IL-10

Dan Seals' Full Bailout Response

Adam Doster — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:18:31 -0700

Ah, the magic of video editing. Last week, YouTube user "ILwatcher08" uploaded a video highlighting 10th District candidate Dan Seals' statements on the congressional bailout bill during his October 2 appearance before the Tribune editorial board. The video, which splices brief clips from Seals' answer, has been picked up by numerous local blogs. Capitol Fax prefaced it this way: "Watch Seals flip and flop all over the place on the rescue/bailout bill." Meanwhile, the conservative TeamAmerica blog wrote: "Seals flips and flops so fast in this video from his interview with the Tribune editorial board that I got dizzy."

Below are both the edited YouTube clip and a video we put together of Seals' full answers. Judge for yourself if the former is a fair representation of the latter.

Let's go over Seals' full answer again. He said he agreed with the need for a bailout, but that he would have voted against the initial bailout bill (which the House had voted down the day before the editorial board meeting). Seals said the bill wasn't strong enough, and that if he were in office and faced with revising it, he would push for an ironclad provision to secure taxpayer assets, as well as resources for those struggling economically on "Main Street." When asked if his hypothetical support for a revised bill was contingent on those types of provisions being included, Seals said: "We've got to get something done, so I won't sit there and say, 'If this isn't there, then absolutely no bill.' But this is the direction that I would push. And I think keeping taxpayers whole is something we should be fighting for." He later reiterated that he believed a bailout was needed, adding "I think there is a better bailout than what we saw [in the initial bill]."

One could argue that Seals' answer was too nuanced. One could argue that he should have been more committal. But there's no flip-flop there.

Kirk's Latest False Proposition: Drill Here Or Buy From Venezuela

Adam Doster — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:36:22 -0700

The big news coming out of the Tribune's editorial board debate last week between 10th District congressional challenger Dan Seals and Rep. Mark Kirk was the GOP incumbent's statement regarding vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin -- a pick he lauded in early September, but about which he now has concerns.

Buried in the discussion about energy policy, however, was yet another misleading claim from Kirk regarding offshore oil drilling.

You may remember that back in June, Kirk falsely claimed that the Chinese were drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba. Two months later, he justified his support for offshore oil exploration by offering a false proposition between drilling here at home or buying oil from Iran, which we immediately debunked.

Sitting before the editorial board, Kirk's false proposition shifted to a different country:

KIRK: Then you go into the difficult choices. You should also expand exploring for American energy offshore. My opponent and I differ on this. I think you should absolutely expand for American energy offshore because, for a time, you will still be on oil. But the question is: is it Venezuelan oil or is it American oil? And I think it should be American.

Watch it:

We currently import over 1.3 million barrels of Venezuelan oil every day. The EIA estimates that opening up the Outer Contitnental Shelf would only increase production by about 200,000 barrels a day and "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." Regardless of whether or not we crack open the OCS, we will be importing a lot of Venezuelan oil until we ween ourselves off the resource. Like the Iran example, Kirk's math just makes no sense.

Immigrants Could Sway Tight Illinois Congressional Races

Josh Kalven — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:09:25 -0700

Immigrants may make up only a fraction of the electorate in the 10th and 11th congressional districts, but their influence in the increasingly tight races could have a larger-than-anticipated influence on Election Day.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) yesterday launched a 501(c)4 arm that will spend $513,000 over the next four weeks to do whatever it takes to deliver some 33,000 immigrants in IL-10 and IL-11 to their polling places.

Tired of lawmakers dodging the topic of immigration reform, Illinois Immigrant Action (IIA) director Lawrence Benito said he sees the campaign as an opportunity to put the congressional hopefuls on the spot.

"What we'd like to know is: if these people are elected what will they do to work toward just and humane immigration reform," Benito said.

For 10th District GOP Rep. Mark Kirk, convincing Waukegan's large Latino population that he supports their agenda might be a stretch. Just last year, Kirk suggested from the House floor that distributing condoms through border patrol agents might help to stem the flow of Mexicans into the U.S. Prior to that, he voted in favor of cracking down on illegal immigration by heightening border security. Furthermore, a local white supremacist organization -- Chicago Friends Of American Renaissance -- described his views on immigration as "encouraging."

Latinos in southwest suburban Joliet, on the other hand, will have to make their decisions based on messages from the campaign trail. Republican Marty Ozinga and Democrat Debbie Halvorson are vying to replace retiring incumbent GOP Rep. Jerry Weller.

IIA will send out the first of three mailers this week. Shortly thereafter, paid canvassers will begin knocking on doors and making phone calls to the new or reluctant voters, mostly in Waukegan and Joliet, who are the targets of this last minute push.

Elsewhere in the Chicago region, organizers also plan to reach out to an additional 100,000 immigrant voters who otherwise might not make it the voting booth on Nov. 4. ICIRR will spend an additional $500,000 on that portion of the campaign, which began three months ago with a registration drive that netted nearly 26,000 new potential voters.

Benito is fighting the perception that the campaign is merely a last-ditch effort to sway these increasingly competitive congressional races.

"This is part of a progression," Benito said. "In '06 you saw big marches. In '07 you saw increases in people filing for citizenship. And in '08 you're going to see people going out to the polls in record numbers because people know what's at stake."

Swing State Project Declares IL-10 A "Toss-Up"

Angela Caputo — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:15:59 -0700

Another bit of good news has emerged for Democrat Dan Seals who, as we noted earlier, is riding high after a new Roll Call/Survey USA poll gave him an eight-point lead over 10th District GOP incumbent Mark Kirk.

Based on the new polling, the Swing State Project reports today that it's shifted the race from "Lean Republican" into the "Tossup" category. Their explanation:

Of all the races that have been in SSP's "Lean Republican" column since March, this one's addition to the Tossup pile always seemed like an inevitable outcome -- it was just a matter of timing.

Two recently-released polls -- one from the DCCC and the other from R2K/DailyKos-- give GOP Rep. Mark Kirk a slight edge here, but both polls have the incumbent dangerously below 50%, leaving him vulnerable to a late Seals surge in a D+3 district that is set to deliver a big margin for Barack Obama in November. On top of it all, a new SurveyUSA poll is showing Seals leading by 52-44. While it's possible that that result is overstating things a bit, if there's one thing we've learned in the past few years, it's that Republicans are getting increasingly poorer at holding Dem-tilting districts. After all, let's not forget that Seals, a very talented candidate, outperformed his final internal polling during his 2006 race against Kirk by a full 15 points.

Roll Call/Survey USA Poll Shows Seals Ahead By Eight

Josh Kalven — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:42:37 -0700

A new poll released late yesterday by Roll Call and conducted by Survey USA (FiveThirtyEight's second highest rated pollster) found Democrat Dan Seals leading GOP Rep. Mark Kirk by eight points in the 10th Congressional District, 52-44 percent. From the write-up (subscription required):

SurveyUSA, an automated polling firm, conducted the surveys for Roll Call on Saturday and Sunday (WHAS-TV in Louisville was a partner on the poll in Indiana’s 9th district). Each poll tested more than 600 voters and had an error margin of roughly 4 points (for complete details, see chart at right). [...]

Kirk has thrived politically despite the liberal lean of his suburban Chicago district. But Seals, running with little help from the national party, came within 7 points of the Republican in 2006. But the DCCC is playing in the district this year, and Kirk saw it coming: He has raised an astounding $4.6 million for the race so far.

But even that amount of money might not be able to get Kirk past Seals in what is shaping up to be a Democratic year, especially with a Chicago Democrat at the top of the ticket. In the SurveyUSA poll, Obama led McCain in the district 62 percent to 36 percent — a margin that’s 20 points greater than Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) margin over Bush in the 2004 White House election.

The Survey USA poll comes on the heels of a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll released over the weekend that put Seals behind by six (and sent the Kirk campaign into a tizzy). Archpundit notes that Kirk came in at 44 percent in both polls and suggests a possible reason for the disparity in Seals' numbers:

Survey USA’s technique are robopolls and so they tend to push everyone to a choice even if they are undecided. What this could (all caveats again) be saying is that the undecideds are leaning Democratic.

Seems like a reasonable conclusion.

Mark Kirk Appears On NBC 5's City Desk

Josh Kalven — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:13:37 -0700

In an episode that filmed last week and aired yesterday morning, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk and Democratic challenger Dan Seals appeared separately on NBC 5's City Desk. Host Carol Marin immediately asked Kirk why he refused to directly debate Seals on the program. Kirk first tried to deflect the question, then stated, "Actually it would have been fine with me." Watch it:

But while Kirk suggested it somehow wasn't his decision, the Seals campaign made clear yesterday that they were more than willing to debate the GOP incumbent on NBC 5's airwaves. From communications director Elisabeth Smith:

"Dan believes that it is important for voters in the 10th district to see where he and Mark Kirk differ on the issues, which is why he agreed to appear jointly with Kirk on City Desk. This is not the first time that a joint appearance has fallen through. Unfortunately, Mark Kirk continues to do everything in his power to run fast and hard from his record of voting nearly 90% of the time with Republicans and supporting President Bush's failed policies in Congress."

Kirk also told viewers that he "hopes everybody watches" his joint appearance with Seals before the Tribune editorial board last week. But as far as I can tell, the only coverage of that debate is this article, which focused on Kirk's comments about Sarah Palin. I've been unable to find any video of the joint appearance on the Tribune website or elsewhere. (If the video is out there somewhere, please leave the link in comments.)

Later in the interview, Marin asked Kirk about his initial support for the Iraq war. He responded by blaming the "faulty intelligence":

While plenty of bad intelligence did indeed surface in the run-up to the Iraq war, Kirk's answer omits a crucial part of the story: how the Bush administration suppressed the intelligence community's doubts about certain prewar claims and how they used highly questionable, alternative intelligence sources to make their case for war. For more on that story, read this Media Matters piece I penned in December 2005. Meanwhile, 10th District blogger Ellen Beth Gill offers her own rebuttal.

Seals Raises $700,000 In 3rd Quarter

Josh Kalven — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:07:12 -0700

After GOP Rep. Mark Kirk last week reported raising $850,000 during the third quarter, Democratic challenger Dan Seals announced some impressive numbers of his own this morning. From a press release:

Today, Democratic Congressional Candidate Dan Seals' campaign reported that it had raised over $700,000 in the 3rd financial quarter, posting their strongest quarterly numbers yet. While Mark Kirk's fundraising stalled—he reported raising less than he had during the 2nd financial quarter—Seals' campaign fundraising continued to build momentum, raising approximately $70,000 more than he had in the previous 3 month period.

On the tails of the Research 2000 poll released yesterday showing a six-point race, the Seals campaign has to be feeling pretty good today.

Research 2000 Poll Shows Seals Trailing By Only Six Points

Josh Kalven — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:45:12 -0700

On Friday's edition of WTTW's Chicago Tonight, the "Week In Review" panel discussed Illinois' tightest congressional races, specifically the contests in the 10th and 11th districts. While discussing the former, NBC5's Mary Ann Ahern described GOP Rep. Mark Kirk as "doing very well so far in the polls" vis-a-vis Democratic challenger Dan Seals. This left me scratching my head a bit because, over the past two months, we've seen only two polls out of the 10th, both of them internals. A poll commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee found Seals trailing Kirk by only seven in mid-August. Meanwhile, a poll paid for by the Kirk campaign in mid-September found the incumbent with a 22-point lead.

Well, now there's a new poll on the scene, commissioned by the liberal website Daily Kos and conducted by the nonpartisan Research 2000 between September 30 and October 1. It shows Kirk leading Seals by only six points, 44-38 percent.

As the Swing State Project noted after Kirk released his internal poll last month, the cross-tabs suggested the campaign was seriously oversampling Republicans:

The partisan breakdown of the [Kirk] poll is 35D-33R-29I. Labels and Lists pegs the district as 34D-21R-44I, and other internal Democratic numbers I've seen show Dems with a 7-point advantage here in terms of partisan identity.

The Research 2000 poll doesn't put the percentage of Independents quite as high as Labels and Lists. But compared to the Kirk poll, there are six percent more Independents sampled and six percent less Republicans, which surely contributed to the vastly different results. Here's the breakdown:

Democrats: 139 (35%)
Republicans: 115 (29%)
Independents/Other: 146 (36%)

Seals' TV ads over the last month should also have also helped him, particularly considering that Kirk began saturating the local airwaves about a month earlier.

Mark Kirk Flips, Votes To Extend Unemployment Benefits

Josh Kalven — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:10:58 -0700

Back in June, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk -- along with five other Republican members of Congress from Illinois -- voted against a Democratic bill to extend federal unemployment benefits by 13 weeks. At the time, Kirk explained that he wasn't against the idea of giving laid-off workers additional unemployment checks, but instead was concerned that the legislation would allow those who had been on the job for as little as two weeks to receive benefits for nine months. Kirk even claimed that by allowing folks with such limited work records to enter the unemployment system, the Democrats had doubled the cost of the bill.

As we pointed out at the time, Kirk's excuse made little sense because it completely overlooked the more strict eligibility requirements laid out by individual states. Indeed, if a worker in Illinois wanted to qualify for federal unemployment benefits for only two weeks worth of work, they'd first have to live for a year-and-a-half on about $4,000. And how much would they then receive from the federal government? Most likely, less than $50 per week.

Furthermore, in contrast to Kirk's claim that these deadbeats would greatly increase the cost of the measure, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out that "the share of the additional benefits under the bill that would go to workers with very limited work records is almost surely miniscule."

We bring this up because yesterday Kirk voted in favor of a new bill to further extend the benefit program. I've looked over the language in the measure and see no provision that establishes a minimum employment length. As such, I'd love to hear Kirk's explanation for why he backed this type after referring to it as "crazy" several months ago. (EDIT: Having gone back and double-checked this, it turns out the bill passed on Friday is based off the unemployment benefits language in the FY 2008 Supplemental Appropriations Act, which does include the 20-week minimum requirement. Apologies for the mistake.)

Interestingly enough, the five other local GOP members who twice opposed the bill in June -- Donald Manzullo, Peter Roskam, John Shimkus, Judy Biggert, and Jerry Weller -- also supported it this time around.

Rep. Kirk: "I Don't Know" If Palin Is Qualified To Be Prez

Adam Doster — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:05:04 -0700

As we noted in the Early Bird, Rep. Mark Kirk is now expressing skepticism about John McCain's running mate. When asked if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had the qualifications to become president, the North Shore Republican told the Tribune editorial board yesterday: "Quite frankly, I don't know." When pressed further, he told the assembled reporters "I would have picked someone different."

But one month ago, Kirk was signing a different tune.

Talking to the Tribune on September 1, he described himself as "encouraged" by the pick. In an September 2 interview on WLS' Don Wade And Roma In The Morning, Kirk praised the governor for her ethics crusading nature. Listen below:

Internal mp3

It seems to be a very much an ego-free zone for her … [T]he governor also took on the old corrupt Republican bulls in Alaska. Fired a bunch of them, some of them are now going to jail, including possibly Sen. Stevens. She seems pretty fearless on taking out the old guard. [...]

There's a lot of guts on both sides for McCain and Palin. So they've got their share of enemies. But sometimes you're marked in public life by who you've taken out. And certainly in the Oval Office and generally in an administration you want a fearless team.

One day before, on September 1, WIND's Big John Howell and Cisco Cotto asked Kirk about Palin's experience directly. Here's what the 10th District incumbent had to say:

Internal mp3

HOWELL: How can you convince me -- a guy who is not a far-right social conservative Republican -- to really consider her one heart beat away from the Presidency?

KIRK: She’s obviously an unknown figure, but she has had a rocket sled of a career already in Alaska. I think as governor, obviously she does have more executive experience -- ironically -- than the three other guys on the ticket. Her big asset, though, will be on the campaign. We have seen Sen. Obama now standing forth as a recognized national figure, but his greatest achievement has been his own campaign, and being able to command and defeat the electorate and push Hillary Clinton to the side. We now will look at Sarah Palin. She did very well in her first time out when she was nominated by Sen. McCain. It was a risky strategy.

Palin is no doubt drawing big crowds on the trail and volunteers to local McCain offices, but it's tough to say whether, on balance, she's been "a big asset" on the campaign. Her constant fumbling in recent interviews and broader reluctance to speak to reporters has turned off a lot of voters:

One of Palin's problems has been perceptions of her experience. In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted during the first half of September, 61 percent said they did not think Palin — governor for less than two years and former small-town mayor — has the right experience to be president. That view has changed little in more recent surveys.

Polls also show Palin's image, while positive overall, has begun to erode. While an NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey in early September showed more people viewing her favorably than unfavorably by 20 percentage points, that gap faded to 6 points by last week. Similarly, her net positive rating in a Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll shrunk from 27 points in early September to 11 points a week ago.