Gov. Pat Quinn probably owes his political life to President Barack Obama.

Quinn’s edge in the governor’s race over Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, is less than 9,000 votes. Yet Brady consistently came out ahead in voter polls. The difference seems to come down to the city of Chicago. The number of Windy City voters far outnumbered the percentage who told survey takers they would “definitely” vote on Nov. 2.

Obama made three trips to Chicago to rally Democrats during the last few weeks, including a visit last weekend. On Tuesday, he phoned in to a Chicago radio station to urge people to get out and vote. The resulting vote from Chicago put Quinn 400,000 votes ahead. Even though Brady solidly won in the collar counties and downstate, he has apparently ended up a bit short.

Ironically, Obama could not save his friend, basketball companion and political apprentice Alexi Giannoulias, who lost Obama’s old Senate seat to U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk. That election also was closer than voter surveys would have suggested.

Quinn had told people his strategy was to advertise almost exclusively in Chicago, whipping up his base of support. Not many thought that would be a winning formula. Quinn gets the last laugh … except that he’ll also take some blame from fellow Democrats in the Illinois House and Senate who lost close races. Some of those candidates might have liked to see a little more competition at the top of the ticket in the areas where Brady won by a wide margin.

Sen. Deanna Demuzio, D-Carlinville, lost her 49th District seat by about 2,500 votes to construction company owner Sam McCann of Carlinville. She might not have wanted to hug Quinn in public if he had come into the area to rally Democratic voters, but she might have appreciated not being the only “target” seen by voters.

Who knows whether stronger, and more statewide, campaigning by Quinn might have energized Democrats who stayed home on election day, or have swayed a few voters in ways that would have been doubly felt as his party gained as the opposition lost ground.

Maybe 2,500 votes would have been a stretch for Quinn to move. On the other hand, does anyone believe that Obama was not responsible for at least the 9,000 vote edge that Quinn enjoys?

Sheila Simon, the lieutenant governor candidate running with Gov. Pat Quinn, told Illinois Statehouse News that she doesn’t see that she and Quinn are way behind among likely voters downstate.

“I’d challenge anyone who says that we are trailing badly downstate. I’ve been campaigning all over the state, and I’ve been getting a good response wherever I’ve been,” Simon told Benjamin Yount.

Simon was responding to questions about recent polls that all show Republicans Bill Brady and Jason Plummer leading Democrats Quinn and Simon among likely voters. A Rasmussen Reports poll released early this week shows Brady with a 50-37 edge.

The geographic breakouts are even more striking, with the Republican nominees leading by 25 percent downstate.

Simon was asked about the poll since she is a professor at Carbondale and might be expected to have some idea how things are going in the campaign and particularly downstate.

The problem with that idea is that candidates get wrapped up in a bubble of supporters during campaigns. They get constant, positive feedback from backers. Even in this day of in-your-face politics, the opposition does not get noticed nearly as much by candidates as the hard-line supporters.

Candidates are the last people who will know how well, or how badly, a campaign is going.

As much as everyone gets sick of polls or treats certain poll results as suspect, they give respondents a chance to be truthful.

Imagine a grandmotherly lady answering a knock on her door. Standing in front of her is a candidate for office. She smiles as the candidate asks for her vote. She shakes the hand he offers her and thanks him for stopping by. As the candidate walks away, he thinks he’s just won a vote. Inside the house, the woman wonders whether that man knows she is the mother of his opponent.

Smiles and kind words happen in polite society. When pollsters call, people drop the polite and don’t worry about whether their answers will hurt someone’s feelings.

A Rasmussen Reports poll shows Republican nominee Bill Brady maintains a healthy lead in the Illinois governor’s race.

Alexi Giannoulias

Poll respondents favored Brady over Gov. Pat Quinn by 46 percent to 37 percent. That margin has been in line with other polls going back months that have shown Brady with everything from a 5 percentage point lead to a 12 percent lead.

In the race for U.S. Senate, Alexi Giannoulias has a slight lead over Mark Kirk. The 42-40 margin for Giannoulias is within the sampling margin of error for the poll. Those results, too, are similar to other indicators that the Illinois race for U.S. Senate may well come down to which candidate surges at the end or which candidate stumbles close to the Nov. 2 election.

Giannoulias has problems after the family’s bank declared bankruptcy and his supervision of loans to underworld figures were publicized. Kirk created his own problems by embellishing on his resume through campaign web sites.

Both Kirk and Giannoulias seem intent on smearing the other guy and giving the opponents plenty of ammunition to retaliate.

Back to the governor’s race.

Bill Brady

If there’s one thing that should concern Brady’s camp, it is that he’s not broken that magical 50 percent mark that cements a win. On the other hand, there is a third candidate in the race, Green Party nominee Rich Whitney.

After one recent poll, Whitney sent out press releases heralding the results when 10 percent of the respondents suggested they would vote for him. In fact, the wording of the poll gave respondents plenty of opportunities to vote for neither Brady or Quinn.

Quinn’s recent problems with the resignation of chief of staff Jerry Stermer, who had turned himself in for using office e-mail to send three campaign-related messages, and the dismissal of the inspector general who investigated Stermer have crippled the Democrat’s chances at winning this fall.

At this point, Bill Brady is the only one who could give Quinn a win. It would take a pretty big mistake by Brady to drive that many votes to Quinn.

Rasmussen Reports conducted a poll Monday that shows Republican Bill Brady with a seven percentage point lead over Democrat Pat Quinn in the race for governor.

The poll of 750 likely voters has a statistical sampling error of plus or minus 4 percent with a 95 percent level of confidence. Its results are bolstered by several other polls that show similar results.

Rasmussen’s breakdown of the poll results shows that Brady does especially well with male respondents, edging Quinn out by 13 percent. The two candidates virtually split the vote among women. Brady is supported by 88 percent of his fellow Republicans and Quinn is favored by 61 percent of his fellow Democrats.

The poll results came out the same day state newspapers reported that Quinn’s budget director, David Vaught, believes the Legislature will pass an income tax increase in January. The Illinois personal income tax rate is 3 percent and could go to 4 percent or 5 percent under proposals made by Quinn during the past two years.

State Rep. Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said such a tax increase would take $6 billion from Illinois taxpayers.

The next poll’s results might favor Brady even more, if people see the tax proposal as Quinn’s plan and if they believe Brady’s argument that the state’s $13 billion deficit can be cured by cuts alone.

Roger K. Davis, a frequent, unsuccessful candidate in Quincy, has called for a Coffee Party USA meeting at 9 a.m. Saturday (March 13) in Washington Perk, 428 Maine.

Davis said the Coffee party has only had a Web site — www.coffeepartyusa.com — for a few weeks and already has 100,000 adherents.

The Coffee party is different from the Tea party movement in that it seeks civility and cooperation n political problems. Davis said Coffee party members want an end to the stalemate in U.S. government.

The tea party movement’s Web site, by contrast, has been around for more than a year, has millions of people involved and focuses on insisting that politicians defend the U.S. Constitution and democracy.

The Quincy Tea Party hosted a Sept. 12, event in Washington Park last year that attracted a crowd estimated at more than 2,000. There where nationally-known speakers and audience members who traveled hundreds of miles.

When Davis announced the Coffee party meeting Friday, he had not yet spoken to any like-minded people in Quincy — probably indicating that it won’t be an overflow crowd.

Davis said Coffee party meetings to be held nationwide on political issues March 27 will be used to create a political platform for the movement. Until then, supporters apparently will not know what they’re joining.

DuPage County Chairman Bob Schillerstrom has withdrawn from the Republican campaign for governor, and he is throwing his support to Jim Ryan. The entire text of his announcement can be read here.

Schillerstrom said he lacked the funds to end the primary campaign with a flurry of media buys and doubted he could win the race. In his announcement Friday, Schillerstrom said Ryan has the best chance to win the governor’s race in November. Ryan, is the former Illinois attorney general and was the unsuccessful candidate against Rod Blagojevich in 2002.

Schillerstrom’s endorsement did not play well with other candidates in this crowded race.

“Bob Schillerstrom’s endorsement of Jim Ryan today is as predictable as the dead voting in Chicago. It was inevitable he would throw his support behind either Jim Ryan or Kirk Dillard. Anything to stop real reform,” said Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington.

Adam Andrzejewski said Schillerstrom “raised issues that made the race for governor a better contest,” but did not think the endorsement of Jim Ryan is the best choice for Illinois.

Dan Proft said Ryan is “a fine man” but said Schillerstrom’s choice won’t change state government. “If you want policy revolution in Illinois, Don Proft is your candidate for governor,” Proft said in a release.

Click on the image to view the Dan Hynes advertisement.

The venomous gubernatorial campaign battle between Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes in the Illinois Democratic primary can be seen in all its fury this week.

Quinn has launched a TV ad that puts all the blame for the Burr Oak cemetery scandal on Hynes. “It was Dan Hynes’ job to regulate our cemeteries,” the announcer intones after reminding listeners how hundreds of bodies were dug up and graves were resold in the cemetery near Chicago.

Hynes already has an advertisement of his own, rebutting the cemetery ad.

Hynes’ campaign has done a particularly scathing ad of its own. The late Harold Washington, former mayor of Chicago, is shown telling why he fired Pat Quinn years ago.

“Pat Quinn is a totally and completely undisciplined individual who thinks this government is nothing but a large easel by which he can do his PR work,” Washington said.

Note that both Quinn’s and Hynes’ ads seem to target black voters, who represent a potent voting block in the Chicago area. Quinn’s attack focuses on Burr Oak, which is a predominantly African American cemetery. Hynes’ ad features Chicago’s first black mayor.

It should be noted that Quinn’s double-digit lead in this race has become much smaller. Some polls now show the governor with a 6 or 7 percent lead. That’s still a sizable advantage with only a little more than a week to go before the primary, but since neither candidate has broken the 50 percent barrier, it is still a horse race.

Hynes has made Quinn’s handling of the secret prison release program an issue. It did not gain traction immediately, but the cumulative effect has caused the numbers to move somewhat.

Whoever wins this one will know they’ve been in a slugfest.

A few weeks ago all the political junkies were strategizing about how their favored candidates would win party nominations or the Illinois governor’s office.

Lisa Madigan’s decision that she will run for re-election as Illinois attorney general has quieted much of that talk. Madigan was thought to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination if she ran for governor. There are no shoo-ins in either the GOP or Democratic fields now.

Gov. Pat Quinn has the power of incumbency and the fact that he’s not Rod Blagojevich going for him in the Democratic campaign. Quinn has been an outsider most of his political life, but also has labeled himself a reformer.

His biggest rival so far is Comptroller Dan Hynes whose father was a prominent Chicago politician as well. Hynes too has a chance to point out his “fiscal watchdog credentials, and may remind voters that he bumped heads with Blagojevich during some years when Quinn was silent as the lieutenant governor.

Sen. Bill Brady is considered one of the more prominent Republican hopefuls. A real estate developer from Bloomington, Brady ran for the GOP nomination three years ago and drew solid support. However, he has not jumped out to a commanding lead in this year’s race so far.

Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale has credentials from his service in the Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar administrations. He’s being supported by some business leaders. But Dillard’s 10-second appearance in an Iowa primary advertisement for Barack Obama may hurt his chances.

Sen. Matt Murphy of Palatine raised $21,000 toward his gubernatorial bid during the first six months of the year. He has hired top notch campaign consultants and is trying to build a support network with fellow attorneys.

Dan Proft, a radio commentator, has made a splash with the state’s most conservative Republicans. Fund-raising so far has trailed others in the GOP field.

Robert Schillerstrom, the DuPage County GOP chairman, heads up the largest block of suburban Republicans in the state. He still must become more than a name, however, to people from downstate.

Adam Andrzejewski is a 40-year-old millionaire who sold his publishing interests and founded www.forthegoodofillinois.org Although he is a political novice, Andrzejewski has been putting together the type of on-line campaign network that may become the norm for statewide or national campaigns.

Other possible candidates continue to be mentioned, but have not yet made their intentions known.

Without a clear front-runner, the governor’s race so far is not easy to forecast.

Everyone knows the Republicans will campaign on the damage done by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the failings of other Democrats who now control the state. Democrats will point out that they’re not Blagojevich.

Voters and campaign donors have yet to speak in large numbers.