Last Tuesday, I engaged in the civic-minded and (for a Republican) futile act of voting in the Illinois Fifth Congressional District primary. My former Congressman, Rahm Emanuel, has gone off to save the country from the greatest threat facing it, viz., Rush Limbaugh, so it’s necessary to select his successor. It will, of course, be a Democrat. Republicans have held the seat for four years out of the past 110. (As an historical aside, the very first Fifth District Representative, elected in 1842, was Stephen A. Douglas.) Last time out, the GOP candidate advertised himself as “LIBERAL”, with “Republican” in tiny type. He got 22 percent of the vote.
When I arrived at the polls, shortly before 8:00 a.m., I found eerie emptiness. Two precincts share the polling place. I was the only voter for either. In the past, there has usually been a short line even for a primary. The wait last November was half an hour. Tuesday’s apathy (a turnout under 15 percent of registered voters) defied the fact that twelve Democrats were running, several of them locally prominent politicians who had advertised heavily.
The first place finisher (12,100 votes) was Mike Quigley, a Cook County commissioner best known for having quarreled with the Stroger dynasty, second only to the Daleys as fons et origo of Chicagoland corruption. That’s more than Barack Obama ever did. I have no reason to think that Mr. Quigley will be anything other than a down-the-line Pelosi loyalist. Still, I’d rather be represented by him than by the union-boss toadies who placed second and third. Further down (seventh place with six percent) was Tom Geoghegan, endorsed by Mickey Kaus, no less. He tried the novel tactic of buying ads on right-wing blogs. It didn’t work.
On the GOP side, there were six candidates, which was quite incredible. In ordinary years, there may be two, usually pretty unimpressive characters. A commentator on a primary a few years ago opined, not unfairly, that neither candidate’s IQ was as high as his age. The field this time around was a quite presentable bunch of nobodies. A minuscule electorate (4,000 voters) chose Rosanna Pulido, whose one quarter of the vote put her 150 votes ahead of the LIBERAL. The guy I voted for, who had what should have been a very helpful endorsement from local Republican star Tony Peraica, did no visible campaigning and came in fourth.
Miss Pulido is a somewhat controversial figure, as she heads the Illinois chapter of the anti-immigration zealot “Minutemen” organization. Her Web site’s choice of “featured issues” (the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, abortion and “seniors”) strikes me as not quite attuned to a moment when everybody’s attention ought to be focused on the bumbling radicalism of the Obama Presidency. When the weather was sunny, it was fine to argue about e-Verify and H1B visas. With the storm raging, let’s concentrate on stopping the guy who’s tearing the roof off the house. A campaign that quoted profusely from Daniel Henninger and Charles Krauthammer and Michael Boskin and Yuval Levin wouldn’t carry the Fifth District, but it also wouldn’t be quaint and out of touch. There are, I suspect, more than a few liberals who are starting to realize that their dwindling stock portfolios have some connection with the dithering Administration in Washington.
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