Chris Wallace interviews Tammy Duckworth on a controversial move by the Department of Veterans Affairs she was trying to defend.

All the big hype in the 8th Congressional District after Joe Walsh decided to run in the 14th against Randy Hultgren was about the face off between Tammy Duckworth, the woman who lost to Peter Roskam for Congress, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, who lost the Democratic Party primary for State Comptroller to State Rep. David Miller.

Then Walsh changed his mind. He announced he would run in the new 8th District, designed to elect a Democrat.

Because of the Republicans’ remap challenge, filing for Congress was delayed until just now.

On the first day of filing, however, the only Democrat to file was Krishnamoorthi.

Duckworth was a no show.

So, why do candidates choose not to file on the first day.

I can think of two reasons:

1. The candidate does not have enough signatures.
2. There are lots of people running and the candidate wants to be last on the ballot.

The second reason makes no sense since in a two-person race whether one is first or second on the ballot has not been shown to make any difference.

So, that leaves the possibility that Duckworth’s petition gathering effort just wasn’t up to snuff, that her advisers wanted the Christmas weekend to get more signatures.

The last day to filed for Congress in Tuesday, December 27th.

No doubt Duckworth will file then.

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An insightful commenter notes a third possible reason for filing late–getting separate stories in the media about doing so.

The commenter, who has a better memory of things Democrat than also points out that Duckworth’s opponent Krishnamoorthi lost the Democratic Party primary to State Rep. David Miller, not Judy Baar Topinka. That correction has been made above.

Thanks again to a citizen-editor.