State Sen. Dan Rutherford, running for Secretary of State, is ambitiously raising money in some unusual places for a candidate for SOS:
Nobody can ever accuse state Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa, of being unable to make some high-level connections.
Rutherford, who is running for secretary of state, has long had big annual fundraisers in Chicago despite his central Illinois base.
On Dec. 6, Rutherford will be in Washington, D.C., where there will be an open house to meet him, hosted by Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Following that is a reception that lists U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Plano, as the special guest. Other members of the Republican delegation to the House are also listed. The cheapest ticket to the reception is $500.
According to the conventional wisdom, Rutherford doesn't stand a chance. But I think the conventional wisdom is wrong: Rutherford will need to get lucky to win, but his combination of hard work and fundraising will leave him in an excellent position to take advantage of any good luck that comes his way.
Rutherford has a sign in front of the Teamsters building on N. Neil.
If any democrat around here went to DC or Chicago to raise money, IP would criticize them. When a Republican does it he is swimming with the big fishes. Another sign of IP's growing hypocrisy.
I am sure Rutherford is pleased to have Melhman standing behind him
Well, call it hypocrisy if you want, but to me there's a difference. The good people of Washington, DC won't be telling Dan Rutherford how to run the Secretary of State's office. But the good people of Chicago will certainly be telling Mike Frerichs and Naomi Jakobsson how to vote in the State legislature, and in Jakobsson's case, she almost always obeys.
Can you point out a single significant vote in which Jakobsson has disagreed with the Chicago Democrat who funds her campaigns?
Naomi voted against the leadership on the SBC rate increase
Are you talking about this bill - SB1700? There's a NG article from May 2005 in which Jakobsson "blasts" SB1700. But it doesn't appear that it was ever called for a vote in the House. How did she "vote against the leadership" if there was no vote?
This is an interesting post. I wasn't aware that Rutherford really liked fish.
I say this as a partisan democrat, if any voter spent 10 minutes with Jesse White and 10 minutes with Dan Rutherford, there is no doubt in my mind they would vote for Rutherford. I think he'll still lose by 8-12 points, but the democrats should be much more worried about Rutherford than they are.