-By Warner Todd Huston
In the first week of March I was in Washington DC at a party at the Breitbart embassy situated among the brownstone buildings just behind the U.S. Supreme Court building and I was talking to the National Review’s John Fund about the Illinois primaries. He asked me if Rauner was going to run away with it and I said that Dillard might surprise people and come much closer than anyone expected. Fund scoffed a bit. Turns out I was right.
State Senator Kirk Dillard did, indeed, get a surge in the last weeks of the election over taking the third and fourth place candidates by a long shot and coming within striking distance of Bruce Rauner. Dillard ended up at 38 percent to Rauner’s 40 percent of the vote.
In interviews after last night’s primary Dillard said that the reason he missed it by that much was “money, money, money.” It’s hard to dispute Senator Dillard on this as Rauner outspent all the other candidates due to the millions of his personal fortune he spent on this race.
One could fairly say that Rauner did buy this primary election. But the worrisome thing for Rauner has to be the fact that even with his millions spent he only beat Dillard by a few tiny percentage points. This is a warning note for the general election when he’ll face incumbent Democrat Governor Pat Quinn.
In any case, Rauner will have to define Pat Quinn’s negatives before Quinn defines Rauner’s.
My prediction is that Quinn will beat Rauner as Rauner will be easily painted as a Richie Rich in a state filled with haters of wealth and that, on top of Rauner’s gaffe prone stumbling, will torpedo his campaign. Still, there is a chance that Quinn might lose. But I doubt it.
As to the other statewide race of note, Tom Cross easily took the GOP nomination for Secretary of State beating Bob Grogan in a 57 to 43 percent fight.
For the U.S. Senate, Jim Oberweis beat newcomer Doug Truax fairly handily in a 56 to 44 percent victory.
I hope Doug runs for something again, though. He is a fantastic candidate and he would serve us well in office.
As to several of the races for U.S. Congress, Adam Kinzinger really swamped his tea party-inspired opponent David Hale in the 16th District 78 to 22 percent.
In the 13th District Rodney Davis beat the wonderful Erika Harold 55 to 41 percent despite the Party establishment’s efforts to destroy Harold.
In the 8th District Larry Kaifesh ran away with it (72 to 28 percent) over the troubled Manju Goel campaign.
It is important to note that not one of the incumbent Congressmen (Democrat or Republican) were primaried out of their seat this time out.
For the State Senate, Chris Nybo is back in the running having won his primary for the 24th District beating Dennis Reboletti 59 to 41 percent.
The big fight in the House of Reps was the 81st District where Ron Sandack got in the fight of his political life and this morning the results still weren’t determined with Sandack at 51 percent and challenger Keith Matune at 49 percent. Less than 200 votes separates the two. Sandack will likely be officially declared the winner, though.
But it should be noted that none of the Republican House members that were targeted because of their vote on gay marriage (like Sandack above) lost. For good or ill, this is an important point for the GOP in Illinois and might free the party to just accept gay marriage and go on to other issues.
Still, a few notable races aside, by and large the most offices up for election in this primary had no challengers to the incumbents.
(See the AP’s election results here)
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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
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 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, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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