach’ jolt Harold to victory?

The phenomenon of Erika Harold as a political entity has taken on another chapter – she has the backing of one-time Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka.

HAROLD: Will she ever win again?

As though the only Bears coach to lead the team to a Super Bowl victory is the key to the one-time Miss America (back in 2003) actually achieving her dream of becoming an elected official of sorts.

FOR THERE ARE now radio spots that will air on central Illinois radio stations in which Ditka tells us that Harold deserves to be in Congress because she’s a leader, a conservative and “tough.” Coming right before her national appearance Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, to be held in Washington.

Whether that’s enough to give her a victory in the March 18 Republican primary is questionable; she’s lagging behind the incumbent Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., has no campaign cash to note and has a political establishment that wishes she’d wither away.

That’s usually what political establishments think of anyone who dares to challenge an incumbent – even one as un-noteworthy as Davis.

The reality is that Harold is the Urbana native who stayed at home to attend the University of Illinois doesn’t fit into the vision that the local Republican Party has. Which is why she may have enthusiasm, an appealing personality and ambition.

BUT SHE’S PROBABLY never going to be the favorite of the GOP officials from the greater Champaign-Urbana and Danville area. She’s always going to be the candidate looking in to the party, rather than being a part of it.

Even if ideologically, she has given a consistent spewing of rhetoric on social issues consistent with the modern-day Republican Party. She’s the type who could easily apply the “Republican In Name Only” label to others – except that those people are being motivated by the GOP establishment to think of Harold herself as the RINO.

DITKA: Is he really a political maker?

A part of me has always wondered if Harold would have a better chance of political success if she were running for office in the Chicago area. The fact that she’s a black woman would not be seen as being as much of an aberration as it seems to be perceived in a central Illinois congressional district.

Of course, her talk about abortion (she opposes it strongly, which is why the Family PAC activist group is one of the few GOP-leaning organizations to endorse her) and other social issues would make her the misfit here.

WHICH IS WHY after living a few years in Chicago (working for law firms – she is a Harvard Law School graduate, paid for with all that Miss America scholarship money), she returned to her native central Illinois.

She’s not about to renounce her beliefs. But some don’t see her as the type of person they want representing him. I’m stating that mildly. One ought to check out the rancid (and anonymous) rhetoric that gets spewed on various conservative-focused websites to see just how hostile our society can be.

I don’t know that Harold will ever get elected to public office. She seems to be “ahead of her time” no matter which part of Illinois she were to try to run for. I do have to admit to having a bit of respect for her for choosing to run from her home community – knowing full well she’d have to face the “outsider” label if she tried to become a Chicagoan and suddenly adopt the “D” label.

DAVIS: The preferred Rep.

Then again, she’s getting treated like an outsider by the political operatives in her home community.

ALTHOUGH AT LEAST if she were running in the Chicago area, the fact that the Chicago Tribune chose to endorse her might mean something.

As would the fact that Ditka (the man who fantasizes he could have stopped the Barack Obama phenomenon if HE had run for the U.S. Senate back in 2004) wants Erika to go to Washington.

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Somebody’s delusional, but whom?

I know that here in Illinois, there are those who are convinced Gov. Pat Quinn is doomed – his approval ratings are so low there’s just no way he can win.

QUINN: Winner by default?

Heck, they’re convinced no matter who takes the Republican primary come March, THAT’S the next governor of Illinois.

OF COURSE, THERE also are those who think the GOP is so chaotic and unorganized that no matter who wins the primary, that’s the loser of the November 2014 general election.

There are those who will tell you in all sincerity that the lack of a presence by Barack Obama himself on the 2014 election cycle ballot means many would-be Democrats just won’t care enough to turn out to cast ballots.

Particularly here in Illinois, where the “Top of the Ticket” will mean voting yet again for Richard Durbin and Quinn himself – the man who supposedly only has the approval of about one quarter of Illinois voters.

But then, there are those who are convinced that the partisan antics taking place these days in the District of Columbia are so appalling to the electorate that many of us just won’t want to cast ballots for anybody carrying the Republican label.

ESPECIALLY IN A place like Illinois, where the two-thirds of the population that lives in urban areas overwhelms the other third in rural areas who see red at the thought that electoral maps don’t depict Illinois as “red.”

So it was with some interest that I learned of the new poll by MoveOn.org Political Action – the one that implies the House of Representatives is seriously likely to flip over to Democratic Party control.

The poll did a survey of 24 House districts currently represented by Republican officials, and found that the discontent is enough that only three of them are safe in next year’s election cycle.

OBAMA: Not on ballot, will his fans vote?

In fact, in 17 of them, people are willing to say they’d vote for a Democrat (any Democrat) instead of the incumbent.

AMONG THOSE DISTRICTS is the Illinois 13^th in central Illinois, the one represented by Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill. That’s the campaign where people are mostly paying attention because he’s being challenged in the GOP primary by the one-time Miss America – Erika Harold.

Although if this poll is any indication, people perhaps should be paying more attention to the mass of Democrats who are interested in taking the House seat. That person might be the one who gets the actual general election vote.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said it considers this particular district (where the Democratic votes from Champaign and the St. Louis area typically are outweighed by the rural swath of central Illinois that connects the two) a priority in their efforts to regain the House.

DAVIS: Doomed to defeat?

As far as whether or not the House of Representatives goes toward the Democratic Party (thereby eliminating the knee-jerk opposition that President Barack Obama faces on every issue), I’d say there’s still a lot of time for things to change.

WHO KNOWS WHAT will happen next November?

What intrigues me is the degree to which this partisan wailing taking place these days continues to impact the future. Will we literally see a backlash against Republicans of all kinds on account of the nonsense being spewed today?

I would find it incredibly amusing if it turned out that this rhetoric literally did stir up the Chicago Democratic vote to turn out to the point that it overwhelms the rural Illinois vote that probably is having delusions these days of being large enough to depose Pat Quinn.

Is the rhetoric enough to overcome a “26 percent” approval rating – which isn’t all that out-of-line with what many government officials get these days; we don’t like any of these people!

A LOT OF people like to say that Obama and Quinn have been extremely lucky in their electoral campaigns – overcoming obstacles that would have toppled many campaigns.

But maybe it’s just that they had weaker opponents – and the fact that we as a society don’t care for the conservative ideologues (they think they’re Sally Field, winning the Oscar for “Places in the Heart”) to the degree that the ideologues think we do.

Then again, I don’t think we like, really like, any political people these days. We vote for the least offensive option.

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