Tonight there was a bit of a disappointment for Andrzejewski who finished fifth in a field of seven. It appears he ended up splitting votes with Dan Proft another candidate with tea party support. In a packed field there is always the danger good candidates will cancel each other out. RS McCain reported Proft had approximately 45,000 votes and Andrzejewski was behind the leader approximately 40,000 votes. As you can see the five top candidates finished quite close to one another:
The good news, however, is the current leader with a slim 2000 vote lead is reported to be a "good guy" according to Andrzejewski. Blake Dvorak of Chicago Now seems to agree:
Brady's showing is also a win for conservatives tonight, although not the one perhaps they were looking for. While Andrzejewski and Proft fought over the activist vote, Brady captured the middle-America vote, which is not as ideological, but no less conservative.
While many conservatives were hoping that Hughes would pull out a win in the Senatorial primary, Rep Mark Kirk won decisively. He will be going up against Alexi Giannoulias mentioned in yesterdays post, who is an Obama crony and Chicago pol from way back. Fivethirtyeight notes Nate Silver thought Illinois "blue enough" for a Democrat win, despite Giannoulias being a less a less than terrific candidate. They did say that in Massachusetts though didn't they? Will the conservatives and tea party candidates rally to support Kirk on the chance they could pick up Senator Barack Obama's former seat? Stay tuned.
The Other McCain has been hot on coverage of the Illinois primary elections tomorrow. In his latest article The American Spectator, McCain notes the Andrzejewski campaign for Governor has caught fire with conservatives online:
The Andrzejewski campaign has caught fire with conservatives online -- including Red State, Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, First Things blogger Jim Hoft and Glenn Reynold's Instapundit mega-blog -- and the candidate was featured last week on Andrew Napolitano's Fox Business Channel program. That kind of New Media coverage has helped compensate for the paucity of attention the campaign has received from traditional media in Illinois.
"We're gonna win this race . . . That's got to be the closer," said Andrzejewski, whose GOP gubernatorial campaign was also reportedly endorsed today by Glenn Beck on the eve of tomorrow's primary. "It's a historical election for Illinois. Nothing like this has ever happened here before."
Andrzejewski had another high profile endorsement over the weekend when Lech Walesa flew in to throw his support behind Andrzewjewski. The Other McCain has audio of Limbaugh, Walesa and Glenn Beck endorsing Andrzejewski. Amusing Bunni has a report after attending a Chicago tea party rally and links to local news coverage of the event as well.
It seems Andrzejewski is building momentum going into election day which is often key in determining the outcome of a race. Recent polls in the seven person race for the Republican nomination are tight:
Though the polls show McKenna with a lead, Anne Leary at Backyard Conservative reported McKenna violated the party's code of ethics by commissioning the poll without obtaining GOP State Central Committee's approval. The poll leaned a bit heavy toward favoring McKenna which would make the results at least somewhat questionable. The violation was exposed by another candidate Dan Proft who has the support of Anne Leary whose opinion I certainly respect. I would add that after reading Anne's links on Proft he certainly does seem to be a strong candidate.
Adam Brickley at Race4 2012 has more recent poll information and analysis including a recent internal poll from the weekend showing Andrejewski within two points of the lead. Though this is an internal poll Brickley thinks this may be an accurate picture considering the dynamics of the race. There are a large number of undecided voters who could be Tea Partiers deciding between Proft and Andrzejewski or "downstate" conservative deciding between Andrejewski and Brady. I guess we'll see tomorrow night how they voted in the most important poll, the election itself.
Final note, Anne Leary mentions the winner may have the pleasure of facing Alexi Giannoulias, the banker who bankrolled Obama along with Tony Rezko:
