Illinois

Last year Republican career hack Rodney Davis edged Democrat Dave Gill 137,034 (47%) to 136,032 (36%) in one of the country's penultimate swing districts, IL-13 which stretches from Bloomington and Champaign in central Illinois to Decatur and Litchfield and down to the northern suburbs of St Louis. The PVI is exactly even and President Obama won the district in 2008 55-44% and was edged by a few hundred votes (49-49%) by Romney in 2012.

Today's Illinois Republican Party… very sadAny list of the most effective and dedicated progressives in Congress wouldn't be complete without 8 term Chicagoland icon Jan Schakowsky.

Who's worse to be hanging with, Pete Peterson or Rahm?In 2010, the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature gerrymandered the state-- in the same anti-democratic way that Republican-controlled legislatures did in states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan-- to create more congressional seats for its own party. One of those seats, IL-17, was expressly designed to defeat freshman Republican Bobby Schilling.

no, not in play-- thanks to Steve IsraelYesterday was the deadline for congressional candidates to file in Illinois-- the first in the nation. (Next up: Texas, December 9 and, in January, West Virginia and Kentucky.) But Illinois is all set now in terms of congressional candidates. The lucky ones are the candidates with no-- or only token-- opponents. They can spend their election dollars building power by helping their colleagues.

Aaron Schock's boyfriend is being targeted for political extinction by the teabaggersEarlier today we took a quickie glance at the devastating Republican Party civil war and how an energized DCCC-- one without Steve Israel holding it back-- could take advantage of it to win back the House. But mainstream conservative Republicans have a different perspective.

"Will it play in Peoria?" means one thing for the rest of the country, but something a lot more personal for Republican Congressman Aaron Schock. Although Schock was born in Minnesota, his family moved to Peoria when he was in the 4th grade. He graduated from Richwoods in 2000 and from Peoria's Bradley University in 2002 and was serving on the Peoria School Board by the age of 19.

By Charles Davis | False Dichotomy | June 27, 2013

Whether liberals are “stupid” is probably the wrong question. A lot of smart people support stupid things; their intelligence is irrelevant. But there can be no doubt that American liberals support — and lord knows, say — a lot of stupid things. Barack Obama, for instance.

Cheri BabyWhen the Democratic-led Illinois state legislature redistricted the congressional districts, Bobby Schilling looked like a marked man. The legislature cut out red area in Quincy, Decatur and Springfield and replaced them with blue areas of Rockford and Peoria. Schilling, who acknowledges Glenn Beck as his "leader," had first won his 17th district seat in 2010 beating Democratic freshman Phil Hare 53-43%.

RT | May 29, 2013

An Illinois community is rallying around a teacher who is reportedly up against disciplinary action for informing his students of their rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment before the high-schoolers answered a survey regarding their personal behavior.