You may want to bookmark this post so that you can come back to it any time you start to think that we the people can't have an impact on the process.
By Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet, in The Hill today:
Recruiting a major
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), aggressively courting strong Democratic House candidates, is facing an awkward situation back home.
As chief of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, one of Emanuel's tasks is recruiting. In the race for the open seat to replace retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), Emanuel is not convinced the Illinois Democrat who is running for the seat, Christine Cegelis, can beat the state senator who is the probable GOP nominee, Peter Roskam.
Emanuel told me he has had several conversations with Army Maj. Ladda "Tammy" Duckworth, a helicopter pilot who lost her legs while serving in Iraq. Illinois's mid-December filing deadlines for 2006 mean Emanuel only has a short time left to lock in an alternative.
"I have talked to her ..." he said when I asked about Duckworth. "She expressed her interest. That's where it is."
Duckworth was injured when a grenade shot through the Plexiglas floor of her aircraft near Baghdad.
She's no stranger to the House -- she was a guest of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) at the State of the Union in the House chamber earlier in the year.
Cegelis, who ran against Hyde in 2004 and gained 44 percent of the vote in a shoestring campaign helped by Howard Dean's Internet troops, has a network of supporters who have been e-mailing me that they are not keen on Emanuel's recruiting drive in their Democratic back yard. Cegelis's campaign manager, Patrick Mogge, told me she has no intention of backing down for Emanuel.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
