5th CD short list

By Lou Grant | Nov 19, 6:48 AM

A favorite morning read is CapitolFax by Rich Miller. Miller has recently been pushing the campaign of a long-time commentator to his blog, Bill, for the U.S. Senate Seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

It’s been great fun. I guess you can count me in as supporting Bill.

But, I would miss the antics of the Mell family if we don’t appoint the untested Deborah L. Mell to Congress. I see the extended Mell family as sort of our state’s dysfunctional version of the Clintons. (I guess that use of dysfunction is repetitive.) Just how do they convince us to continue to elect them?

It would be another term job for person with family political connections. Let’s see, the district sent Rahm Emanuel to Congress. He is a Clintonista whose first priority was the welfare of the Democratic Party. Prior to that it sent Rod Blagojevich. Blago is the unpopular brother-in-law of Mell.

There was Michael Flanagan, one of the few Republicans elected from Chicago in the last, oh, 40 years. He replaced convicted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski. He was our friend in Congress.

According to Wikipedia, the district was held by Bill Lipinski before Rostenkowski. Of course redistricting caused the merger of some districts and Rosty was in Congress, just assigned a different district number. Lipinski of course was replaced not by Rosty. He was replaced by his untested son, Dan.

So naming Mell would be sort of political Karma for this district.