I’ve given my 2 cents on Koppie before, I don’t mean to malign a gentleman that you admire but here I go, his potential for victory is 0% in the general (Oberdouche is at least 1%) and maybe 1% in the primary. No resources, no name recognition, he’s cannon fodder, nothing more than a protest vote. We need to do better than that. His long history of third party runs is unproductive, he took 0.41% away from Al Salvi in 1996 as the Taxpayers (Constitution) party nominee. That was a long time ago but WTF? IL conservatives were trying to stop Durbin from reaching the Senate and he was playing mini Perot? Fail.
Anyway, it’s official. Oberweis is in, I’d wager he’ll win the primary if no one else jumps in. And he won a 4 year term in the State Senate so he’ll go back to Springfield after Turbin slaps him around.
That being said, I will it was pretty much a token protest vote for Chad against the worthless RINO candidate, and Chad is pushing 80 so I think his odds of winning the nomination this time around are extremely slim.
I think almost all of us on this thread are in agreement that Oberweis would be a lousy choice to run against Durbin. He's had a pretty good conservative record in office so far (and I'm very pleased he went to bat for us in working to oust Pat Brady as ILGOP chairman). However, he literally just became a state senator a few months ago, and now his fan club (Which claims there's no such thing as an Oberweis fan club, it's sheer coincidence people keep floating his name for every office on the planet) wants to him to mount ANOTHER quixotic bid for statewide office after he's already lost 4 or 5 times. Cue the "very definition of insanity" remake here. I wouldn't be surprised if they gear up to run him again in 2016 after Durbin crushes him this time around. You can't fix stupid. Amusingly, his fan club compares him to Abe Lincoln, although Lincoln actually got elected to the state legislature FOUR times AND to Congress BEFORE attempting to win statewide.
In the case of both Oberweis and David McSweeney, the fact they FINALLY won election to LOCAL office in 2012 should have told their fan clubs that having all the money in the world can't make someone a viable candidate for a major office overnight. Sadly though, that lesson has fallen on deaf ears. I'm surprised the "let's run more wealthy businessmen that don't have a clue about politics" crowd seems to be in Dillard's camp instead of Bruce Rauner this time around. Maybe Rauner should try pretending to be a "tea party" candidate, regardless of how liberal he is (Donald Trump proved people will fall for that)
But the real problem here is how weak the entire field is. Oberweis' fans just retort: "Oh yeah, if you don't want Oberweis, who do YOU have who is better known?!" and we don't have anyone. It's very similar to the situation in Florida where Kathrine Harris fanclub was hellbent on running her against Bill Nelson. Anyone with an IQ over 3 knew she would be DOA in the general election, but the only other Republicans who filed against her were third tier unknowns with no money. Similar set of choices against Oberweis: Chad Koppie, Doug Traux, and William Lee (I'm sure Phil will remind me that I forgot someone else)
Sadly this is another example of why Illinois remains a one party RAT state. I wouldn't be surprised if the combine was hoping Oberweis is the nominee, so they can "prove" ala Alan Keyes that "conservatives can't win" and strengthen their argument to run more RINOs the next time around.
Impy, I disagree since you said that Chad has no name recognition. He has high name recognition, since he ran, statewide, four times.
That race has six candidates, Chad Koppie, Jim Oberweis, Doug Truax, William Lee, Joe Ruiz, and Almen Alveraz.