Machine candidate Robin Kelly defeated conservative Paul McKinley in the special election to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr., in Congress that was held yesterday in Illinois’ Second District.
While McKinley was able to win 2/3 of the counties included in the district, the city of Chicago provided enough “turnout” that Kelly received 70.5% of the vote to McKinley’s 22.3% overall.
McKinley said, “We have not been defeated. We have won. Not only have we won, we have opened a door that can’t nobody shut….I hope that those who sit in the shadows of the corrupt Machine — I”m putting you on notice, that every ward, every committeeman, every person that’s running, we’re going to run somebody against you. The Machine doesn’t get a break no more.”
In contrast, Kelly said:
Watch us take on the NRA, the Tea Party, and anyone else standing in the way of our safety. Watch us mobilize families and turn grief into action just like the families of victims of gun violence have done in powering this campaign each and every day.
McKinley’s numbers are in fact quite promising given the mismatch in funding and cold shoulder given McKinley by the Illinois GOP.
The next election for this seat will take place in just 8 months, and McKinley has built name recognition that could prove quite powerful in the general with higher turnout.
And New York Mayor Bloomberg flushed upwards of $2.2 million into Kelly’s campaign, aided by Daily Kos’s constant fundraising, contrasted with McKinley’s $10,000 in donations, along with a series of ads placed by the Tea Party in the finals days of the campaign.
The result was a contest between a truly grassroots effort and a New York-funded Machine.
But, if new information obtained last night proves to be true, there may have been even further subterfuge of McKinley’s campaign going on behind the scenes, from the very party he sought to reinvigorate with new life in the form of Illinois GOP political consultants. Rebel Pundit reports:
Despite a full-on assault from local media outlets, led by the Chicago Tribune’s Bill Ruthhart and Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery, McKinley also won two out of the three counties in the second district—taking Will County 43 to 41 percent and smashed her by 10 points in Kankakee County, 50 percent to Kelly’s 40.In addition to the media effort that saw to it McKinley didn’t step out of his place as an activist, Breitbart News has learned from elected Republican Party officials that members within the Illinois GOP’s consulting class worked behind the scenes to derail McKinley’s campaign and fundraising efforts.
Legal Insurrection reported in the past on Valerie Jarrett supporter/Republican consultant Chris Robling’s attacks on McKinley for his recurring guest role on the show of local Fox’s Mike Flannery. Robling, who said on-air that McKinley was “not a real Republican,” later admitted to know nothing of the candidate or his platform.
As I walked into the room last night, I was just able to catch Fox’s Flannery barraging McKinley with a series of bizarre questions about Rahm Emanuel being Jewish and lines of questioning about various forms of narcotics and race. Is this what Flannery deemed important to inform his viewers of on Election Night? I’m still waiting to see if Flannery releases the full footage of his news-byte-seeking questioning.
Nevertheless McKinley, who heralded last night as the beginning of a movement, has brushed the local media’s Machine-covering and the festering Illinois Republican Party’s lack of support of his race off his shoulder. While the Republican establishment may not be interested in supporting minority candidates with conservative principles, his supporters, who crowded into the second floor of a local church community center to celebrate this Republican’s challenge of the Machine, are undaunted.
I spoke with several of the people who had gathered there who said to me that, as inner-city black Republicans, they’re used to being ignored by the party and by the media, but they are ready for revolution in their community. One man told he had been so inspired by McKinley that he flew in for Election Night from Georgia. Because of McKinley’s example, he sought out his first Tea Party meeting. To his surprise, he said, “they weren’t racist!”–and he has been attending ever since. He now plans to mount a similar campaign of his own in a Democrat stronghold in Georgia.
A young girl who was hanging around the community center joined us as we awaited results. At the beginning of the night she told me “I’m a Democrat,” and when someone said, “why?” she said, “Because I’m black,” and then smiled sheepishly. She spent the rest of the night talking with all of us in the room about issues, and stayed until the final results came in.
That’s minority outreach; that’s worth more than the entire RNC report.
In a race that left attempted to spin as about guns–Robin Kelly was caught on tape by Rebel Pundit saying she’s “all about banning guns“–a different story emerged, of a nascent movement in the the roughest areas of Chicago to reclaim their representation from The Chicago Democratic Machine.
The establishment of the Republican Party of Illinois has proved it wants no part of such movements.
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