McHenry County Blog

Well, glory be.

The Chicago Tribune has decided to include third party and independent candidates in its political poll.

Rick Pearson, power party acolyte called “reporter” by the Tribune, wouldn’t even mention my name when I ran as the Libertarian Party candidate against Rod Blagojevich and Jim Ryan in 2002…not even the Sunday before the election.

Republican Party candidate Bill Brady signs an autograph for a supported at Crystal Lake's April 15th TEA Party rally and demonstration on Route 14.

How things have changed.

In Sunday’s edition, he writes,

“(Bill) Brady collected 37 percent to (Pat) Quinn’s 32 percent support, while another 19 percent were undecided in the poll of 600 likely registered voters conducted Aug. 28 through Wednesday.

“Former Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen, who’s now running as an independent for the top post, had 4 percent, and Green Party candidate Rich Whitney and Libertarian Party contender Lex Green each had 2 percent. The survey’s error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points.”

I heard my first radio ads for Scott Lee Cohen today on WBBM-Radio. They were focused on jobs, the same strategy he used when he won the Democratic Party primary election. Next time around, I precinct Cohen will have more that 4%.

Joe Walsh

Melissa Bean

A press release from 8th Congressional District Republican candidate Joe Walsh alerts me to polling results for both the 8th and 14th Districts. Melissa Bean is the incumbent Democrat Walsh is challenging.

Democratic Party candidate Bill Foster is the candidate from south of the McHenry County line being challenged by State Senator Randy Hultgren.

Here’s the Walsh press release that led me to We Ask America’s web site:

Poll Shows Walsh Ahead of Bean

(Lake Zurich, Ill)–A poll conducted by We Ask America two weeks after the primary shows Joe Walsh leading incumbent Melissa Bean 38.33% to 37.61%.

8th Congressional District poll results show incumbent Democrat Melissa Bean and Republican Joe Walsh within the margin of error of +/- 3.4%.

The sample size of 827 people was based to match the demographics of the district with a margin of error around ±3.40%.Green Party candidate Bill Sheurer received 3.97% while 20.19% were unsure.  We Ask America is a non-partisan polling company that surveys more than 4 million people each year.

The results for the 14th District show Republican Randy Hultgren leading Democrat Bill Foster 37.82% to 36.47%.  Green Party candidate Daniel Karis 4.53%.

Results for the 14th Congressional District show incumbent Democrat Bill Foster and Republican Randy Hultgren within the margin of error of +/- 3.4%.

The poll was taken about two weeks after the early February primary election.

The polling firm explained its technique like this:

“As with all of our polls, the participants were selected to match the demographics of the district we called, and were selected from our propriety database of likely voters. The margin of error for each is around ±3.40%.”

I got a phone call from gubernatorial candidate Dan Proft tonight.

He said he was the “conservative” candidate and had called me to ask me to take part in a telephone town meeting. He was sorry he missed me and we’d do it some other time.

Only thing was, I answered the call on the second ring, and Proft had not called before.

Anyone but me find that an interesting technique to get one’s name before Republican voters the night before an election?

Deceptive, but interesting.

Rather like the call about the fake poll that came Friday night.

Something called Illinois Election Research called last night.

I’ve never heard of such a business and neither has Google.

They wanted to know who we were going to vote for.

My wife, who cannot abide such calls, but knows they interest me, handed me the phone.

The recorded caller read off

• Kirk Dillard
• Dan Proft
• a third name
• Andy McKenna
• More names

I pressed one for McKenna and did whatever else was requested.

Anyone have any idea who paid for the survey?

Was it a voter identification call?

Or what?

Kirk Dillard

Andy McKenna

As I suggested after I got Mary Pat’s call on behalf of Andy McKenna earlier today, the race for the Republican nomination for governor has narrowed down to three candidates:

• Andy McKenna – 19%
• Jim Ryan – 18%
• Kirk Dillard – 14%

The Tribune’s Eric Zorn is reporting the results seen above.

17% reported still being undecided.

Among those with less than 10%, here are the results:

• Bill Brady – 9%
• Adam Andrzejewski – 7%
• Dan Proft – 6%

Bob Schillerstrom had 2%, but he dropped out in favor of Jim Ryan today.

In the Democratic Party primary, Zorn reports

• Pat Quinn – 44%
• Dan Hynes – 40%

As Zorn puts it,

“Game on.”

Who?

Mary Pat.

Didn’t sound like the Mary Pat I know.

Turned out it was a robo-call in support of Andy McKenna for governor.

It talked about Jim Ryan’s having supported a $5.5 billion tax hike. I presume this was when he was on the board of the union-financed not-for-profit tax hike advocacy organization run by Ralph Matire.

Mary Pat told me how Kirk Dillard had raised taxes millions of dollars, presumably by being one of the three DuPage County defectors who supported the tripling of the RTA sales tax rate in the collar counties.

This quote was attributed to Dillard about some tax matter, but I didn’t catch which one:

“What’s the big deal?”

So, what’s the message of this little bit of campaigning.

First, it interrupted a call I was having with a Crystal Lake number on a different exchange.

Second, when talking to an acquaintance in southern Kane County, he had gotten the call, too.

Andy McKenna

Kirk Dillard

So, it’s probably going to Republicans throughout the suburbs.

But there’s something more importantly.

It signals that McKenna’s polling shows the governor’s race in the Republican primary has narrowed down to three people:

• Kirk Dillard
• Andy McKenna
• Jim Ryan

In December, the Chicago Tribune poll said Ryan was leading by over 2-1, but still in the middle 20 percentage range.

So, if you think Jim Ryan can’t win in November and you want a Republican elected, the choice pretty much narrows down to McKenna or Dillard.

I had previously thought that Bill Brady might be one that  could catch up with Ryan, but this robo-call does not indicate that is the case.

A pollster for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Schillerstrom called yesterday afternoon.

Schillerstrom is DuPage County Board Chairman.

The pollster wanted to know if I would vote for Schillerstrom for governor.

I told her, “No.”

She didn’t ask why, but, if she had I had an answer.

I would have told her that I was really disturbed that he balanced his DuPage County budget by getting most of his county’s state senators to vote to triple my RTA sales tax.

The bill that eventually passed, after an amendment (allowing collar county board’s to use the quarter of a percent sales tax offer of free road money for collar county boards to be diverted to public safety purposes) was added.

That allowed Schillerstrom to forego an already-on-the ballot countywide referendum to raise sales taxes one-quarter of one percentage point for law enforcement to fill his budget hole. (Winnebago County passed such a referendum in 2002.)

Schillerstrom’s intervention was so egregious that he was taken to the wood shed by Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna at the Decatur state convention last June.

That made Schillerstrom hopping mad.

It stung so much most DuPage County Republicans walked off the convention floor.

Later my wife and I got a letter from Schillerstrom about it.

Schillerstrom let his state senators take the heat.

He got “free money.”

How ironic that one of them, Kirk Dillard is also running for the Republican nomination for governor.

But, the pollster was onto her next question. No time for an explanation on my part.

She asked if I would be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew I knew he had lowered property taxes seven ten years in 10 years.

I told her, “Yes.”

Would I be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew he had cut $200 million in wasteful spending?

I told her, “Yes.”

The final question was whether I would be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew DuPage County had passed “comprehensive ethics reform.”

I told her, “Yes.”

Do you see television and radio ads coming out of this survey?

= = = = =
The photo of DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom comes from the Young Republican Candidates’ Bar-B-Que held in Barrington Saturday, August 11, 2009.

April 14th, a pollster called one of McHenry County Blog’s friends in Algonquin.

Here’s my contact’s description of the phone call:

She said she was located in Asia and representing Western Wats. I tried to jot down her questions, not word for word, for you;

1. Will you vote in the Republican primary for IL governor?

2. Is IL heading in the wrong or right direction?

3. Approve or disapprove of the job state legislature is doing?

4. Who would you likely vote for governor? This was her list to choose from;

• Joe Birkett
• health care
• Kirk Dillard
• Bill Brady
• Doug Whitley
• Dan Proft
• Tom Cross
• Bob Schillerstrom
• Ron Gidwitz

5. What issue(s) concern you or you think legislature should focus? She
quickly read off this list;

• abortion
• lowering taxes
• reform and ethics
• improving education
• reducing crime
• family values
• wasteful state spending
• Second Amendment rights
• protecting the environment
• creating jobs/improve state economy

6. Do you subscribe to cable or satellite TV?

7. Who is your provider?

8. How often do you watch:
MSNBC; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.,
Fox News; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.,
CNBC; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.

9. Do you listen to the radio?
How often do you listen to Hannity?
Limbaugh?

10. What year were you born?

11. Are you Evangelical or born-again Christian?

12. Support or oppose abortion?

You can pretty well guess that the person paying for the survey research is listed among the names read.

If anyone else gets a political polling call, please make notes and let me share them with McHenry County Blog readers.

= = = = =
Seen on top are Joe Birkett on the left and Kirk Dillard to his left. Next comes Bill Brady. Under him is a photo of Ron Gidwitz. Dan Proft is to the left. Below him is Tom Cross.

Just in case you are interested, here are polls in the states with primary elections Tuesday.

Thanks for Respublica for pointing the way.

Just in case you are interested, here are polls in the states with primary elections Tuesday.

Thanks for Respublica for pointing the way.