(Ill. Senate Race) Niecestro Says ‘Flake’ Denied Him Petition Signatures

-By Warner Todd Huston

Conservative businessman Mike Niecestro has been making noise about running for the U.S. Senate against GOP candidate Mark Kirk for at least a year. Even just a few weeks ago he amped up his noise machine to say that he had the ballot petition signatures needed to make a run for the office as an independent.

But yesterday the filing time came and no Niecestro papers were to be seen. He told reporters that one of the operatives that promised him thousands of signatures didn’t even get him a single one. ABC’s Charles Thomas reports that Niecestro said the politician in question is “known as a ‘flake’ in GOP circles.”

This quote raises major concerns about the seriousness of a Niecestro campaign. If Niecestro knew the guy he was relying on to put him over the top in petition signatures was a well-known “flake,” then why did Niecestro rely on him in the first place? If Niecestro was putting all his eggs in a “flake’s” basket, this seriously calls into doubt Niecestro’s planning capabilities, doesn’t it?

As Charles Thomas says, this is good news for center left Republican Mark Kirk. More good news came with the fact that Constitution Party candidate Randy Stufflebeam only turned in 34,000 signatures, likely not enough to beat the inevitable petition challenges he’s bound to face. The rule of thumb is to have at least twice the 25,000 signatures required to get your name on the ballot.

Granted all petitions are assumed valid unless challenged, even if they don’t have enough signatures. If no one challenges, then the petition stands. And that has happened about never in Illinois’ rough and tumble political scene.

At this point it seems unlikely that conservatives and conservative Republicans will have an alternative to Mark Kirk on the 2010 ballot. There is an outside chance that Stufflebeam will squeak through, but not much of one.

Still, there are a passel full of candidates that filed their petitions, 11 in all. Here’s the list:

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

Huston 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. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.

Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.

Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.

He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the 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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(Ill. Senate Race) Niecestro Says ‘Flake’ Denied Him Petition Signatures”

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