EL Rider Confronts Speculation - Hat In Ring for 10th District Run

After weeks of speculation (all of it unwritten and unspoken) that I, the EL Rider, would run for the United States Congress in the upcoming election, I have decided to end the guessing game. I will run as a write-in candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Illinois Tenth District seat in the United States House of Representatives. This will likely come as a shock to my two opponents who thought that they only had each other to worry about; now they have to worry about history. I will run on the John F. Kennedy platform from 1960, lower taxes and strong national defense. Oddly that platform would make my opponents some sort of two-headed Nixon.

Some would say that I cannot run for that seat because I live outside of the district, poppycock I say. Of my opponents only Jay Footlick actually has a residence in the district, he rented a pied-a-district last July and my other opponent Dan Seals has never lived in the district. However, it should be noted that both have dined in the district. On the other hand, like the sitting Republican Congressman Mark Kirk I grew up in the district and have played on ball fields up and down the length and breadth of the 10th district. Further I have been gainfully employed in Chicago during the past three years and for decades before that, something neither of my opponents could honestly state.

As a nod to the Clinton campaign of 1992 my campaign committee has been organized in the manner of a "war room" (the term is also used in the trading business) but it will be referred to as the "war room without Carville or Stephanopoulos" or WRWCoS for short. The WRWCoS has advised me that although I currently live in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park, one if the many diverse Chicago neighborhoods that made up the "Seals Coalition" during the last election, that I should consider moving into the 10th district. Some (well, one) have suggested that I move back in with my mother, who lives in the district (thanks Mom) but I have decided to put down more permanent roots. So later this week I will be looking at an apartment above the Glenview House, I plan to sign a one year lease on my own pied-a-district that will terminate months after Mr. Footlick's lease. As a big nod to the personal life and career of Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts I will also be on the, er, lookout for one of those super-rich North Shore divorcees to shack-up with.

As a further tribute to the Clinton campaign of 1992 I will effectively refuse to release any tax returns or any information concerning any futures or option trades that I may or may not have placed at any time until well after any election that I may win. I will however state here and now that I have not traded any cattle futures during this century. If pressed I will offer access to "original trading records", that's right, "original", meaning the paper that I scribble on. I am legally required to keep those records for five years and the first ones that I would find today would be from the fall of 2002. Thank you Mrs. Clinton. I'd like to give another shout out to former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO, Democratic Senator and current New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine who has inspired me to state unequivocally that I will make no statements concerning any corporations, partnerships, holdings or hedge fund interests that I may own or may be partner to. Thank you Mr. Governor and best wishes with the recovery, I know how bad the cold weather can be to bone injuries, my prayers are with you.

Some have asked, "hey EL Rider, why didn't you just turn in petitions like everybody else?" That is a great question and frankly the answer doesn't make my faith in the WRWCoS look very well placed; they ordered the phone books for Lake County, Indiana. The WRWCoS had planned on using the popular "Link Method" of sequential petition listing. At the last minute we had to regroup and run as a write in, something that Lake County Democratic Party Chairman Terry Link nearly had to do. Later events showed that certain bloggers are starting to catch on to this popular ruse, so maybe the error was a blessing.

As an attempt to not alienate or offend anybody I promise that I will not speak any language other than English. I am Irish Catholic but I swear that I will not send out any pamphlets containing anything written in Gaelic or any images of Irish people drinking beer on St. Patrick's Day.

To my two opponents I say, more to follow.

El Rider For Congress - I Don't Live There Either!

10th District Democrat Let Fingers Do Walking on Fraudulent Petitions

The good folks working with TA up at the Team America's Tenth District Blog earlier uncovered numerous dead signatories to the nominating petitions of Illinois State Senator Terry Link, the Chairman of the Democratic Party of Lake County, Illinois. Well they have outdone themselves with their investigation of Mr. Link's petitions by noticing that the names were apparently copied out of the phone book and the signatures allegedly forged. It was not immediately noticeable due to the fact that the petitions show the first name first, however they have compiled a long list of pages that list the last names alphabetically or in reverse-alphabetical order (TA charitably calls the later "sneaky"). They have found people with only a first initial listed in the phone book who's petition entry contains only the same first initial, TA's group contacted some of them who claimed to never sign anything with just the first initial. They found other instances in which those telephone customers were listed on the nominating petition with incorrect names that start with the correct initial. In spite of all of that I have to agree with TA that the following pretty much closes the deal:


Aritha Walker (sheet 41, line 23) is listed as living at 245 Jackson, in North Chicago. Aritha lives on Jackson, but at a different street number. "245" is April Walker's house number at a completely different street in Mundelein. April Walker is the entry in the phone book immediately above Aritha Walker.


All of us who appreciate honest elections and honest campaigning owe a thanks to TA and his mystery sleuths. Considering all of the talk I hear from the Obama campaign on new ways to "do" politics I'm sure that former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama would also appreciate their work.

Illinois Democrats Now Trying to Ruin Metra

They have done a heck of a great job ruining the Chicago Transit Authority so now they have turned to Metra, Chicago's local commuter rail service. Suburban Republican Congressman Mark Kirk (US 10th) had this to say: "(t)he bottom line is this: California, Florida [and] Texas do not suffer from this kind of political gridlock," Kirk said. "Our inaction in Springfield could lead to a huge windfall for other states."

The congressman's statement pretty much says it all about our state, the political gridlock is the Democratic Party.

Jay Footlick Gets PR Boost

Jay Footlik got some decent PR this morning in Neil Steinberg's Sun Times column. Mr. Steinberg was initially amused at Mr. Footlik's name but proceeded to contact the Democratic Congressional primary contestant for Chicago's northern suburbs (IL 10th) and interviewed him. Mr. Steinberg is a liberal, albeit often a very reasonable one.

What Would the Left Do?

What would a lefty blogger do with the hysterical pictures above? A couple of weeks ago I was driving up the Edens Expressway when I came across the woman pictured above. She had part of her car dragging behind her and it was attached to a bumper that held a sticker for last fall's (and a current) Democratic candidate for Congress in the Illinois 10th Congressional District, Dan Seals. Well if the shoe was on the other foot and the car had a bumper sticker for 10th District Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) you can bet that those photos wouldn't have languished inside of an iphone but rather they would have been trotted out to show how heartless, stupid and yes dangerous those evil Republicans are. I did no such thing concerning those funny photos, Dan Seals and the Democratic Party because it would have been stupid.

Well none other than Illinois 10th Congressional District Democratic blogger and Dan Seals supporter Ellen Beth Gill, the blogger at Ellen's Illinois Tenth Congressional District Blog that I wrote about here, has written a post concerning a woman who allegedly drove through a stop sign "in the city" (I would presume Chicago) while using her Blackberry-type device. Ellen has blamed the incident (that occurred "in the city") on President George Bush and the North Shore Congressman Kirk. This has got to be one of the most ridiculous posts I have ever read. I must ask, does this nonsense represent the left side of the blog world? I must also note that she has no photos of that neo-con outrage "in the city."

One would think that a resident of one of Chicago's suburbs would know that the residents of the city of Chicago are overwhelmingly Democratic and the women are even more so. Especially if said suburbanite is part of * the local suburban Democratic Party. Frankly, if the event described actually occurred the driver was likely one of Ellen's compatriots who was driving-while-blackberrying "in the city". Maybe it was even a lady on an iphone reading one of Ellen's posts.


*It is well worth noting that the link for "part of" is to the Illinois 10th Democratic Organization. When I was a child I did a lot of work for Democrats in that area for the New Trier Democratic Organization (NTDO),some of it for the Mikva campaigns mentioned on the 10th site and that my late father was once a force in the NTDO; along with the late yachtsman Lynn Williams. I cannot speak for Mr. Williams but my father recognized the problems that his party has been having with the far left long ago and would have appalled that the 10th District Organization has become so closely aligned with the Daily Kos types and their yearly convention. The Yealrly Kos will be the same weekend as Lollapalooza, go figure.

Big Hat Tip to Publia of the Wilmette blog who noted the ridiculous post in the comments section of my original post on Ellen's Tenth.

Last night I incorrectly wrote that I had worked for the IL 10th Democratic Organization and have since corrected the post.

Many thanks to the wonderful Dr. Sanity and her Carnival of Insanities for inclusion again this week. Go read her blog!

Update: Thank you Team America! You are right that link was incorrect, I thought that I doulble checked it after posting; I blame Dick Cheney! The correct link is now posted, thanks again.

Dems Deem Illinois 10th Dumb

How else to explain this ridiculous internet ad. The Democrats have cherry picked votes during Congressman Mark Kirk's (R-IL) years in the House to produce a commercial that states that Mark is bad for the military. By "cherry picking" I mean that certain bills may be voted against due to the fact that there is a better bill in the hopper that covers the same issue or the bill may simply not be a good bill for any number of (pork laden?) reasons. I also seem to recall an obscure issue some years back in which the VA didn't spend all of it's funds from the previous budget year and those left-over funds were counted as part of the then current budget year; I'm not sure if that is the issue that the Dems have going in this ad or not. I do not have time to investigate their citations this morning but I will do so next week.

The first problem with telling people that Mark is bad for the military is that he is actually, you know, in the military. Yes Congressman Kirk is an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves, he is a Lieutenant on an AWACS plane and he has been flying missions over Iraq and Afghanistan as a sitting congressman. The guy being run by the Dems for the 10th District Illinois is Dan Seals. Mr. Seals lost to Mark less than 8 months ago, yet he announced his candidacy for that seat a few weeks ago. Mr. Seals ran last year as a "retired" thirty-something banker who lived outside of the district. Now I have no idea whether or not Mr. Seals has actually moved to the 10th district but this ad campaign is ridiculous. The Democrats are running this military themed ad in support of a guy who hasn't even worked for a good portion of this century and against a congressman who has been flying missions over Iraq.

If it matters I attended Joseph Sears School and New Trier East High School with Mark and consider him a smart, well rounded, level-headed guy, in fact much more level headed than your humble (ed. what?) correspondent. Mark is an impressive guy, at Christmas time the year that we got out of college I ran in to him on the El, I was just starting out on my journey through the Chicago Board of Trade as a bottom of the ladder runner. Mark on the other hand was living in London and working for a Member of Parliament. Mark was always like that, smart enough to open doors and savvy enough to do something with those openings. I was not surprised when I heard that Mark had joined the Reserves, they need sharp people too.

The 10th District of Illinois is a moderating, formerly heavily Republican district that has been represented by moderates for decades, Mark is a continuation of that moderateness but even in that very wealthy and well educated Midwestern district the folks on the left side of the spectrum have started to demand the liberal purity often demanded on the coasts. Last year I was surprised to hear some previously relatively moderate Democrats describe Mark as a "lap-dog to Bush". Having not even attended medical school I would shy away from some sort of diagnosis but it did sound a lot like Bush Derangement Syndrome. The Democrat's latest internet ad takes full advantage of some willingness on the part of the left to believe rhetoric over reality. I mean come on, the Dems want the people of the 10th to believe that the guy who would be good for the military is the one who was likely seated at the "kitchen table" in Charlie Trotter's at the same time that the sitting congressman who is supposedly bad for the military was doing 10 hour shifts in an AWACS plane over Iraq. Pathetic.

Big Hat Tip to Publia at the Wilmette blog, thanks for the e-mail!

Kirk vs the Loser - Round II

Last year Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL), a childhood friend of mine successfully defended his congressional seat against a carpetbagging Democrat named Dan Seals who lives outside of the 10th congressional district. As far as I could determine last fall Mr. Seals doesn't actually do anything, the guy is unemployed and has been out of work for a large portion of this century. The man's job is to be a Democratic candidate, like I said, he ain't working. He spent last year campaigning and the year before planning his campaign. Additionally he is another Democratic Candidate who refuses to live in his district. Last fall I wrote:

The Democrats of Chicago’s North Shore are angling to replace a man with qualifying experience with a guy who worked in a bank for ten years. Mr. Seals has spent the last year campaigning rather than working. This shows a real lack of seriousness on the part of the Democrats. Additionally one can assume that Mr. Seals is just another tool of the Chicago Democrats, and one would be correct. So if you want an empty suit who has no knowledge of our military at a time when the United States has been under attack from a new type of warfare by all means vote for the Democrat. After all, Seals was endorsed by al qaeda (as have all of the Democratic candidates). It seems that the best thing that Mr. Seals has going for him is his looks, a pretty shallow reason to vote for someone. If you want a centrist who actually understands both what is at stake and how to prosecute our defense you should vote for Mark Kirk.

Look, I know that the district is very expensive but maybe the guy could afford to live there if he, you know, got a job.

Hat Tip: I owe one big hat tip to Publia of the Wilmette blog