The Primary Is Over

At least it would be if this were next year and House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) gets his wish to move the primary election from the third week in March to the first in February.

What will result?

Lower turnout.

Think of the times you have avoided going out this early February while the temperature has been near zero. We skipped swimming practice Monday.

And, even where it’s warmer, that’s what’s happened.

What if the Bears are in the Superbowl again?

If so, challengers will get virtually no media coverage.

It would be no surprise if all incumbent legislators won re-nomination.

Certainly, fewer will get primary challenges since the filing date will be in November, about a year before the election.

But, as The Hill's reporter Aaron Blake points out,

The change would lengthen the campaign for the state’s two most vulnerable members of Congress, freshman Rep. Peter Roskam (R) and second-term Rep. Melissa Bean (D), and create a nine-month battle for Sen. Dick Durbin (D) if Republicans can muster a strong challenger.

A congressional or state legislative challenger could knock on a lot of doors in seven months, but he or she would have to afford to do so. That might make it difficult for a state employee like Tammy Duckworth, now Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs, unless she takes a salary from her campaign fund, as at least one statewide Republican candidate I know once did.

So, easier to get re-nominated, but maybe harder to get re-elected in a marginal district.

Oh, yes. U.S. Senator Barak Obama wins the Illinois Democratic Party primary election.

And lots of liberal Republican women cross over—as they did in 1992 to vote for Carol Moseley Braun—giving conservative Republicans a better chance of winning Republican primary elections.

Additional stories at McHenry County Blog.