-By Warner Todd Huston
The folks at ChampionNews.net have endorsed Jim Dodge for Illinois Comptroller. And they aren’t shy about saying what they think of the other two candidates, William Kelly and Judy Baar Topinka, either: they’re “clowns.”
ChampionNews.net is a conservative organization out of Chicago run by long-time area conservative Jack Roeser. Roeser ran for Gov. as an outsider Republican and got 26% of the vote in 1994. That was amazing considering the lock on power the good old boy GOP network had back in those days (and still does). Today Roeser is a businessman employing over 500 employees and a conservative activist. Additionally, the ChampionNews folks have a Sunday morning radio show on Chicago’s WIND AM 560 radio from 8AM to 9AM.
The folks at CN.Net have confidently endorsed Jim Dodge for Comptroller saying he is the “only credible and corruption free candidate.” But their endorsement of Dodge is more an indictment of William Kelly and Judy Baar Topinka. In the posting headlined “The race for Illinois Comptroller: Candidate vetting for dummies,” they pulverize Mr. Kelly’s campaign. They promise to do the same to Topinka in a future posting.
The folks at CN.Net are plainly not fans of Mr. Kelly’s TV work calling the shows “inane” and they say that his past radio work was “the radio version of a train wreck.” They paint Kelly as an “unserious person running for a very serious office.” But all that isn’t want is interesting to me in their piece, really. No what is interesting is this:
One of his gimmicks a couple of years ago was the website “Rebuild Illinois” which described itself as:
“a political action committee organized for the purpose of building a statewide apparatus to help rid Illinois of corrupt leaders and practices.”
This writer could find no PAC registered with the State Board of Elections, and has seen no evidence anywhere that this silly thing has accomplished anything but taking up space in cyberspace.
Now this is an interesting point that borders on a sort of fraud on Kelly’s part. If he has sold this thing as a political action committee, a PAC, but never registered it as such, then it isn’t really a PAC and Kelly shouldn’t say so. A political action committee is a particular legal entity that has meaning. It isn’t just a few general words to be lumped together to describe a personal campaign to further an ideology.
If just anyone could say they had a “political action committee” then every blogger is a PAC, everyone with an opinion can say they are a PAC. But that isn’t the case. A PAC is a legal thing that you have to file papers for with the state and/or federal government
This is a pretty serious charge that Kelly is misleading people about what his website and effort to build that “statewide apparatus, etc.” is. And if there are no filings with the government than it seems pretty sure that Kelly is making more of his website than it is by calling it a PAC.
Anyway, there is no doubt where the CN.Net folks stand on both Kelly and Judy Baar Topinka.
See ChampionNews.net Dodge endorsement.
And Jim Dodge’s website is: www.jimdodge2010.com.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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