Progress Illinois

The latest from the 2010 U.S. Senate race ...

Yesterday afternoon, Rep. Jan Schakowksy announced her endorsement of State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in the Democratic primary.  When they rolled out Rep. Luis Gutierrez' backing a week earlier, the campaign used the occasion to highlight Giannoulias' position on the need for stronger financial regulation.  This time, the topic was health care.  From a release:

"Alexi Giannoulias is the best candidate to retain President Obama's seat because he has the courage to take on powerful interests and stand up for Illinois families," Schakowsky said. "He supports health-insurance reform that will reign in the soaring costs of premiums and protect families from losing coverage during these difficult economic times." [...]

"Jan and I believe in a simple proposition: if you pay your premiums your insurance company should cover you - no exceptions, no caps, no limits," Giannoulias said. "Mark Kirk disagrees. He believes in protecting insurance companies, not protecting people."

Giannoulias has now racked up endorsements from five of the state's congressional Democrats (Reps. Bill Foster, Mike Quigley, and Phil Hare are also supporting him). Meanwhile, Cheryle Jackson is the only other candidate in the race to receive backing from members of Congress (Reps. Bobby Rush and Danny Davis).  

Elsewhere on Sunday, Giannoulias skipped a debate held in Rockford, which Jackson, David Hoffman, and Jacob Meister all attended.  ABC 7 has a report on their comments regarding Afghanistan. (All three "expressed deep doubts ... about sending more troops.) 

In other news, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a clever web ad today hitting GOP frontrunner Mark Kirk for his shifting positions on Sarah Palin. Watch it:

And in a blog post on Friday, Gianoullias campaign manager Tom Bowen notes that Kirk's latest poll was conducted on a single day and not handled by his campaign pollster:

So, if you're releasing a one-day sample poll that is known to be unreliable, you juice it by running it on November 3rd and it's not done by your real pollster, how accurate can it be?  My guess is that he's trying to distract from the real numbers in this race, which look a lot more like the ones we released.

Jackson appeared on Fox Chicago Sunday over the weekend, where she continued to cast herself as "a regular everyday person" and repeatedly emphasized her belief in the need to support small businesses (scroll down for the full video).  When asked about Giannoulias' polling lead, she responded: "I think the question is: Why hasn't he locked it up by now, being in the race six months?"  At one point, co-host Jack Conaty asked her whether she supported sending more troops to Afghanistan.  Jackson's answer was pretty shaky, leading him to end the segment with this quip, "We're going to give you an exit strategy." (We'll add the video if and when Fox Chicago posts it to their website.)

Hoffman also hit the airwaves, showing up on ABC 7's Newsviews yesterday (scroll down for the full video).  He continued to pitch himself as the candidate least likely to attract corruption-related attacks from the GOP in the general election:

HOFFMAN: There is no question that it is going to be a risky year for Democrats for a variety of reasons.  I think the press has been very consistent about this: that there are vulnerabilities that are very strong on the Democratic side.  And the main reason is the corruption scandals: the Blagojevich issue and others.  And what people have been saying is that we need a nominee in the Senate ... who just takes the corruption issue off the table.

It should be clear to people that, whatever Republicans want to say, they won't be able to talk about corruption or ethics issues or tie me in any way to Blagojevich or Rezko. I just take those off the table.  I have no connections to them and I've been a leader in helping to fight against corruption.

This argument is quite reminiscent of the case made by Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.  She incessantly warned that Barack Obama's connections to Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers and Jeramiah Wright would give the Republicans far too much ammunition in the general election.  We all know how that turned out ...

Finally, late last week, Meister released his policy platform.  You can read it below:

UPDATE (5:30 p.m.): Here's the full video of Jackson's WFLD appearance:

And here's the full video of Hoffman's ABC 7 video:

Full Disclosure: The SEIU Illinois State Council, which sponsors this website, has endorsed Alexi Giannoulias in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.