Joe wasthe first "Tea Party conservative" to win his primary in 2010 - by
roughly a 10 point spread thanks to enthusiastic volunteers, without
media or party endorsements or money. He ran against incumbent Melissa Bean, who
raised nearly $2 million for the campaign (largely from PACs and outside
of the district) and portrayed
herself as a "moderate", "fiscal conservative", "New Democrat" who
"votes her district". She attacked him with ads and
mailings in the final weeks of the campaign as "too extreme". For more about the IL 8th race for Congress, refer to the Barrington Tea Party websiteand the menu links there, or other local Groups. That
includes reports about
Melissa Bean and
Democrats in the IL 8th District.
November 16, 2010 -
Melissa Bean has conceded after the final vote count of 98,115 votes
for Joe Walsh and 97,824 for Melissa Bean, so he won by only 291 votes.
The final results will be reported by the counties to the
state board of elections by November 23, and then the winner officially
proclaimed by December 3 since no recount has been requested.
November 16, 2010 - Media reports about the final vote count in the Joe
Walsh vs. Melissa Bean race for the 8th Congressional District of
Illinois.
FoxNews Chicago -
Melissa Bean concedes to Joe Walsh (with a great photo of Joe
at the U.S. Capitol for the freshman orientation program this week)
October 20, 2010 - As elaborated below, Melissa Bean only agreed to
appear once this year at a public forum with Joe Walsh. This event
was staged by teachers (who support the Democrats) under restrictive
League of Women Voters rules by which two teachers got to pre-screen all
questions while another moderated the forum, with high school students
asking all the questions instead of direct questions from voters.
There were estimated to be over 300 questions from the more than 400
people in the audience, but 9 were selected - including those which hit
some of Melissa Bean's favorite talking points, such as to portray Joe
Walsh as extreme because he does not favor the Department of Education,
and instead insists that education should be a state and local issue
with greater choice given to the parents so that schools become more
competitive.
The
event got off to a rough start after the audience grew impatient with
the ten minute opening lecture by the moderator on all the restrictive
rules, only to find that the Pledge of Allegiance would be left out
while she tried to get back on schedule. This prompted a
spontaneous reaction from the crowd.
The media
and Melissa Bean may think Joe Walsh supporters are dangerous, extreme,
or crazy, but as the video shows, they were not happy when the League of
Women Voters moderator left out the Pledge of Allegiance. The
entire audience simply stood up spontaneously and said it anyway.
The moderator then proceeded to scold the audience for disrespecting her
decision to not recite the Pledge in response to a polite request to do
so.
This
was NOT staged by any prior planning, because it had been assumed
that the Pledge would be a routine part of any such forum. After all, as
the moderator had declared in her remarks, this forum (the only one that
incumbent Melissa Bean has agreed to do this year) was run by teachers
"for the benefit of the students" at a public high school.
One would therefore expect these teachers to want to set
a good example for the students. They were allegedly learning
about civic responsibility as AP Government students, rather than
learning how to become progressive campaign workers.
Even
if it wasn't on her planned program, the moderator could easily have
included it in response to the polite request, so there was no reason
for anyone to expect an incident such as this to occur. In any
case, why wouldn't Bean supporters also want to recite the Pledge?
Why didn't more of her supporters show up? Why did the moderator
even object to the Pledge?
Some
in the media have also described this as a "Walsh crowd", as though the
event was somehow rigged in his favor, which could not be farther from
the truth. It was run by a teacher, with all questions screened by two
teachers, and they gave Melissa Bean more than one chance to recite her
favorite talking points rather than face tough questions. Since this was
the only forum at which Melissa Bean agreed to appear this year, why
didn't she have more of her own supporters there? The students were used
as pawns to avoid direct, tough questions from 8th District voters while
their teachers chose what to ask.
October 23, 2010 - The Northwest Herald -
Politicking before debate - Why blame the incident on Joe Walsh
because he objected that the only candidate forum this year was imposing
a rule against videos, thereby preventing voters who did not attend from
seeing what they said? That limits voters to media reports. The NW
Herald editor sees no problem with that, despite previously endorsing
Melissa Bean? Why not take a look at this video by Bean trackers
at the LWV forum in Barrington in the primary?
Hypocrites. See this "Call me crazy" video posted in September 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KJs6k5RluI It's OK for Bean
trackers to video LWV forums to attack Joe Walsh this way, as they also
did by taping other meetings this year? For example, they taped a
meeting I hosted in Barrington. The local media was in attendance,
but even though the Bean tracker was identified and called to the
attention of the audience by Joe Walsh, the media chose not to report
it.
Subsequently, when Melissa Bean didn't even show up
for the LWV forum in her hometown of Barrington, Joe Walsh was limited
to making a brief statement. An unedited video of this brief
statement was posted, since there had been no forum, but the Melissa
Bean campaign quickly complained to the LWV and they insisted that the
video be removed from YouTube.
Maybe voters would like to have a chance to see such
forums for themselves. Why is the media opposed to that? Are
they afraid that more voters might become aware of the bias in their own
coverage of events? The League of Women Voters should recognize
that this rule is absurd, and instead should insist that all such events
are put on video, and the full, unedited videos are made readily
available so that all voters can see what the candidates said.
Other videos from the IL 8th District
League of Women Voters candidates forum in Grayslake, IL on Oct 20, 2010
There are other videos from the Grayslake League of Women
Voters candidates forum - this one is from the Daily Herald.
The Northwest Herald, another one of the local
newspapers, edited their own video of the event. That includes what
happened right after the pledge, as the moderator tried to portray the
audience as disrespectful. In reality, the audience was remarkably quiet
and respectful throughout the forum, despite repeated provocation.
When the story of the Pledge incident started to spread,
the editor tried to further defend the moderator, and smear the
attendees for their "incivility",
Other
background about the Illinois 8th District race between Joe Walsh and
Melissa Bean
Alert
voters may remember what happened during the August recess when voters
became frustrated about being lectured by Bean about more responsible
use of consumer credit while she took no questions about her votes on
stimulus, healthcare, cap & trade, etc.
http://barringtontea.ning.com/video/melissa-bean-august-2010
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