Thursday, October 29, 2009

Who Will Replace Kathy Ryg? Recent Filings in 59th Legislative District Indicate a Hot Race; Dan Sugrue Endorsed

It looks like the race to replace recently retired State Representative Kathy Ryg in the 59th Legislative District may be a hot contest for both Republicans and Democrats. Although only two candidates, appointed incumbent Democrat Carol Sente of Vernon Hills, a businesswoman, and Republican Dan Sugrue, an attorney from Green Oaks, filed their nominating petitions on Monday October 26th, we've been waiting for the expected entrance of several other candidates who also declared their intention to run for this spot.

Yesterday, two of those candidates made their filings, and it's game on in the 59th District primary. We've not heard much about Buffalo Grove Trustee Lisa Stone as a possible candidate lately, but we'll have to see.

On the Dem side, Buffalo Grove Mayor Elliott Hartstein filed midmorning yesterday, and will challenge the newly-appointed Sente in the primary. When Hartstein did not file on the first day, we were suspicious that some back-room deal had been cut among the Dems to get Hartstein out of the race. That appears not to have happened (yet), so this should be a primary race to watch. Hartstein has great name recognition and will give Sente a real fight. If he wins, he will face the GOP winner in the general election without the advantage of incumbency that Sente would bring, and would be taken as a sign of weakness and a possible pick-up opportunity for the GOP.

Sente appears to have learned a lot from Kathy Ryg about being out in the district and interacting with constituents. She's done more in the past few months than some legislators do all year in terms of hosting meetings and greetings. But, Sente is no shoo-in; just recently she was criticized in the Daily Herald for not taking a position on campaign finance reform when asked by the Herald editorial board. Newspaper people hate it when politicians won't give them a straight answer.

On the Republican side, declared challenger Mohan Manian showed up to file against Dan Sugrue, who previously ran a good race on little resources against Ryg. Mohan is a good guy, but the advantage belongs to Sugrue with his experience and name recognition. Sugrue signalled his intentions to run against Ryg again, before she announced her retirement, and deserves credit for sticking with the fight when no one else was interested in taking on the popular Ryg. Dan is off to a good start and he deserves the support of the party. Sugrue is endorsed by the Team America Blog.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back from total knee replacement and ready to get back to my volunteer work. Glad to add my endorsement to Dan Sugrue -- he deserves all of our support. He hasn't stopped working since the last election. He's really one of the good guys and we all need to get behind him to take this seat which was drawn up to include ten precincts in Wheeling for Kathy Ryg many years ago.

Baxter and Beau's Mom

Anonymous said...

Kudos to you TA. I too am sticking with Sugrue.

If the Republican House Shrinking Minority Leader Tom Cross, the simpleton State Representative Ed Sullivan, Jr. and the sycophant Lake County Republican Chairman Dan Venturi spent a tenth as much time and money frustrating Democrat candidates as they do Republican candidates, we’d all be ahead of the game.

And, if impressively articulate, intelligent and attractive were candidate minimum standards the Lake County Republican Party wouldn’t be entitled to a single seat in the Illinois General Assembly.

Easy said...

If everyone here supports Dan as much as TA has done so far, I think he can crack 40% in this GOP year.

Don't let up...everyone keep typing!!! We can blog our way to victory.

Team America said...

Hey Easy, what's your beef?

Anonymous said...

Baxter's Mom,

Glad to see you back in fighting form.

Easy, take a hike.

FOKLAES

Anonymous said...

Hey Foklaes, stopped at KFS after staples removed this AM. Can't wait to get back there next week and do what I do. Thanks for the welcome back.

Baxter & Beau's Mom

Anonymous said...

Easy,

Sounds like you're quite the "team player" - just wonder whose team your on

Anonymous said...

Baxters mom,

Did you see msk @kfs now that there's no longer a kfc?

Easy said...

My beef is this. I don't think you or any of these posters believe Dan S can win--and I think that is demonstrated by the absolute lack of fundraising and organization he has put together--if he did indeed pass all his petitions, that is an awful campaign strategy.

So my point is, if you think he is the best then invest some time. If you are not going to invest any time or resources other than your precious key strokes, then get out of the way and stop character assassinating others that may want to run.

Team America said...

Easy - you don't know what you're talking about. First, we have not assassinated anyone's character. If you're worried about Aaron Lawlor, we're in full support of his bid for county board and I bet it's very safe to say that I've given him more money and support than you have. Same goes for Sugrue. How many times have you sat around a kitchen table with Dan and other supporters talking about his campaign and plotting strategy- in fact, even before Ryg announced her retirement- umm... probably NONE. I know, otherwise I would have seen you there. As I said the other day, if you have a concern about how committed we are to Dan, maybe you ought to ask him instead of trying to hijack his campaign and reputation for your own agenda.

If you have a different candidate you would rather support, go out there and work for him or her, and while you're at it, go start your own blog so you can support whatever opinions and candidates you like. If I can do it, you can do it.

'Nuf 'Sed.

Anonymous said...

TA, What would Aaron Lawler have to do with anything about this? Lawler is an outstanding individual and I don't see him undermining a Segrue campaign. It's not in his character to do something like that. We do have some sneaks in the Lake County GOP, but Lawler isn't one of them.

I also wonder about the posting about Chairman Venturi. Venturi has been solidly supporting Segrue.

Although he is out of my district, I look forward to helping out Dan Segrue this election.

Easy said...

Fair enough, I shall take your advice...except the blog part, not sure that is in my skillset. But I still hope you will allow me to participate in the dialog here, I do enjoy it.

Team America said...

Easy, you're as welcome as anyone else to post here. You know the rules- keep it clean, polite and honest.

Anon 11:01- the reference to Aaron was the only thing I could think of as to potential character attacks with regard to Sugure, simply based on a post we did when it seemed that Aaron was being talked into the considering the race and we felt he need to stay put and run for his county board seat. We certainly did not attack Arron - we support Aaron - but that's the only thing I could possibly think of in response to that one commentor.