More assclownery in Illinois

I know, what a surprise, huh? To recap for those not from this fair state of ours (hello, Portugal!), we had our primary elections this past Tuesday, the first state to do so this year, and thus attracting enough attention to show the rest of the country just what kind of fools we are here. Yes, it’s not enough that people elect Mayor Richie “Napoleon” Daley time after time, or Rod “What’s in it for me” Blagojevich as governor, but this time our astute populace elected some guy named Scott Lee Cohen as Lieutenant Governor. Which is essentially a do-nothing, ceremonial position – unless your governor gets kicked out, and the lieutenant has to step in. Oh, like what happened here last year.

Anyway. So this Cohen guy gets elected, and now the Democratic party is all up in arms about it, because it turns out this guy was once charged with threatening/assaulting his girlfriend (charges later dropped) – the same girlfriend who was arrested for prostitution, though Cohen thought she just “worked as a masseuse.” Right. Oh, but his ex-wife explains all that away as ‘roid rage, since he was on several different kinds of steroids at the time. This is the same ex-wife to whom he supposedly owns $54K in back child support payments.

In other words, a real winner. Oh, and did I mention his profession? Pawnbroker.

You may be wondering why the people of IL voted for this guy, to which I say – who the hell knows. Maybe because he was first on the ballot? Because he had an “American-sounding” last name? That’s how we once wound up with a couple of Lyndon Larouche followers on the ticket, because of the name thing. I’d like to say I had a good reason for voting against him, but I have to confess, I just hated his commercials. They’d have the usual blather, then end with a close up shot of a young guy who looked like a meth addict saying “I….will…..vote…..for….ScottLeeCohen…. so…you….should….too.” They were so bizarre and irritating, that I vowed to not vote for this shmoe. But that’s about all the info you get to go on, since again, no one pays attention to this race.

So now that this guy has won, the Democrats are using pretty harsh and rude language to tell him he should resign, that he’ll drag the ticket down, that he doesn’t have the kind of values of someone who belongs on the ticket, Quinn (the guy who won the primary for governor) won’t call him to talk to him directly, blah blah blah. And in part they’re right – this buffoon probably will drag the ticket down, since the governor and lieutenant governor run as a pair in the regular election, instead of separately as they do in the primary. The thing is – they should have thought of that sooner. Cohen spent about $2M of his own money on this race apparently, and he won fair and square. And he was upfront about the battery charge before the election, talking about it to a reporter who did write about it in his column, but no one paid attention. So now the Dems are making a big stink about it? Yes, this guy is a clown, but he won. The people, stupid as they are, elected him. Does anyone else see the rather dangerous precedent this might be setting? “Well, the people elected this NRA freak who moonlights as a pimp as the Comptroller, but since his name is Brad Putt, they were obviously confused so we need this guy off the ticket.” I mean really, what the hell?

If the Dems do succeed in pushing Cohen out, there had better be a lot in it for the guy – like his $2M plus, maybe some random government position, some nicer language perhaps and a few apologies. Because otherwise you’re going to really tempt me to vote Republican or Green Party in the fall just based on the principle of the thing – and that’s saying a lot.