14th district to try Saturday for special election

Barely a month after the Super Tuesday primaries, two congressional candidates in the west suburban 14th district are asking voters to return to the polls--on a Saturday no less.

A special general election on March 8 will determine whether Jim Oberweis or Bill Foster will be able to run as the incumbent in November when they will be vying for a full two-year term. The special election will put the Republican Oberweis or the Democrat Foster in office until at least January 2009.

The question is: Will voters turn out to grant this 8-month trial run that may or may not prove to be the start of a long-term replacement for former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert?

The answers vary.

"We would hope that at least the number of people who voted in the primary would be coming out, if not even more," said Doreen Nelson, assistant director of the DuPage County Election Commission.

Confidence in equaling the primary turnout is not as high in DeKalb County, one of the other seven counties included in the district.

"I don't see that we're going to have a huge turnout," DeKalb County Clerk Sharon Holmes said. "If 50 percent turned out I would love it. I would think that is great. I don't think that's going to happen."

Holmes said a lack of early and absentee voting has indicated the March 8 numbers won't match Feb. 5.

"We're not having that big a turnout [in early voting]," she said. "We maybe have five, six, seven, eight [people voting] a day compared to 30, 40, 50 a day for the [February] primary."

With all the voters turning out to vote in the Feb. 5 primary, which featured the presidential race, the special primary totaled more than 141,000 votes between the Democratic and Republican ballots across the district. Still, that was more than 10,000 fewer votes than the same race garnered on the regular primary ballot.

Voters were asked-but not required-to pull a regular and special primary ballot. Despite efforts to educate voters on the confusing process, Holmes said many voters just didn't get it.

"A lot of voters still do not understand why there's a second election, why we're having the March 8 [election]," she said. "People just aren't that aware."

So the drop in number of votes from the regular primary to the special primary is not surprising, but how it breaks along party lines is intriguing. While Republican candidates on the special primary ballot maintained about 96 percent of the votes they received in the regular primary, Democrats totaled just 88 percent of their regular total.

In fact, in some counties like DeKalb, Henry and Lee there were more votes cast in the Republican special primary election than in the same race on the regular primary. This contrasts with the Democratic candidates who received a lower number of aggregate votes in the special primary than the regular primary in each of those counties.

This was a result of voters selecting a Democratic regular primary ballot and a Republican special primary ballot, according to Bill Pascoe, campaign spokesman for Jim Oberweis.

"There were actually more people who asked for a Democratic ballot in the regular primary throughout the 14th district than there were people who asked for a Republican ballot," Pascoe said. "That's a shocking piece of information politically because no one's ever seen that before in the 14th district."

Pascoe has a theory as to why so many voters in this traditionally conservative district opted to vote in the regular Democratic primary.

"What appears to be happening is [Republicans] don't want to wait until November to take the opportunity to cast a ballot against Hillary Clinton," Pascoe said. "[They are saying] 'The more important thing for me to do is be able to make absolutely positive that Hillary Clinton doesn't get anywhere near the White House."

Theories about the discrepancy of votes between the regular and special primaries are just conjecture, said Don Rose, a longtime political consultant.

The breakdown of the Feb. 5 results is not the focus of Foster's campaign, which is directing all of its attention to the March 8 primary, according to press secretary Andrew Pupuy. It's clear though that Foster must improve on the number of Democratic votes cast in the special primary if he is to win the special general.

The fact that the election falls on a Saturday is a wild card no one is sure how to measure.

"Looking into my crystal ball that's really difficult to say," Nelson said. "We've not had an election on Saturday since before consolidation of elections."

Saturday elections generally produce greater turnout, according to Rose.

"It's a day off. People can do it easier," he said. "They don't have to stop on the way to work or rush in after work."

While Pascoe is uncertain who the Saturday election might favor, he doesn't think Gov. Rod Blagojevich scheduled it that way without reason.

"I'm sure Governor Blagojevich, a close Bill Foster ally, believes that the [Saturday election day] favors Foster," Pascoe said.

"What [Gov. Blagojevich] didn't obviously think about was that the day before the March 8 election Northern Illinois University goes on spring break," Holmes said. "Now do you think those students are going to be worrying about voting or being on the beach? You tell me."

NIU is located in DeKalb County. The 14th Congressional District also includes parts of Bureau, DuPage, Henry, Lee, Kane, Kendall and Whiteside counties.