Manzullo Has Well-Heeled McHerny County Demo Challenge

The Rockford Register-Star's Political Reporter Chuck Sweeney Something called had an interesting rumor about a potential Democratic Party candidate against Republican Congressman Don Manzullo in his Sunday column.

Instead of having an under-financed 2008 general election opponent, Manzullo will face Robert Abboud, village president of Barrington Hills, Sweeney reports.

While Abboud runs his own company--RGA Labs--now, if memory serves me correctly, the nuclear engineer used to work for Commonwealth Edison.

Abboud is probably best known for being his father’s son. The elder A. Robert Abboud was President of the First National Bank of Chicago and, later, the Occidental Petroleum Corporation.

You can read Abboud's political views in the Rockford Sunday column. I’d suggest reading the comments, too, some of which Abboud replies to.

What Sweeney did not mention is that Retired General John Borling may run for Congress as an independent this time, instead of as a write-in candidate as he did in 2006. (Borling did next to nothing in McHenry County and garnered 76 write-in votes. Manzullo got 66% of the votes cast in McHenry County.)

Whether that would cut into Manzullo’s base or the Democratic Party’s base will take some pretty sophisticated polling to figure out.

Someone named Sean on The Swing State Project laid out this strategy for an Abboud victory:

What a Democrat must do to win the district is not that hard. They must run at least even in the small counties along the Wisconsin border like Boone, Stephenson, and hold Manzullo to about 53% in Jo Daviess, 55% in Carroll, and to 58% in Ogle. As for the big population centers, they have to win big in Winnebago county(about 57%), and hold Manzullo to 56% in the district's portion of McHenry county.

While Abboud now lives in Barrington Hills, he grew up in Fox River Grove, where his father was quite active in reform politics.

Abboud and his wife Patricia gave $2,520 to Democratic Party State Representative Jack Franks in 2006, a year when Franks had no opponent.

Posted first at McHenry County Blog.