 Obama and former President Bill Clinton will be in Chicago this week
to support Democrats Alexi Giannoulias, who is in a razor-tight
Senate race against Republican congressman Mark Kirk, and Gov. Pat
Quinn, also locked in a close race with his GOP challenger.Kirk,
who touted the backing of some black ministers on Monday, is getting
a financial boost from two groups backed by GOP guru Karl Rove. The
groups have spent about $4.6 million on the race and helped finance
ads against Giannoulias, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a
nonpartisan Washington-based watchdog group that tracks campaign
finance numbers.
Kirk was scheduled to join more than a dozen other Republican
candidates Monday, including Quinn's challenger, state Sen. Bill
Brady of Bloomington, at a rally sponsored by a national
organization of Jewish Republicans.
Democrats have more work to do than Republicans to energize their
base, but both sides need to sway independent and swing voters, said
Kent Redfield, a professor emeritus of politics at the University of
Illinois Springfield.
While Republicans are charged up ideologically, some Democrats
aren't happy with Obama because they've been hurt by the slumping
economy, are dissatisfied with his progress on gay rights or think
he settled for too little change in health care reform, Redfield
said.
"It's kind of finishing the sale with the undecideds, the
moderates and making sure the true believers get to the polls," he
said.
The candidates are doing their part.
Kirk, a five-term congressman from Chicago's northern suburbs,
worked the crowds at Northwestern and Northern Illinois University
football games over the weekend. Giannoulias, the Illinois state
treasurer, attended a more traditional get-out-the-vote rally in
Chicago.
"We need people to come out and vote. It's such an incredibly,
incredibly important election," he said.
Giannoulias, who said he's filling his schedule with voter
rallies, can use all the attention he can get. Kirk is heading into
the final weeks of the campaign with four times as much money to
spend, despite Giannoulias' fundraising help from Obama.
Kirk had $4.4 million available after the quarter that ended
Sept. 30, compared Giannoulias’ less than $1.2 million. Since then,
the White House has given more help to Giannoulias, with fundraising
visits this month by both the president and first lady Michelle
Obama.
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Giannoulias will get another high-profile boost when Clinton
visits Chicago on Tuesday, and Obama is scheduled to come back
Saturday.
Two polls this week show Kirk with a slight edge over Giannoulias
in a race that would be an embarrassing loss for Democrats -- though
both candidates have had their share of struggles this campaign.
Kirk has admitted embellishing aspects of his military service,
while Giannoulias has had to deal with the fallout of the failure
earlier this year of his family's Chicago bank.
In the governor's race, Quinn and Brady made their pitch to black
voters over the weekend. Both spoke at a massive church on Chicago's
South Side. U.S. census figures show nearly 15 percent of Illinois'
13 million people are black, with the majority of them living in
Cook County, home to Chicago.
Brady is scheduled to appear later this week at a rally in
suburban Chicago with Republican governors from Louisiana,
Mississippi and Virginia.
Quinn, the former lieutenant governor, is trying to win a full
term to the job he inherited in January 2009, when former Gov. Rod
Blagojevich was removed from office.
Brady has flatly rejected raising the income tax, while Quinn has
proposed a 1 percentage point increase for education as the state
struggles with a $13 billion deficit.
[Associated Press;
By DEANNA BELLANDI]
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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