One for Illinois

Former Speaker Dennis Hastert's seat has gone to a Democrat:

In a stunning upset Saturday that could be a harbinger of trouble for the GOP this fall, a little-known Democratic physicist won the special election for a seat drawn to re-elect former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Bill Foster defeated Republican Jim Oberweis, who lost his fourth high-profile election in six years, following an expensive and highly negative contest.

Foster is a physicist formerly with Fermilab; it's only fitting -- Hastert's certainly no rocket scientist. Foster's a little more conservative than I would like -- more likely to caucus with the Blue Dogs than the progressive wing -- but he's no DINO.

And it only points up something that I've been saying for a while: Illinois doesn't have much patience with extreme right-wingers, which Oberweis certainly is. We might elect Republicans, but not of that stripe. (And you'd think after losing every election he's entered, Oberweis would get the hint.) Oberweis is also given to dirty tricks -- it was an Oberweis staffer who torpedoed Pat Ryan's candidacy (or was it Pete? There are a lot of Ryans in Illinois politics) against Rod Blagojevich. Oberweis managed to maintain plausible deniability on that one, but please -- the stooge in question had been high up in his campaign.

To give you a good take on what an upset this is, here's a map of IL-14, courtesy of BooMan:



If you know anything about Illinois, you can see that this district was gerrymandered through some of the most conservative parts of the state, mostly to insure Hastert's seat.

Didn't work.

Does this spell doom for the Republicans? Don't know. We've not been too happy with them in this state for a while. (In the 2002 elections, when the Republicans were cleaning up nationally, they lost all but one statewide office and both houses of the legislature. Another of Jim Oberweis' shining moments -- he never made it past the primary.)

However, given that pretty much every seat that's been vacated by a Republican through resignation or jail over the past couple of years has gone to a Democrat, it sure don't look good.

Breaks my heart. Maybe the GOP really will sit down, take stock, and throw out all the varieties of cons so they can be a real political party again -- you know, one that has something to offer more than 25% of the population. One that can run on issues rather than swiftboating. One that can actually govern.