Court-Ordered Extension of Congressional Filing Deadline Means More Time for Dems to Find Their Man (Or Woman) in IL-10

As regular Team America readers know, we like to focus on politics in Illinois' Tenth Congressional District, and that means that, of course, there is no more important race this cycle (at least to this 10th District Blog) than getting Congressman Bob Dold re-elected. Appropriately, we have been following the movements behind enemy lines on the Democratic side of no-man's land with great interest, as the Dems offer up one candidate after another, and as each hopeful casts out their name with varying degrees of fanfare, claimed masses of support, and commitments for the Big Buck$ necessary to win against Dold's impressive >$1 million war chest.

Some of the Dems have clearly had the knives out, ready to slash away at their fellow liberals to earn the nomination, regardless of the damage to each other, or their party. So far, though, none of the announced Dem candidates: Ilya Sheyman, Brad Schneider, Vivek Bavda, and John Tree, have seemed to light the North Shore set on fire, just yet.

Sheyman is slightly left of Attila the Hun, Schneider's network peetered out after the first quarter of his fundraising efforts, and Bavda, even the Dems don't take seriously. Tree looked good on paper, but once you start to look more closely, he has as much baggage as anyone.

So, the 10th District Dems may be relieved to hear that due to the GOP lawsuit over the unconstitutionality of the Dems' redistricting plan, the appellate panel hearing the case has kicked the filing period back from beginning next Monday, all the way to Friday, December 23rd, through Tuesday Dec. 27th (anyone besides me notice that this period includes Christmas?). That gives the Dems plenty of time to try to find yet another winning candidate to finally give them a chance to wrest away the 10th from Republican rule.

Given that four men are in the race, I would think that a female candidate would have a great chance to stand out in the Dem primary. Maybe our friend Lauren Beth Gash hasn't quite given up her dreams of finally socking it to Mark Kirk (in a manner of speaking, of course, since he's now in the U.S. Senate). Time will tell.