Kirk, Giannoulias Illinois Senate Showdown Already Brutal

CHICAGO -- The signs the Illinois Republican Party put up at its post-primary unity breakfast on Wednesday -- an affair that lasted until lunch -- proclaimed "Illinois Is Next!" followed by graphics of three states where Democrats recently lost seats they should have been able to keep: Massachusetts (U.S. Senate), New Jersey and Virginia (governor).

"Welcome to the most important race of 2010 in the United States of America," boasted the new GOP Illinois Senate nominee, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, to the crowd at the Union League Club in the city's Loop.

Big screens on the sides of the head table showed a map of the United States superimposed with a picture of a smiling Scott Brown holding up a copy of the Boston Herald headlined "He Did It!" the day after he won Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat. Brown was sworn in on Thursday.

"Yes we will, we will win back the Barack Obama Senate seat," said keynote speaker, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, the former chief of the Republican National Committee and the title the Democrats like best, former lobbyist. "We're in for a big year in Illinois if we work together," Barbour said.

You can't blame the Illinois Republicans for their euphoria, even if the GOP gubernatorial primary was so close it has yet to yield a winner. With just a few hundred votes between them, the state senators in a virtual tie, Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard, signaled they will support whoever is the eventual winner.

The Illinois GOP is coming off the first-in-the nation 2010 primary in good shape and wildly optimistic. Illinois Democrats, on the other hand, have a mess on their hands that could drag down the top of the ticket, Democratic Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer, and Gov. Pat Quinn. Quinn's primary rival, Comptroller Dan Hynes, reluctant to throw in the towel on Tuesday night when the vote seemed close, conceded on Thursday.

The Democrats control everything in Illinois: governor, both Senate seats, the Illinois General Assembly and every statewide elected office, and a Chicago Democrat is in the White House. But the Democratic grip now is tenuous for many reasons: seemingly endless corruption, including the Rod Blagojevich scandal; the botched Roland Burris Senate appointment; high unemployment; a nearly insolvent state government and, something new, a kerfuffle over a nobody named Scott Lee Cohen.

The front pages of the Thursday Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune blared headlines about Cohen, the unknown Chicago pawnbroker who self-financed his lieutenant governor race and to everyone's shock, won. The stories were about how court records showed Cohen was arrested on Oct. 14, 2005 on suspicion of holding a knife to the throat of his live-in girlfriend, a convicted prostitute. The charges were dropped when the girlfriend did not appear in court. (Under Illinois law, the governor and the lieutenant governor run separately in the primary. The primary winners, however, are fused together in a ticket. So Quinn now has a running mate who will be a ball and chain around his neck.)

The Senate seat is the most formidable challenge for Democrats, in part because Republicans in Illinois put aside their differences to yield their strongest possible candidate, Kirk, a five-term lawmaker and an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves.

A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted on Wednesday -- the day after the primary -- said Kirk leads Giannoulias 46 percent to 40 percent, with 10 percent undecided, four percent wanting someone else, and a gender gap: male voters heavily favor Kirk while woman strongly support Giannoulias. Kirk is viewed favorably by 55 percent of voters and unfavorably by 33 percent with 12 percent not sure. Giannoulias is regarded favorably by 46 percent and unfavorably by 39 percent with 15 percent not sure.The poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Giannoulias comes into the nine-month-long general election a flawed candidate, beat up by primary rival David Hoffman over the troubled Giannoulias family-owned Broadway Bank and loans made to accused mobsters. This is not a good year for a banker to be running for office and Giannoulias worked at the bank before running for state treasurer. The most radioactive charges center on Broadway Bank business dealings with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko, a political patron of Barack Obama and Giannoulias.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are already on the attack. On Thursday, the DSCC put out a web video slamming Kirk for appearing with Barbour, who was a Washington lobbyist before returning to Mississippi. The NRSC had a web video on the shelf slamming Giannoulias for this alleged ties to shady characters, Rezko included. The video, posted to YouTube on Feb. 1, was titled "Blagojevich, Rezko, and The Mob. Alexi Giannoulias would make Tony Soprano Proud." The video is narrated by an announcer with a tortured New Jersey like accent that is jarring to Illinois ears.

Giannoulias, who will be 34 years old on March 16, spent his first day campaigning as the nominee at a former GE plant in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. The company closed and sent the jobs to China, which Giannoulias said came after getting tax breaks Kirk voted for during the Bush administration.

"It's no wonder Mark Kirk supported tax breaks for GE," Giannoulias said, "rewarding them when they created a job in China rather than in Illinois, because GE gave thousands of dollars in contributions to his campaign."
Giannoulias has been hounded by Broadway Bank problems since he ran for treasurer in 2006 with then-Sen. Obama backing him in a contested primary. I asked Kirk, 50, about the role the bank will play in the general election and whether Kirk anticipates the Obama White House getting involved in the contest.