That’s Bond, Michael Bond:
State Sen. Michael Bond (D) is gearing up to run for Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R) seat, according to sources familiar with the situation. Kirk is pondering a bid for Senate in 2010, and his departure would make his north Chicagoland seat a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Bond has tapped John Lapp to do his media campaign, Bennett, Petts & Normington to his polling and Ed Peavy to do direct mail for the race, according to one source familiar with the arrangement. The source also said a former aide to Rep. Melissa Bean (D), Brian Herman, will manage his campaign.
Kirk himself has set a pretty definite timeline for deciding his 2010 plans (“by the end of the month”), but the fact that Bond is already putting a campaign team together may indicate a willingness to run regardless of Kirk’s intentions. In any case, Bond may have company in an open seat race — fellow state Sen. Susan Garrett says that she’s considering a bid, and ’06/’08 nominee Dan Seals is known to be interested to run again if Kirk bails on the seat.
More info on Bond is available here.
Kirk is going to find himself in the same position of Chris Shays, and soon to be Jim Gerlach, facing one tough race after another until someone finally gets past him.
How bout the other Illinois Republicans? Of course Obama’s numbers are inflated due to home-state appeal, but still, some of those margins are pretty tempting. He won Roskam’s district by 13 points, Biggert’s district by 9 points, and Manzullo’s by 8 points.
Kirk’s of course he won by a stunning 23 points.
Depending on the district he may or may not have had to go up for re-election in 2008. It was a Republican held seat until a Republican primaried the incumbent in 2006.
is really going at this hard this cycle. They’ve seem to realize that they’ve already picked off all the R+___ seats they could and overreach in quite a few of them. Their recruits indicate a strong strategy of offense but this time mainly focused on the seats that should be ours but that the GOP are sitting in.
Let’s see some great candidates announce in Michigan, WA-8 and PA-6 now. I hope the DCCC is working Bonoff here in MN too.
I liked Dan Seals, but he had 2 bites at the apple and didn’t get it done, so he’ll be a weakling if given the nomination a 3rd time even for an open seat. The fact is if Kirk does gun for the Senate and leaves IL-10 open, Seals as a 2-time loser will be weaker than a local or state-level elected official.
I feel the same way about IL-10 as I do MN-03, where as an Indian-American myself I gave a lot of money to Madia in his losing bid. Madia has his shot and disappointed, and in what might be our last near-term realistic shot at the seat (assuming redistricting doesn’t put more Dem voters there) before Paulsen becomes entrenched I now want to see Bonoff or another popular elected official as our nominee.
ellison won a district that is overwhelmingly white next door easily. and besides, the stereotype of Asians is that they work harder and are smarter than whites so i’m not sure if that alone had a negative impact.
the district was probably 35% GOP, 33% Dem, 32% Ind and had been electing a moderate Republican easily for maybe the last 40 years. paulsen was a smart, experienced legislative leader who had worked in Ramstad’s office and had the uber-popular Ramstad’s blessing as his successor. he also had the classic wife, kids, dog on the front stoop profile so important to suburban voters.
madia was unknown, young (turned 30 during the campaign), unmarried, had a very thin resume, and didn’t even live in the 3rd district when the race began. also, when the issue became the economy rather than the war, a candidate who was running mainly as an anti-war candidate was suddenly flatfooted.
he is smart and a good speaker and raised good money. but, in retrospect, someone with a more conventional background might have done better. i consider this race to be the mirror image of AL-5 or OR-5. in both cases, a popular, moderate democrat was retiring from a borderline GOP district giving the GOP a great opportunity. but the democratic bench was much deeper in both districts meaning that we could put up a solid, experienced candidate who matched the district and the republicans were left wishing it had turned out differently. we have lot of reps and sentaors in the 3rd but almost every one was elected in 04 and 06. they were neither very experienced or established, leaving an opening for a dynamic outsider like madia.
i tend to think that only steve simon (assistant majority leader with experience beating a popular moderate incumbent republican) has the verbal dexterity, money-raising ability, and hard drive to win that would give us a chance in 2010.