Good Luck!!

Jeff, it would be helpful to show data on why you think IL-6 is changing.  DuPage County has always been the center of the IL GOP Party, why do you believe its changing now?  Especially since Republican nominee Judy Baar Topinka outperformed Governor Blagojevich 50-38% in Dupage County .  I am not sure I believe its trending the right way given Rod's performance everywhere else in the state.  Most of the state senate and house races went to the GOP as well (7 Republicans for the State House ran unopposed in the county).

I am of the strong believer that Kirk (IL-10) is a better target than Roskam, but would like to more about the IL-6 demographics referenced above in your post.

I am not trying to discourage your effort, because it is much needed.  I wish you the best with your effort.  Please keep us informed here on SSP too!  Good Luck!

"It takes one man with courage to make a majority" - Andrew Jackson

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by: Nick A @ Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 20:01:22 PM CST

Dupage County is definately changing

Here are the results:

1988:  69% Bush, 30% Dukakis
1992:  48% Bush, 31% Clinton, 21% Perot
1996:  51% Dole, 40% Clinton, 9% Perot
2000:  55% Bush, 42% Gore
2004:  54% Bush, 45% Kerry

I think going from a 39 point deficit to a nine point deficit is a pretty dramatic change.

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by: Sean @ Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 23:13:51 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Using the H.W. Bush - Dukakis Election

as your base may be a bit misleading.  Presidental votes can easily distort the true underlying politics of a district of a county. That is why I tried to look at the county's representation in the state legislature where the five state senators from DuPage are all republican (districts 21,23,24,28,48) and all ten state reps are also republican (districts 41,42,45,46,47,48,55,81,95,96).  I realize that Dupage is not entirely IL-6, it also carries IL-13 (Biggert) and a small part of IL-14 (Hastert).  That is 100% republican representation in the county, which considering the state of the IL GOP, doesn't bode well for voting trends.

Kos had an excellent diary on the dangers of labelling political trends by looking at top ticket races, like president, as your sole source of data.

I am also not saying that we should not target Roskam, but when we do target him, make sure we understand the voting trends of the district instead of making blanket statements like Jeff c's "the district is changing rapidly".

"It takes one man with courage to make a majority" - Andrew Jackson

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by: Nick A @ Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 10:28:16 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Something to remember

Realignment seems to happen from the top down.  Look at Georgia, where I'm from.  The state voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1964 (except the two Carter races and 1992).  However, during that time, most Congressmen were Democrats.  Most, if not all, statewide officers were Democrats.  And the General Assembly was controlled by Democrats. 

In the early nineties, realignment reached the next level: Congressmen and Senators.  In the early 2000s, it reached the statewide races and legislature.

I know it doesn't always work this way.  For example, Colorado seems to be realigning from the bottom up. 

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.

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by: TheUnknown285 @ Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 15:19:40 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The 6th District went 53-47 for Bush in 04.

In 2000 it was 53-44 so there is an increase for Democrats in the district. I say go for it.

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by: D in FL @ Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 09:05:53 AM CST

Il-6 is changing for the better

Thanks for the comments, I'm glad to go into more details. 
I will get into even more details tonight when I have time, but just wanted to go over a couple quick things for now.  First off, while most of IL-6 is in Dupage County, there is a significant chunk (about 20%) of the vote in Cook county.  Duckworth won Cook County last year (results below), and a solid democrat could presumably do likewise in '08. 

2006 Cook County Results
Duckworth (D)-  16,576 -  47.2%
Roskam (R) -  18,544 -  52.8%

That leaves us with DuPage, which has historically been a Republican bastion.  Here there are a couple of factors at work.  First, the Demographics are changing to become more urban and diverse - tendencies that generally trend Democratic. 

Dupage population (2005 estimated) 
  1990 -  2000 -  2005
Total -  781,666 -  904,161 -  929,133
Black -  15,462 -  27,600 -  38,094
% Black -  2.0% -  3.1% -  4.1%
Hispanic -  34,567 -  81,366 -  104,992
% Hispanic - 4.4% -  9.0% -  11.30%

These changes have helped fuel the area's increasingly Democratic voting trends.  Below are the Congressional results for Dupage the past few years - clearly a trend going the right way.

  2002 - 2004 -  2006
Republican -  92,403  114,790 -  74,806
  65.7% -   55.0% -  51.7%
Democratic -  48,005 -  87,769 -  68,028
  34.2% -   42.1% -  47.0%

Unfortunately, because of the Republican history of the county (which includes several Republican townships not in IL-6) Dupage has only a few elected Democratic state or local officials with only small portions of their districts in Dupage County.  We came very close (49.3%) to winning state house seat 46 in 2006, but came up a little short.  We need to continue to build the emerging Democratic infrastructure in DuPage over the next 2 years, if we do so we can definitely knock out Roskam. 

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by: Jeff_C @ Mon Jan 29, 2007 at 09:34:59 AM CST

wrong cook county number

Just realized I flipped the 2006 Cook County numbers around.  It should read:

2006 Cook County Results
Duckworth (D) -  18,544 -  52.8%
Roskam (R) -  16,576 -  47.2%

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by: Jeff_C @ Mon Jan 29, 2007 at 14:02:23 PM CST

I know I've posted this many times...

...but it bears repeating. A better DCCC ad campaign would have put Duckworth over the top and helped other Dems in the Chicago TV market. Roskam tried to make himself out to be the local candidate as per the Republican theme this year of not being tied to their nat'l. party scandals. The DCCC  didn't stick with our national strategy here.

The D-trip spent something like $3.2 million on attack ads that had nothing to do with the 2006 campaign, here or anywhere else. Peter Roskam is too conservative but the issues last year weren't guns and book banning. Nobody believed the Dr. Suess ad. Right out of the box that ad damaged Tammy's credibility and riled up Roskam's fundy base. If they had Roskam on record wanting to ban Harry Potter books for promoting witchcraft to schoolkids that would have been one thing. But he's way too slick for that and they didn't.

The nat'l. issues this campaign were the culture of corruption and Iraq. Peter Roskam was a poster boy for the CofC and why they didn't go with that I don't know. Judy Biggert (IL-13) filed a FEC complaint against him in 1998 and his benefactor in that instance, uber wingnut Gary Bauer wound up paying a hefty fine. If you go through Roskam's financial reports from 2006 you can find multiple campaign contributions of more than $2100 from individuals. I don't know if he sent back the overage or he just thinks he can get away with it. Roskam started his career as an aide to Tom DeLay. He tried to claim that was 20 years ago and he hardly knew the man. Didn't stop DeLay from hosting a big fundraiser for him in September of 2005. How hard would it have been to find a pic of those two together? There's also  pics of him with Bush, Cheney and other assorted Repubs that are as popular, even around here, as a turd in the punchbowl. 

A Lake County judge reportedly admonished Lil' Petey for bringing frivolous lawsuits to his courtroom. His lawfirm has a big yellow pages ad soliciting for slip and fall injuries etc. I contrasted the type of ambulance chaser Roskam is from a champion of the little guy like Edwards in half a minute on doorsteps across the 6th. The massive Tribune Corp's endorsement of Duckworth castigated Roskam for raising campaign cash from his fellow trial lawyers and then not staying bought. He called global warming junk science during the COD debate while taking hefty contributions from big oil. Any of this stuff would have worked. It would have demoralized his fundy base and reminded everybody just how sleazy the Republican party is. 

At the end there was actually a good Iraq ad in the can starring Tammy. I don't know if it was hers or the DCCC's. All I know is I only saw it on U-tube. If that had been run in heavy rotation that last weekend it would have helped. If that's what Carville was talking about when he said Dean didn't kick in the rest of that $10 million at the end as promised then this is one of the races where it hurt. When you've got a winning hand you go all in at the end.

Jeff you've got a good idea here. I hope you keep it up and whoever our candidate is next time takes advantage of your work. I have a google alert set up on Roskam. I'd be happy to feed you what I get. 

 

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by: markg8 @ Tue Jan 30, 2007 at 10:50:18 AM CST

Perfect Storm in '06-- we lost

I'm afraid if we had a chance, it was in '06.  Perfect Storm, and Roskam still beat us.  Let's devote our juice to winnable races. 

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by: zambonimansam36 @ Tue Jan 30, 2007 at 16:46:28 PM CST

We can beat him and the Repub DuPage party

He's a lightweight and their machine is about ready to crumble. They constantly excuse their corruption saying Cook County is worse. Well me and mine didn't move from Cook County when I was 11 and so we could be deprived of our voting rights in DuPage. 

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by: markg8 @ Tue Jan 30, 2007 at 23:34:24 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The Obama factor

Interesting paragraph from an article in today's Roll Call below:

Freshman Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who won a highly publicized battle against wounded Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth (D), nevertheless had $141,000 in his bank account at the end of 2006. Although no high-profile Democrat has stepped forward to challenge him yet, Roskam's suburban Chicago district is trending Democratic - and the Democratic turnout could be even higher if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on the national ticket next year.

While I will point out this article supports the facts that the district is trending Democrat, the Obama factor is something else to consider in judging this race.  Having an Illinios Senator run for president would help our candidate in this race and could push us over the top.  Of course to be fair, I should also point out that Hillary is an Illinois native.

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by: Jeff_C @ Thu Feb 01, 2007 at 13:37:39 PM CST