By Jim Tankersley
Three retiring Republicans and one or two “hot seat” GOP incumbents have Democrats dreaming of big pick-ups in the Illinois congressional delegation in next year’s election, when the state is shaping up as a pivotal battleground for House control.
The GOP, meanwhile, is working hard to hold its seats — and party leaders in Washington are trying to boost their prospects in what figures to be their best chance to steal a House seat from Democrats in Illinois: the suburban district currently held by Rep. Melissa Bean.
Republicans in the Illinois congressional delegation hosted a Washington fundraiser this week for Steve Greenberg, a businessman and former hockey player whom many GOP leaders believe — thanks in part to his (Rep. Bean, campaign photo)
checkbook — has the best chance of beating Bean. In addition, Greenberg will be one of the first nine Republican candidates this year to benefit from a special House GOP fundraising program dubbed “CHOMP” — the Challengers Helping Obtain the Majority Program.
“It seems as though a lot of Republicans feel strongly that this is a race that’s winnable,” Greenberg said in an interview this week.
Bean is a self-styled “pro-business,” fiscally conservative Democrat who beat longtime Republican Rep. Phil Crane in 2004 and won re-election by seven points in a three-way race last year. Republicans believe the “reddish” tilt of her district and the fact that Bean didn’t win by more in the Democratic wave of 2006 make her vulnerable this time.
Bean has been raising money vigorously, chalking up support of business groups and earning praise from several Republican officeholders in the district.
Greenberg is already honing what promises to be a familiar campaign theme from GOP — and some Democratic — challengers to House incumbents this year: that Washington politicians have lost touch with their constituents (whom polls show hold Congress, along with President Bush, in very low regard).
Greenberg says he hears “such an anti-Washington tone when I walk through the district. It stems from one thing: Washington has forgotten who the customer is.”
A Bean spokesman responded with a statement: “There will be plenty of time for politics once we have an opponent. Right now Congresswoman Bean is working to address the priorities and representing the moderate mainstream values of her consituents.”
