Progress Illinois

As Capitol Fax noted yesterday, 14th District GOP congressional candidate has started running a negative TV ad against Rep. Bill Foster, hitting him for supporting the Wall Street bailout package.  Yesterday, Foster hit back with a spot that briefly highlights the new "negative attacks" from Oberweis and whacks him on Social Security. Watch it:

As Capitol Fax noted today, 14th District GOP congressional candidate Jim Oberweis appears to have violated his pledge to run a positive campaign with a new negative ad hitting Rep. Bill Foster for his votes on the Wall Street bailout package.  Also of note is a new two-minute radio ad he's running on WLS (and perhaps elsewhere).  The spot is narrated by Oberweis himself, who criticizes the bailout at length while never mentioning Foster's name.  What's interesting is this passage:

OBERWEIS: This plan is a product of everything that's wrong with Washington: the special interest lobbyists, the campaign contributions to favored members of the key committees, the rush to action with too little consideration of alternatives or consequence.  This bailout plan doesn't represent change, it represents more of the same.  

Sound familiar?

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No sooner had I posted the previous item on the Esquire endorsement did I notice a much more relevant media outlet's decision to back Rep. Bill Foster: the Chicago Sun-Times.  From today's editorial:

Our earlier reservations about Foster concerned his style and substance. During a meeting back then with the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board, he struck us as unprepared on many issues, and he spoke softly and tentatively, hardly like an obvious leader. The staunchly conservative Oberweis, in contrast, argued his views forcefully, which we had to respect, even if we didn't always agree. We overlooked his contentious edge.

But much has changed in seven months. We have watched Foster in action and taken a better measure. He knows his stuff, though he remains soft-spoken, and has been effective in Washington.

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We've done our part to point out that the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) did not -- I repeat, did not -- lead to the current economic crisis. But the myth just keeps cropping up in conservative circles. Last Friday, the Daily Herald published a bevy of interviews with suburban congressional candidates, as well as those at the statehouse level. Lo and behold, when asked what steps Congress should take to promote economic recovery, 14th District Republican candidate Jim Oberweis blamed the CRA for all the nation's problems.

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Reader TB pointed out another amusing passage from Chicago Magazine's profile of GOP election shopper Jim Oberweis. This one comes at the very end of the article:

Oberweis resists saying where his breaking point is. The mounting losses and the public sneers do hurt him, Trish Oberweis says, but he seems to view them less as signs than as additional obstacles on his path to inevitable political office. "There was a guy about 130 or 150 years ago who had several losses before he won," he says. "I can't quite remember his name, but he went on to become the president of the United States. His first name was Abraham. What was his last name again?"

Ah, yes. Yet another conservative compares himself to Abraham Lincoln.

Rather than run through all the ways in which Honest Abe would likely disagree with the stances taken by Juvenile Jim, I'll just point one thing out. It's true that Lincoln lost various bids for federal office prior to being elected president in 1860. But before he ever ran for Congress, he served four consecutive terms as an Illinois state legislator. In short, he actually won election to public office at the state level before setting his sights higher. That's more than Oberweis can say for himself.

This month in Chicago Magazine, Ben Goldberger asks a question that many of us have wondered about perennial Republican candidate Jim Oberweis: after so many losses and in the face of unpopularity in his own party, what motivates the man to keep running?

Apparently Oberweis owes some of his sticktoittiveness to the support of his friends, one of whom outlined the ice-cream magnate's campaign strategy for his rematch against Rep. Bill Foster in the 14th District. In doing so, he inadvertently compared Oberweis to something that needs to be "flush[ed]":

"If elected, it is my belief that Jim would be a terrific congressman," said Robert Bonifas, the CEO of Alarm Detection Systems in Aurora and a longtime Oberweis friend and political donor. "Whether he is capable of providing a mental enema to the electorate to flush out the old Jim and instill the new Jim, I don't know."

You ready for that District 14?

Remember how -- following his loss in the 14th District special election in March -- their were murmurs from the highest ranks of the Republican Party in Washington that Jim Oberweis shouldn't again be on the ballot come November? House Minority Leader John Boehner was even reported to have called him "unlikable" and a "terrible candidate." And remember how those murmurs seemed to disappear as quickly as they'd surfaced?

Well, now we know why. From Real Clear Politics:

After the loss in the special election, some members of the Illinois Republican delegation tried to get Oberweis out of the race, according to aides familiar with the discussions. But, said one, [former House Speaker Dennis] Hastert stood by his candidate and "basically roadblocked the entire coup."

"Members of the delegation saw Oberweis as a losing cause and we needed to move him out of their quick," the aide said. Still, the lack of a viable replacement, Oberweis's willingness and ability to spend from his own pocket and Hastert's personal backing saved him for a rematch with Foster in November.

GOP congressional candidate Jim Oberweis' efforts to sweeten his image seem to have taken a literal turn as of late. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out some photos today that apparently show him handing out coupons for Oberweis Dairy ice cream. It appears they were taken at a parade last weekend in the 14th District:

Here's the hit:

“Out of touch and out of ideas, it seems the only thing Jim Oberweis has left to offer voters is a discounted ice cream sundae from his dairy empire,” said Ryan Rudominer, DCCC Midwest Regional Press Secretary. “But, all the ice cream in Illinois can’t hide the fact that voters have rejected Jim Oberweis four times for his long history of deceiving voters and for being out of touch with middle class families.”

The DCCC also used this as an occasion to revisit the fact that the Federal Election Commission fined Jim $21,000 during his 2004 U.S. Senate bid for appearing in an Oberweis Dairy television ad during the campaign. The FEC ruled that it amounted to an illegal corporate contribution.

Jim Oberweis continued his publicity tour yesterday, telling The Courier News editorial board that an image makeover is all he needs to unseat Democratic Rep. Bill Foster in the 14th District this November:

"The opportunity is there," Oberweis said during a visit to The Courier News. "If we can explain to voters where we are on the issues ... I believe I'll win. I do believe my views represent the majority of views in the 14th District. But we didn't do a very good job of communicating our views."

He also lavished blame -- with little evidence -- on Foster, claiming that the Democrats initiated "aggressive attack ads" against him and "used scare tactics" to turn out voters during the special election in March. (Of course, Oberweis himself has no history of using grossly inappropriate or patently false appeals to drum up support.)

He concluded the interview with the understatement of the day:

"I'm an entrepreneur," Oberweis said. "I've started six companies. Not everything I've done has been a success."

For more on Oberweis' "charm" offensive, check out Mose's posts here and here.

In a sign that perennial GOP candidate Jim Oberweis is intent on running again for the 14th Congressional District, the Beacon News reports that he has been calling supporters -- and reporters -- to ask for their thoughts on "what went wrong" during his failed special election campaign:

Since losing the March special election to now-Rep. Bill Foster, Oberweis has been contacting people involved in the race, people who commented on the race, and people [...] who covered the race. He's been meeting with as many of these people as he can, trying to pick their brains and find out where his campaign went off track.

Such an approach is not completely unexpected. The Beacon News writes that "the relentless negativity of his campaign turned a lot of voters off" and we previously noted that part of Oberweis' new campaign strategy involves an image overhaul. Oberweis' new campaign spokesman says that part of their November strategy will be "letting people know who Jim is."

The problem there is that, after his failed four attempts at public office in Illinois, many voters seem to have a pretty good idea "who Jim is." They just don't like what they see.