 Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, for instance, is
tying himself closely to President Barack Obama with television ads
and personal appearances -- including a visit to a Chicago breakfast
spot Sunday and a raucous get-out-the-vote rally the night before.
He's pursuing the strategy despite intense voter frustration with
Obama's policies on jobs and health care. And he isn't afraid to go
after Republicans, who he says are unfairly blaming Obama for all
the country's ills.
"They make it sound like he took his hand off the Bible when he
got sworn in and all of a sudden we had record deficits,"
Giannoulias said at an appearance Sunday.
While Giannoulias sometimes focuses on the positive, groups
supporting him still are attacking Republican opponent Mark Kirk.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been running ads
portraying Kirk as a dishonest political insider, someone who cares
more about China than Illinois, because he promotes trade with the
country.
Kirk is positioning himself as the voice of experience in
perilous times, someone who would act as a check on Democratic
excess. America is headed in the wrong direction, he says, and the
results could be disastrous if someone doesn't turn things around.
Meanwhile, groups supporting Kirk are attacking Giannoulias as
shifty and crooked. They point out that his family's bank did
business with criminals before it went under and that one part of a
college savings program lost money during his tenure as Illinois
treasurer.
"Alexi Giannoulias can't be trusted," says an ad by American
Crossroads, a national political group tied to Karl Rove.
While Giannoulias stuck close to Obama during the weekend, Kirk
has been traveling the state with Bill Brady, the Republican
candidate for governor.
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Gubernatorial race
Brady's message is that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is an
incompetent, tax-and-spend liberal. He hits Quinn for proposing to
raise income taxes by one-third and for missteps such as giving
raises to his staff during a budget crisis and granting early
release to some violent prisoners.
"We have suffered enough," one ad says ominously. That's
immediately followed by Brady himself: "Working together, we can fix
our problems and make Illinois great again."
The Bloomington state senator promises, without offering any
details, that he'll be able to solve the state's budget crisis and
create jobs while cutting taxes.
Quinn visited black churches on Chicago's South Side on Sunday
morning, focusing on the positive. He talked about helping people
and told churchgoers that one way to serve the Lord is to serve our
democracy and "vote your conscience."
"The most important thing you can do as governor is to help your
neighbor, so I think you've got to have a governor who really has a
servant's heart. That's what I got," he said outside Apostolic Faith
Church.
But Quinn isn't so generous when it comes to Brady.
He has assailed Brady in debates as a millionaire businessman out
to help the rich while decimating public education and social
services to fix the state's out-of-whack budget. In one of Quinn's
latest campaign ads, ominous music plays as a narrator calls Brady
"wrong and reckless."
[Associated Press;
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS and DEANNA BELLANDI]fs
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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