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Will Salvi be Democrats' salvation in IL 8th District?
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| Contributor | COSDem |
| Last Edited | COSDem Jun 12, 2005 10:00pm |
| Category | Speculative |
| News Date | Jun 12, 2005 09:00pm |
| Description | Al Salvi's political rehabilitation is not necessarily contingent on an image eradication. Rather, a low turnout could propel him to Washington.
Salvi, a Mundelein attorney specializing in personal injury, is articulate, personable, knowledgeable, conservative, well known and sufficiently affluent to partially self-fund his campaign, and he is poised to run as a Republican for U.S. representative from the Lake-McHenry County 8th U.S. House District in 2006. The incumbent is Democrat Melissa Bean, who in 2004 upset Phil Crane, the inattentive, complacent 35-year Republican congressman.
But Salvi carries the baggage from two failed statewide campaigns, both of which seriously damaged his image and damaged his credibility and electability. In the 1996 U.S. Senate race, he was relentlessly blasted as an "extremist" by Democrat Dick Durbin, and he lost by 655,204 votes, getting only 40.7 percent of the vote. Salvi spent $1.5 million of his own money in that bid. In an ill-advised 1998 comeback bid for Illinois secretary of state, Salvi was unable to overcome the perception that he didn't really want the job and that he was running only to keep his political career alive, and he lost to Democrat Jesse White by 437,206 votes, getting only 42.5 percent of the vote.
Given his outspoken positions on a wide range of social and fiscal issues (pro-gun rights, anti-abortion, pro-tax cut, anti-spending hikes), Salvi, age 45, is a polarizing figure. Voters either love him or hate him.
"Bring him on," exclaimed one area Democrat. "He'll lose worse than Crane." That typifies the Democratic consensus that Salvi is the perfect opponent for first-termer Bean.
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