This is what they call democracy? Rep. Emanuel should be ashamed!

Residency an issue for 6th District rivals

BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Columnist

Democratic congressional candidate Christine Cegelis said Thursday she did not understand why Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) recruited a rival to run against her who did not live in the district.

Democratic Party of DuPage County Chairman Gayl Ferraro said the residency of Army Maj. Ladda “Tammy” Duckworth “is going to be an issue with a lot of our voters, from what I’ve been hearing.”

Duckworth, who lost her legs and suffered a badly wounded arm when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq on Nov. 12, 2004, is poised to announce her candidacy as soon as she is off active duty.

Duckworth’s husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, said Thursday her paperwork to switch her status has been submitted to a medical board but that it was not clear when the Army would act.

Nominating petitions for the 2006 con tests in Illinois are due Dec. 19.

Seeks seat Hyde is yielding
Once Duckworth contemplated a run, encouraged by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the House Democratic political organization), she received guidelines from her commander at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington that limited her public partisan speech, Bowlsbey
said.

However, that has not kept Duckworth from quietly laying the groundwork for a bid, working with political professionals and
contacting local officials about the seat now held by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who is retiring. Durbin lent a Chicago staffer, David McDermott, to help Duckworth.

Duckworth met with Ferraro on Wednesday afternoon at DuPage County party headquarters in Lombard. Ferraro said Duckworth told her she “has permission to start circulating petitions” even while on active duty.

On Mond ay, Duckworth phoned Cegelis to discuss the race. The conversation was brief, Cegelis said. “She just wanted to introduce herself to me, that’s all,” Cegelis said in a conference call with reporters.

“We didn’t talk for very long. We talked a bit about the fact that she does not live in the district and that she does not intend to move to the district.”

Cegelis lives in Rolling Meadows and was the 2004 6th Congressional District Democratic nominee, gaining 44 percent of the vote in a shoestring campaign against Hyde.

Remapped out of district

Duckworth lives in the section of Hoffman Estates in the 8th Congressional District — whose voters sent Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) to Washington.

Freshman Bean lives in Barrington, in the 10th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.).

Bean, however, lived in the district when she first ran for the House and is just about 1,400 feet o ver the line, having been remapped out by Republicans looking — unsuccessfully, it turned out — to protect Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.), whom Bean defeated in 2004.

After she was wounded, Duckworth’s friends remodeled her home in Hoffman Estates to make it handicapped accessible, and as a practical matter, it would be difficult for her to move at this time. Emanuel’s considerable fund-raising ability will be used to market Duckworth and diminish her residency as an issue.

Emanuel shopped around for another Democrat to run because he was not convinced Cegelis could muster a campaign to beat the likely GOP nominee, state Sen. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton).

Ferraro — who as party chairwoman said she will be neutral in the primary — said Emanuel’s undermining Cegelis has made some DuPage Democrats “very angry about the whole situation. They are looking at it as the DCCC coming in and telling them what to do.

“But I don’t ne cessarily view it that way. It is anyone’s right to run for the office,” Ferraro said.

If Cegelis beats Duckworth and Wheaton College Professor Lindy Scott — a long shot — she will emerge stronger than she is now From http://www.suntimes.com/output/sweet/cst-nws-sweet02.html

AND

Chicago Sun-Times
November 29, 2005

Time for Emanuel to support Cegelis in 6th
BY DICK SIMPSON

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-simp29.html
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) should quit playing games and support Christine Cegelis for Congress. Cegelis is running for the second time for Henry Hyde’s seat in the suburban 6th District that includes northeast DuPage County and northwest Cook County.

As Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet reported, Emanuel courted Army Major “Tammy” Duckworth to run as the Democratic candidate. He cynically believes that people will vote for her just because she is a wounded veteran of the Iraq War. She has no political platform and no indigenous campaign organization. She is still undergoing physical therapy for her war inju ries and she had to get permission from the military to run. She will leave active duty on Dec. 1 to do so.

Apparently the campaign staff and cash would be helicoptered in from Washington because there has been no base built in the district even though nominating petitions are to be filed beginning Dec. 12. David Alexrod has been picked by Emanuel to run her public relations campaign locally.

As a candidate produced a couple of weeks before petitions are to be filed in an election for which she has yet to campaign, running is neither in Duckworth’s best interest nor the party’s. Emanuel just wants her to run because he can control her and use her in photo opportunities for the party.

Professor Lindy Scott of Wheaton College, who is also running, has a grassroots base in the district and a political platform. He has taught Spanish and Latin American Studies at Wheaton for 10 years. His platform includes: “We should inform the Iraqi government that we will withdraw our troops over the next two years and we will submit to their precise timetable within those parameters.” He has raised only $21,000 but is serious about running.

In comparison to Duckworth and Scott, who have never run for office before, Cegelis received 44.2 percent of the vote in 2004 against long-term Republican incumbent Hyde. Her election would revolutionize suburban politics by making elections between Democrats and Republicans competitive.

In talks before audiences in the 6th District over the last couple of weeks, Cegelis asserts that she is fighting to reclaim the American Dream and better opportunities for Americans. She believes the country is going in the wrong direction. Because she is a mother, she is concerned about the next generation and the country we are leaving to our grandchildren. She argues the cost of a college education is too high. She points out the No Child Left Behind federal legislation is causing primar y and secondary education costs in her district to soar at the same time some suburban schools are losing funding by being placed on the state’s failing school lists.

She believes we have to be smarter in fighting terrorism by better gathering and using intelligence and data which the Bush administration is failing to do. On Iraq she has consistently said: “We need to develop a timeline and an exit strategy to get
out of Iraq.” She is pro-choice on the issue of abortion.

This is a tough but winnable district for the Democrats. In 2004, Cegelis carried 44.2 percent of the vote; John Kerry, 47 percent, and Barack Obama, 60.

Cegelis’ sin in the eyes of Emanuel is that she has raised only $160,000 this year and has only $50,000 in the bank. Washington insiders believe that only campaigns that raise $1 million win. Emanuel previously tried and failed to get some personally wealthy Democrat to jump in the race. Failing that, he is putting up a war veteran in the hope of winning the sympathy and patriotic vote despite the fact that the majority of Americans now want to get out of Iraq.

The national Democratic Party would do better to send money and support to Cegelis. She, her more than 100 campaign volunteers, and the Democrats and Republicans in the 6th District who voted for her last time, have earned the right to run this race.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-simp29.html