An Accounting of the 6th District Primary's Costs

Despite its zombie-like return in the Tribune's hagiography of Rahm Emanuel, the Cegelis campaign's fundraising issues have been overblown and deliberately misunderstood.

Although I've addressed the money issue repeatedly and at length before, let's review the facts:

First, Christine's campaign time and again met the fundraising benchmarks set by Emanuel's DCCC. Fundraising goals that the campaign was assured would earn them establishment support -- only to see Dems Inc. change their story and increase their demands when her supporters, locally and on the Internet, met the DCCC fundraising challenges. The ability to raise money only became an issue when Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Durbin began openly courting potential primary challengers.

There were definitely money problems though. As Larry the Archpundit has thoroughly documented, a lot of money was wasted on various highly-compensated campaign "professionals" who added little or no value to Christine's grassroots campaign. But I must point out, that waste took place during Cegelis Team 1.5 ("Team 1.5").

Team 1.5 was the campaign crew that was mostly held over from Christine's initial insurgent run against Henry Hyde. They were still new to the game and, unfortunately, too damn naive. Team 1.5 were told by Dems Inc. that they would have to not only have to raise a hell of a lot of money -- see above -- but would have to run "a professional organization" staffed by "campaign professionals".

Yes, the very campaign "professionals" who bled Team 1.5 dry were recommended to the campaign by the same DC Dems who later lambasted the campaign for that waste.

After it became impossible to ignore the fact that the Dems Inc. folks were somewhat less than honest with deliberately undermining the campaign, Team 2.0 -- a crew of Kucinich veterans and grassroots locals -- was brought aboard, the dead-weight "professionals" were ejected and the bleeding was stopped. But the money was already gone and the campaign was crippled from that point forward.

So what's my point?

First, that fundraising was not a problem for the Cegelis campaign until it was deliberately impeded by the party leaders' vocal search for an alternative candidate. And second, that the wasteful flow of money out -- for which the campaign was rightfully beaten about the head and shoulders -- was due to its following the "professional" advice of "professionals" recommended by Dems Inc leadership. Both of which served to undermine the local candidate.

Is that tinfoil hat thinking? Nope, just go back to contemporaneous accounts of the primary race -- even by those who didn't support Christine -- and you will see that it is all there. I didn't bring it up earlier because I didn't want an honest review of the dishonest primary to distract from the party's campaign against a dangerous, right-wing nut-job.

Sadly, they managed to lose the race anyway.

But if you want to venture into the Land of Tinfoil Hats, consider for a moment how Mr. Emanuel's clipping of Cegelis served Mike Madigan's opposition to Illinois participation in Howard Dean's "50 State Plan".

Had Christine -- a member of the Dean Dozen -- won the primary, she could have would have invited the DNC's chairman and his "50 State" workers into the 6th District and the Land o' Lincoln. But with the Dem Inc. candidate as the nominee, Mr. Madigan was able to successfully and very nearly thoroughly exclude Dean's DNC teams from Illinois. Thereby leaving the Illinois Democratic power structure intact, consolidated and unchallenged.

But to believe that, you would have to be some kind of conspiracy nut -- capable of believing that the Illinois Democratic party leaders might be more concerned with maintaining their personal political power via stability at all costs, rather than with promoting progressive values.

Only a nut could possibly consider even the possibility of such institutionalized sleaze -- right?

So what was the 6th District's reward for Dem Inc.'s cutting down their local progressive candidate? The willful decimation of a thriving grassroots organization.

Well, that and Representative Peter Roskam (IL-6).