50 IN '09?:

Proposed Special Election for Obama’s Seat No Sure Thing for Dems (Greg Giroux, 12/11/08, Congressional Quarterly)

[A] special election, if that is the route ultimately taken, would accelerate the state Republican Party’s plans to get back into U.S. Senate competition. Party officials insisted, even before Blagojevich was hit with criminal allegations, that they planned to recruit a strong candidate to seriously contest the regularly scheduled election in November 2010, at the end of the six-year term Obama won in 2004.

“It’s going to be a change election,” whether it is early next year or in November 2010, said Andy McKenna, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. McKenna has called on Blagojevich to resign and the state legislature to commence impeachment proceedings if he does not.

“We think we’ve got a slew of good candidates who can come forward and earn the voters’ trust,” McKenna said.

Perhaps the biggest problem for the Republicans if there is a hastily scheduled special election is that they lack a deep pool of potential candidates who are well-known throughout the state. Jim Edgar, the state’s popular Republican governor from 1991 to 1999, has been mentioned for numerous statewide races since he left office, but has said repeatedly he isn’t interested in returning to political life.

One possibly competitive prospect is Rep. Mark Steven Kirk , a Republican moderate. Kirk was just elected to a fifth House term in the Democratic-leaning suburban 10th District north of Chicago, which split its ticket to strongly favor Obama for president. Though he doesn’t have a high profile statewide, Kirk raised more than $5 million to win re-election this year — more than any other House Republican nationally — and could raise substantial funds for an abbreviated Senate election.

Mike Ditka owes us a race. If he'd run a couple years ago the current president-elect never would have made it to Washington.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 11, 2008 8:59 AM