Free Republic

CHICAGO — Battling mental illness and personal financial troubles, Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is a heavy favorite for reelection Nov. 6 despite a surreal campaign from which he has been absent for almost four months. Jackson, 47, who disclosed this summer that he has bipolar depression and has undergone weeks of hospitalization, is convalescing in Washington and meeting occasionally with aides. He has been absent from the House of Representatives since June 8. Whether he will campaign at all is in question. His reelection bid is being led by his wife, Sandi Jackson, who turned down interview requests....

Public Employee Unions: In a city with double-digit unemployment, teachers who can't be fired and who make more than double what their students' parents make, have gone on strike. Anyone for school choice? Public sector unions reared their burdensome and inefficient head Monday when some 25,000 unionized Chicago Public School teachers went on strike, unhappy with a salary the parents of their students can only envy, leaving 350,000 students and their overtaxed parents struggling in the educational lurch. The Chicago Teachers Union walked away from a contract offer that amounted to a 16% raise over four years for the average...

President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows. A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous. Those numbers do not bode well for the president. “He has to come out of Cook County with a...

President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows. A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous. Those numbers do not bode well for the president. “He has to come out of Cook County with a...

Look, I’m a pretty sunny optimist, but this stretches even my credulity. A pollster in Illinois believes that Mitt Romney can win Barack Obama’s home state, thanks to a mediocre performance in Cook County by the incumbent, and outright hostility outstate: A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state....

President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows. A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous. Those numbers do not bode well for the president. “He has to come out of Cook County with a...

An autopsy for an Obama for America campaign staffer who died after collapsing in the Chicago headquarters was inconclusive Saturday. -snip- The autopsy requires further studies before a cause of death can be determined, according to the medical examiner’s office.

A 29-year-old man who was working at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago collapsed and died Friday, campaign officials said. Alexander Okrent of the 300 block of Dewey Avenue in Evanston was pronounced dead at 11:45 a.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

An Illinois priest forced out of his parish by Belleville's Catholic bishop for improvising prayers during Mass will no longer be able to preach in public as of today. The Rev. William Rowe said Monday that Bishop Edward Braxton has suspended him and removed his "faculties," or license to practice ministry under church law. The move has been associated in recent years with the punishment of clergy accused of sexually abusing minors. Rowe, the pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Mount Carmel, Ill., has not been accused of abuse, but he has clashed with Braxton over altering the liturgical...

Standing at a Skokie Holiday Inn before a table full of “Obama! Oy Vey!” buttons, Anita Ashe and Ellen Warsaw had a strikingly similar story to tell. The women, both Skokie residents, were born and raised in an environment where voting Democratic was as natural for their families as the Friday Shabbat dinners that were a regular part of their Jewish faith. Despite that political history, Ashe in recent years has found herself attending events sponsored by he Chicago Chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition after becoming “more and more conservative as I read more and get perspectives on the...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has defeated fellow Republican Rep. Don Manzullo in the state's 16th District GOP congressional primary. The AP called the race for Kinzinger just after 11 p.m. Eastern time. With 85 percent of precincts reporting, Kinzinger led Manzullo 56 percent to 44 percent. The race between Kinzinger and Manzullo, forced because Illinois lost a congressional seat and state Democrats controlled the redistricting process, followed a common tea party-against-establishment trend in recent GOP primaries. But the script flipped here, with 10-term veteran Manzullo garnering the bulk of the tea party and movement conservative support while Kinzinger, a freshman,...

On the eve before the GOP Illinois primary, one might ask: How the hell does SGTreport have election results for a Republican primary in Illinois which has yet to take place? We have long argued that the fix is in, but this… um… leaves us speechless. Posted tonight – MONDAY, March 19th – on the web site of Chicago ABC News Affiliate WLS-TV are the following election results, clearly labeled as “Illinois Races, Federal Offices”. If we have this wrong, please let us know why this information exists in ANY form. Or, if we are indeed living in a banana...

Newt Gingrich had to win Mississippi and Alabama in order to remain a viable candidate. Those states weren't essential because of their delegate counts or their importance to the national election, but because Gingrich had won nothing outside the South and staked everything on a southern strategy. He lost. He remains in the campaign, but he's a ghost, a bitter aftertaste, and a thorn in Rick Santorum's side. Santorum now faces his own "must win" primary, Illinois. He's won more states than Gingrich, but his strength so far has been in the Midwest and South, and in neither region has...

Chicago - The Republican race for president looks like a two-man contest in Illinois Thursday night. Mitt Romney is ahead of Rick Santorum among Illinois Republicans, even after Santorum’s big victories in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday. But Santorum is within striking distance for next Tuesday's primary. An exclusive FOX Chicago News poll found a six point lead for Romney among those likely to vote in the March 20 presidential primary. Romney had the support of 37 percent on Wednesday. Rick Santorum earned 31 percent of the vote.

No link yet. I'm just seeing it on CNN. Reuters said Fox called it as well.

NBC: Romney Wins Illinois Republican Party By Michael O'Brien, msnbc.com Mitt Romney won the Illinois Republican primary with some ease on Tuesday evening, allowing him to likely add at his advantage over his rivals in the tally of delegates needed to secure the party's presidential nomination. NBC News projected that Romney had won the contest, the lone presidential primary taking place on Tuesday, shortly after polls closed. The primary offered Republicans maybe their best chance yet of a genuine one-on-one battle between the former Massachusetts governor and Santorum, his chief competitor for the Republican nod.

Rick Santorum’s campaign and super PAC have been outspent by a margin of 7 to 1 in the Illinois primary, with forces supporting Mitt Romney shelling out a total of about $3.7 million on the airwaves, according to a GOP media-buying source. Romney’s campaign has spent $1,117,704 million in Illinois while the super PAC Restore Our Future has put in $2.556,353 million. The Santorum campaign spent a comparatively modest $219,961 and the super PAC backing Santorum, the Red White and Blue Fund, put in $312,150. The gulf was even more enormous in the crucial, expensive Chicago media market. There, Romney’s...

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Ronald Reagan 547,355 (48.4%) to John Anderson 415,193 (36.7%) an 11.7% victory, Bush was way back with 124,057 (11%) 2 10 Crane 24,865 (2%) 3 2 All others 18,611 (2%) 0 2

Mitt Romney is headed for a blowout victory in Illinois on Tuesday. He leads with 45% to 30% for Rick Santorum, 12% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul. Romney's particularly strong among voters who live in suburban areas (50-29) and with those who live in urban areas (46-23). But he's even running slightly ahead of Santorum, 38-36, with folks who identify as living in rural parts and that strength with a group of voters he hasn't tended to do that well with is why he's looking at such a lopsided margin of victory. Romney tends to win moderates...