From today's "The Hill"

Cegelis refuses to endorse Duckworth after primary
By Jonathan E. Kaplan

Christine Cegelis will not endorse Tammy Duckworth, the winner in Illinois's 6th Congressional District Democratic primary, because she has reservations about Duckworth's positions on universal healthcare and free trade, a source close to Cegelis's campaign said.

Duckworth, a wounded veteran of the Iraq war, defeated Cegelis by 3  percentage points in last week's hotly contested primary. Cegelis, a liberal Democrat, won 44 percent of the vote against Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in 2004.

On Saturday, Illinois Democrats held a unity breakfast attended by Duckworth, party officials and Cegelis supporters who vowed to help Duckworth. Cegelis did not attend.  

Duckworth had favored universal health insurance but changed her tune, advocating a more incremental approach, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source asserted that Cegelis believes Duckworth has backed away from her opposition to the Central America Free Trade Agreement that the House and Senate passed last year. Despite that perception, Duckworth won the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsement.

Duckworth spokesman Billy Weinberg said that instead of focusing on the differences between Duckworth and Cegelis,  voters should consider the differences between her and her GOP challenger, state Sen. Peter Roskam (Ill.).

"I would urge them to consider if that's in the best interest of the goals we share," Weinberg said, referring to the focus thus far on the differences between the two Democratic primary candidates.

Cegelis's refusal has irritated national Democrats who said she had promised local officials that she would endorse Duckworth. The national party officials worry that her unwillingness to support Duckworth's bid could dampen enthusiasm among some Democratic activists in November.

Democrats had hoped to avoid this scenario as early as last year. Top party officials studied the likelihood of trying to persuade Cegelis to drop out of the race but concluded she would not do so if asked, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) official said.

The heated primary reflected the tension between activist voters who favor a passionate, outspoken candidate and voters who support a candidate they view as having the best chance to win in a general election.

In the Republican-leaning, suburban Chicago district where the Democratic Party has had no real organization in recent years, Cegelis had built support from a coalition of activists and one-issue voters. She also earned the endorsement of Democracy For America, a prominent grassroots movement run by Howard Dean's brother after Dean's failed presidential campaign. Dean is now the chairman of DNC.

"There's no respect now for grassroots support," the source close to Cegelis's campaign said, adding that Dean was the only national Democratic leader to call her after the race ended.

In the absence of a strong local party, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), handpicked Duckworth as the establishment choice. Illinois's U.S. senators, Democrats Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, as well as Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), aided Duckworth's campaign by recording phone calls to voters, endorsing her in direct mailings and raising money.

Illinois Democrats say that they are not worried about Cegelis's decision not to endorse Duckworth because most Democrats, even if upset by the outcome, will choose Duckworth over Roskam.

Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, told The Hill, "We've seen plenty of reaction in the past when Washington Democrats involved themselves in a race. I'm seeing a different reaction here. It's not reversed itself into a Kumbaya moment."

"I don't sense a recrimination mode. The tenor of rhetoric from the DCCC is one of `well, that's politics,'" he added.

A Democratic Party strategist said, "Maybe [Cegelis] can take some people with her, but with or without her this is going to be a hell of race. We hope that she is part of it."

Good.  This will show them that we're for real.  You can't just put a national candidate in there and then use us when its all over to beat the Republicans.  This one might be a loss but the "establishment" will no longer think of us as another tool.  They must hear what we have to say.

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Cross-posted from Soapblox/Chicago, where I blog most often.

Like many fellow Cegelis supporters, I have been feeling a sense of loss and frustration over the recent primary election. I so badly wanted Christine to win. I felt she was the best woman for the job, I knew her heart, and I had confidence in her background and skills. I knew that she would be an independent voice for the people of the 6th, always looking to us first for guidance and advice.

I still feel that way. I maintain the viewpoint that Christine would have been a better candidate than Tammy Duckworth and I will not apologize for that. Christine Cegelis would have been better for us, for our nation, and for the world as our Congresswoman.

However, the operative phrase is would have. Unfortunately, Christine did not win and Tammy Duckworth did. The reality of the situation, all emotional response aside, is that Tammy Duckworth is who we have to face Peter Roskam in November. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let that man represent me in Congress.

So I decided it was the right thing to do to attend the DuPage Democrats Unity Breakfast at Drury Lane yesterday morning. And, for many of the same reasons as other Cegelis supporters, I felt incredibly uncomfortable about it. But, unlike many of you,  part of that is because I made the decision to put myself out there and attack Tammy Duckworth directly.

More on the flip...

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If the Democrats don't recruit these working class Latinos they are truely lost.

Crossposted from Dameocrat Blog

More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights - Los Angeles Times: "More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights
By Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer
2:51 PM PST, March 25, 2006

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When I read Matt Stoller's post on Cegelis and Hackett, I have got to admit that I was a little shocked.  Not only did the author call Paul Hackett a coward but he tried to draw an analogy to the two races.  I not only disagree with calling Hackett, a marine who risked his life for this country a coward but I also disagree with the Cegelis/Hackett equivalency.

(Please don't delete my diary similar because it dissents from mydd's beliefs.  I hope that you keep it here so we all can have a lively debate.

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I'm just going to follow up on my earlier post with an explanation of why I brought up Michael in Chicago.  He emailed me very hurt and angry that I made him look bad.  And honestly, it wasn't my intent.  Michael is clearly a passionate and driven supporter, and he provided a lot of good information on Cegelis.  I had earlier bumped some of his diaries because I thought they were great.

In that last post, I was just explaining why I stopped writing about Cegelis.  As a practical issue I try to avoid subjects on which I have unreliable information.  For instance, even though I hate Lieberman, I spoke to a lot of people before getting on the Lamont bus, and even went up to Connecticut to meet him.  

I did not have a good way to do that for IL-06.  And in a very contested and vicious primary, there was a lot of misinformation, as there always is (Daniel Biss has more on this problem).  Initially, I was relying partially on Michael's diaries and a few other IL contacts for my info on the race, and I was getting pushback on the district from DC people.  When Michael had some disclosure issues (read this thread, this thread, and this thread if you want more), I decided I could no longer reliable talk about the district with any sense of what was actually going on.

Now, Michael seems like an ethical guy who made a mistake.  For one thing, he admits he made a disclosure error, which I think is pretty stand-up of him, and he then changed his profile to reflect his contracting status.  I wish we had had these discussions earlier.  It's just that at the time I had no idea what was really going on, and I felt like everyone was trying to spin me instead of level with me, and I didn't know the district.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to make this into some sort of attack, I just wanted to explain some of the problems I had in terms of getting reliable information.

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