The liberal former mayor of New York might have a shot at gaining the nomination of the Republican Party in two years, if the results of yesterday's Republican primary race for the Illinois governorship is any indication.
Nominated for governor by the GOP was state treasurer, Judy Baar Topinka. John McCain (the Senate's third most-conservative member) or Mitt Romney (conservative darling from Massachusetts) she ain't.
Consider this:
Topinka supports abortion rights and gay civil unions. Like the last two Republican governors, Ryan and Jim Edgar, she is a fiscal conservative and social moderate, though similarities to her buttoned-down predecessors mostly end there, Jackson said.Topinka isn't exactly standard Republican fare. Yet, she passed muster with GOP voters in Illinois. Rudy can take some encouragement from that. He's not nearly as outrageous as Topinka, but their views on social issues appear to be aligned. If Republicans in Illinois went for her, Republicans in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina might well go for him in the fight for the presidential nomination.
Topinka called her Republican challengers "morons'' during a March 9 dinner event. She later apologized.
In her 1995 inaugural speech for the first of three terms as treasurer, Topinka joked about flatulence, alluding to the effects of ham-and-bean campaign dinners in the confines of a small van, according to an account of her remarks by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
She plays the accordion for audiences and smokes Marlboros in public, bemoaning failed attempts to quit. She pokes fun at her "chemically dependent'' bright red hair.
It should be said though, that Topinka faces an uphill fight against an incumbent Dem, Rod Blagojevich, who, while not winning his primary battle decisively, enjoys a big lead over Topinka in the polls.
This Illinois gubernatorial race will be a very interesting one to watch.
[For some Giuliani-related posts, look here, here, here, and here.]
1 comment:
Rudy Guiliani would be far tougher for Democrats to beat in 2008 than McCain. It's hard to come up with significant negatives about Guiliani.
Despite the press labeling McCain as a "moderate," he has the third most conservative voting record in the Senate, per certain tracking services. And many on both sides of the aisle cringe at McCain's "good soldier" over-subservience to George Bush.
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