Hey Fieldmarshal, explain this to me.
If Giannoulias had won and he had been indicted (I doubt he will be indicted but, for the sake of argument, lets’s say he is) then Quinn could have appointed anyone he wanted to replace him. So why was it necessary for the “combine” to let Kirk win?
C’mon, China Lake, you’re not that naive. Let’s presume for a moment that Kirk had been a Conservative Reformist (*snicker*), first off, he’d never have been allowed to run, not for Senator (or if he had, he’d have had to prepare for unholy hell from the Criminal Outfit, just like Pete Fitzgerald got), and secondly, if he somehow had gotten the nod with those credentials and Alexi had won the Dem nod, Alexi would’ve been yanked (or forced) off the ballot faster than you can say Jack Ryan. He would’ve been replaced by another hack Combiner without a looming indictment... and said hack would’ve then “won” the election fair and square... Chicago “fair and square”, that is. Same way the Mighty Quinn won... y’know... “fair and square.”
As for whom the Combine lets win, sometimes it’s better for them to have their “R” puppet win or the “D” puppet win, sometimes it doesn’t matter which. I pity the fools out there that think Illinois politics is like other states where it’s Republican vs. Democrat. It ain’t, and it hasn’t been for as long as things have been done the Chicago Way. Bipartisan corruption in Illinois is as Chicago as the wind blowing off the lake. Too bad the folks in DC only pay desultory attention to it. Not until good government types get control of “Just-Us” perhaps will we begin to hack away at the epic-scale chicanery and criminality.