On the race for Burris' senate seat

A round-up from the CapFax including a story about the mayor's brother Bill Daley taking himself out of the race. Story about state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulis having to answer for a loss in a state sponsored fund. Also three stories about Roland Burris that I will share with you in this post.

Holt's primary opponent backing Bergmanson - PolitickerNJ

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell) will face an opponent in the 2010 Democratic primary: Lawrenceville resident Scott Baier, a 28-year-old former Mercer County Republican Committeeman who was a Socialist Party candidate for State Assembly in 2005. His platform includes putting George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld on trial for war crimes, abolishing the U.S. Department of Defense, the nationalization of the media, legalization of all drugs, a constitutional amendment banning all guns, and a "total ban" on pornography.
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Baier has endorsed former Glen Ridge Mayor Carl Bergmanson for the Democratic nomination for Governor, and says he's backing U.S. Senator Roland Burris in the 2010 Illinois Senate race.

Dems looking at alternatives to Sen. Burris - The Hill

Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) has not announced his reelection intentions, but Democratic partisans have signaled they are moving ahead with little concern for the embattled appointee.
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But Senate Democrats have sent strong signals they are looking to other candidates, especially after Burris raised just $845 in the first three months of the year.

“Sen. Burris has not made a decision as to what he’s going to do,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Certainly if I look at his fundraising quarter, I’m not sure it shows an intention to seriously run for the Senate.”

Burris Grills Hearing on Funds for Minority Businesses - Washington Post

What's Roland Burris up to these days? He's fallen off the radar screen since the drama of Rod Blagojevich selecting him to fill Barack Obama's seat. He says he hasn't decided yet if he is going to run for reelection in 2010, but the Chicago Tribune last week quoted a strategist saying Burris was embarking on a "very aggressive" fund-raising regimen. And judging from a hearing today of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee about stimulus spending, it is clear that Burris is doing all he can to tend to what he perceives as his political base: African American voters in Illinois. At the same time, though, Burris' performance at the hearing raised questions about whether he fully grasped the nature of the needs and services affecting that very population.


Burris spent a long chunk of time grilling the witnesses with questions that focused on one and only one thing: whether stimulus money was getting to African American communities in Illinois. He said that he had been peppered with questions during his recent break in Illinois from African American constituents demanding to know why more of the stimulus money wasn't coming their way.

"Small businesses are saying, 'Where's the money and who's getting it?'" he said. "How is the stimulus money going to impact the black community in Chicago, in Peoria, in Rockford?"