Yesterday, 8-AUG-09, I attended an event billed as a “Illinois Conservative US Senate Candidates Forum” at the Doubletree Hotel in Bloomington, IL. The event was poorly publicized and lightly attended with about 50 people showing up to hear from the 6 potential candidates that spoke. The main theme seemed to be “Find someone who is not Mark Kirk.” and was also the reason I attended. The event was being recorded by Illinois Review who said they would post the videos soon (but have not as of this writing).

The presentations were in a moderated format with each candidate being give 10 minutes to introduce himself and give an initial overview of his campaign. After the opening remarks, the moderator asked each person the same questions from a list with the number of questions asked depending upon the time the candidate took to answer each.

First up was Cisco Cotto who is a radio personality from the Chicago area. He was formerly a news anchor for WLS and WMAQ radio and now hosts his own talk show on WIND AM. As expected given his day job, he speaks very well and has a great voice. He’s a strong conservative and is able to articulate conservative principals well. One major advantage he has over the other candidates is name recognition. I think he would make an excellent candidate for Senate.

John Arrington was next. He started out with a bit of a shocker. He was a community organizer in his younger days and worked with Barak Obama. In fact he was next in line to replace Obama when he moved on to other thing. He says he quit the job after his father took him aside one day and said “Listen, I don’t know about these people. Truth to them means whatever it needs to be. If they need truth to be “Up” one day it’s up. If they need it to be “down” then next it’s down.” I liked the imagery. He’s converted from being a liberal Dem. He’s currently on the Harvey city council and said he learned first had how improving tax policy can attract new business to depressed areas. One advantage he has is he is schooled in the Alinksy tactics. He says he recognizes these tactics when everything is a crises and must be fixed now. I like this guy, but his presentation was rough (it better as he went) and he was a bit weak on some major policy issues. (“What would you do about energy?” was one of the standard questions and he hesitated far too much.) I don’t think he’s make a good US Senate candidate at this time, but with some polishing he’d have a chance. I think at this point I’d like him to run for a State Senate or Represntative slot and get some more experience. He’s a good man, but I don’t think he could beat Mark Kirk.

Don Lowery is a retired circuit judge from southern Illinois. He was probably the most passionate speaker there and knew the issues cold. I get the impression that he’s running because he’s angry at the direction of the country and genuinely wants to make changes. He mentioned several times that he thought Mark Kirk voted for Cap and Trade because of the influence of Excellon Energy (sp?) which donated heavily to the Kirk campaign. He also spoke well on other issues but seemed most motivated by the Cap and Trade bill. I think the Judge would make a great Senator, but I don’t think he’d win an election against a slick Democrat operator. I’d definitely want the judge on my side to fire up the base.

Pat Hughes is an attorney and real estate developer in Hinsdale Illinois. He recently organized a group called “Stop It” to fight Gov. Quinn’s 50% income tax increase. He’s a fiscal conservative and used the phrase “Mainstream Republican Values” multiple times. I think it’s going to be one of his catch phrases in the primary. He’s a very good speaker and gave the impression that he had in depth knowledge of most major issues. He was also pretty good at expressing conservative values. From the speech he gave and the Q&A time, I would have no problem supporting him as a Senator and believe he would make a great candidate. The only yellow flag is the real estate development business. Given the history of other politicians having trouble with real estate dealings, I hope that he gets a thorough vetting in the primary before becoming our general election candidate. With a good exam, I would gladly support him.

Eric Wallace is one of us. He was a Fred! Thompson delegate in the last election for God’s sake! Unfortunately, his presentation skills did not come through well. He seemed like a nervous college kid giving his first speech in SPEECH 101. It’s unfortunate because of the bunch, when he DID manage to get his ideas across, he seemed to most match my ideology. I’m really puzzled by his problem with the presentation because he’s an ordained minister and I would expect him to have the skill to speak to an audience and get complex ideas across. I’m sorry to say I don’t think he’ll make it very far in this campaign unless he does some work. He’s the only candidate that handed out campaign literature with a web site. I think I’ll email him with some pointers to the Marco Rubio and Michael Williams speeches from the gathering. Frankly I want to support Mr. Wallace. I just can’t.

Last to speak was Robert Zadek. To make it short, I didn’t like him. It was a personality thing I think. For issues, he’s a flat taxer. According to him, take the US government spending including Socials Security and Medicare, divide it by gross reported income and you come up with an 11.2% tax rate. Everyone pays at that rate and all financial problems are solved. Our energy problems can be solved by burning garbage. Again problem solved. According to him, all the complex problems of society have very simple solutions and he knows the solution.

After the speakers, the organizers collected a straw poll from the attendees. I hope they give the candidates copies of all the ballots because they do have more than just the vote totals. The ballots had 3 sections. One was a critique of the candidates. One was “Which of THESE” candidates would you vote for? And the 3rd was would you vote for the candidate in section 2, Mark Kirk or Someone else? The totals were:
Pat Hughes 17
Cisco Cotto 12
Don Lowery 8
John Arrington 4
Robert Zadek 2
Eric Wallace 0

I voted for Cotto.

Mark Kirk got no votes.