IL-06 House Election: Iraq and Immigration
Illinois 6: western Chicago suburbs: Elmhurst, Wheaton, Carol Stream (map)
Democrat: Tammy Duckworth, military pilot, Rotary International manager
Republican: Peter Roskam, state senator, lawyer (incumbent Henry Hyde resigning—2004: won 56%–44%)
Poll D +1: Duckworth 48%, Roskam 47% (10/26)
Outlook: tossup
Post updated: October 31
Final result (11/8): Republican 51%, Democrat 49%
Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and hulking symbol of the Clinton impeachment debacle, is retiring after 32 years. His suburban Chicago district has been changing—once Hyde's fiefdom, it is becoming progressively less conservative each year. In 2004, George Bush won the Illinois 6th by 6 points (and Hyde won by 8), but today Republicans are no longer automatic heroes here, and Democratic politicians have a chance.
Especially when the Democratic politician is a real war hero like Major Tammy Duckworth (photo), an Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq and is now running as a critic of the war. She is a breath of fresh air in stodgy Hydeland, and if she wins it will be as much her story as her political views that will make it happen. Her father was a Marine war veteran who worked for the United Nations, and her mother was a native of Thailand, where Tammy was born. She was employed by the community organization Rotary International and working on a doctorate in political science when her Illinois National Guard unit was activated and sent to Iraq.
When she returned, she decided to run for Congress,
because I think we really need to change course. We need to face up to our tough challenges when it comes to creating jobs, providing a quality education for our kids and making affordable health care accessible to all. And when it comes to making decisions about sending our young people to war, we need strong voices in Congress who understand the consequences of those decisions.…
[I]nvading Iraq was a mistake. We should have focused our military resources instead on pursuing the terrorists who attacked our country and on capturing Osama Bin Laden. Not only did we misdirect our human and financial resources; we squandered an enormous amount of international goodwill that we acquired after 9/11.
Iraq is at the center of Duckworth's campaign, highlighted every time she rolls her wheelchair (or walks a bit awkwardly) into a room and flashes her infectious grin. But she also has progressive positions on other issues: deficits, the environment, congressional ethics, energy, healthcare, stem-cell research, and (not surprisingly) veterans' issues. As for immigration, she has an unusual perspective for a congressional candidate—her mother recently gained US citizenship—and while she calls for border security and employer sanctions, she also supports John McCain's plan providing for eventual naturalization of the 11 million immigrants now in the US illegally.
Duckworth's opponent, Peter Roskam, worked for Tom DeLay and Hyde in Washington before being elected to the Illinois legislature, and Hyde has anointed him as his successor. Like many DeLay/Abramoff associates, he has been less than scrupulous about campaign finances. He has an admirable record on the environment, but otherwise he appears to be merely another upstanding Republican apparatchik, saying yes to ever-lowering taxes and relying on the marketplace to fix the broken healthcare system.
To judge from his website, Roskam's campaign consists mostly of personal attacks on Duckworth: that she originally lived just outside the district, and that she won't debate him whenever he wishes. Roskam is good, however, at vapid symbolic gestures: returning lost dog tags to Vietnam veterans, Project Voices to connect Illinois residents with soldiers in Iraq, and the Ground Zero Flag Tour to connect Illinois residents with New Yorkers. While he mentions nothing on his site about the Iraq War or the War President, if elected he will be a reliable vote for the reactionary policies he dare not name.
Illinois 6 has a long Republican history, and it will be a real
battleground this year. Roskam's has followed up his early attacks with lots of nasty, issue-free campaigning. Duckworth will
need to organize a strong get-out-the-vote operation to
win, and her campaign needs to raise a lot of money to compete in the
expensive Chicago media market. With one week left, she is pulling slightly ahead of Roskam in contributions. She is also ahead in the Majority Watch poll conducted October 24–26, though by only one point. It's too
early to guess who will pull ahead at the end. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is betting that Roskam's extremism will tip the scale:
If the race is decided on the basis of the candidates' clarity of vision and focused zeal, the winner will be Duckworth by ten clicks. On September 30, she delivered the Democrats' national radio response to the weaselly charge by Bush (and, even more explicitly, by Roskam) that his opponents want to "cut and run." She was succinct and powerful:
[A]s I went through my recovery, I started asking myself whether our leaders in Washington are doing their duty.
After more than three years, more than 2,700 U.S. deaths and tens of thousands of wounded, this administration still lacks a plan for securing Iraq. And the leaders of Congress still refuse to do their job of holding the administration accountable.
So, instead of a plan or a strategy, we get shallow slogans like Mission Accomplished and Stay the Course.
Those slogans are calculated to win an election. But they won’t help us accomplish our mission in Iraq.
You can listen to her address or read the transcript on the DCCC website. It's inspiring!
You can also contribute to Tammy's campaign here.
Read more:
from Republicans for Duckworth blog:
http://republicansforduckworth.typepad.com/blog/
Why Peter Roskam Will Lose
CNN reports that 60% of Americans oppose the U.S. war in Iraq, the highest number since polling on the subject began with the commencement of the war in March 2003, according to poll results and trends released Wednesday.
And a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year, according to results from the Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted last week on behalf of CNN. The corporation polled 1,047 adult Americans by telephone.
According to trends, the number of poll respondents who said they did not support the Iraq war has steadily risen as the war stretched into a second and then a third year. In the most recent poll, 36 percent said they were in favor of the war -- half of the peak of 72 percent who said they were in favor of the war as it began.
Like other bomb-and-spend Republicans, Roskam backs up president Bush on the Iraq military adventure. According to Roskam's own Web site: he "hasn't spoken of a withdrawal timeline and wants to make sure the United States "finishes well what it started."
Don't kid yourself. He wants to see more American boys killed in Iraq. He wants to see the Bush oil interests get wealthier. He wants the war. And that's why he'll lose on election day.
Posted by: Larry Bodine | Thursday, 07 September 2006 at 14:26