In Our View: It's not an ordinary election year (DeKalb Daily-Chronicle editorial)
March 2, 2008
(DeKalb Daily-Chronicle) - Voters in the 14th Congressional District must be as conflicted as we are.
Who should succeed former House Speaker Dennis Hastert: Bill Foster or Jim Oberweis?
All else being equal, Oberweis would get the nod because he is a conservative and a Republican in a decidedly conservative Republican district.
But all else is not equal in 2008.
That is why we endorse Democrat Foster in the March 8 special election to decide who completes Hastert's term in office. The incumbent resigned in November, in the middle of his 11th term.
Foster, 52, and Oberweis, 61, will face off again Nov. 4 for a full two-year term.
Oberweis received Hastert's early endorsement, which helped him to win last month's Republican primary.
But that backing brings baggage.
Hastert was among the signatories of a conservative agenda, “Contract With America,” that Republicans rolled out in 1994 to help them take control of Congress. The concept was embraced by American voters after Democrats had held a majority in the U.S. House for the previous 40 years.
Unfortunately, the 12 years that followed - before Democrats took back control in 2006 - were nothing as promised. The contract was breached by congressional scandals, continued pork-barrel spending and - after Republicans also won the White House - record budget deficits. (GOP disgust with the obscene practice of “earmark” spending developed only recently - after Democrats won back Congress.)
Those years were, in short, a betrayal of the conservative standards that were promised. And Hastert, though much beloved among most of his constituents, was right in the thick of it after being chosen speaker of the House in 1999.
It was the conduct of the Republican administration and Congress that led to the Democratic resurgence at the polls two years ago.
And the continued “change” that Democrats, including Foster, pledge is likely to make the November election another referendum on Republicans' performance.
Oberweis hasn't demonstrated a stomach for the kind of change that Washington needs.
Perhaps thinking that 14th District voters count heavily among the 30 percent of Americans who approve of President Bush's performance, Oberweis continues to have problems being critical of any White House policies.
And in a meeting with the Kane County Chronicle editorial board this year, Oberweis said it was not wrong for Hastert to abandon the seat to which he had been re-elected barely a year earlier. That disappointing move by Hastert makes necessary Saturday's special election, which is estimated to cost up to $100,000 in DeKalb County alone and more than $2 million districtwide.
Both Foster and Oberweis could take a strong businesslike approach to the job in Washington because neither has made a career in politics - although Oberweis has tried for elective office three times before. Foster is a businessman and scientist, formerly with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia; Oberweis owns an investment management firm, but he is better known for his family's dairy business.
The other side of that coin, of course, is that neither multimillionaire could likely relate easily to the concerns of most ordinary Americans, concerns that Congress has shamefully neglected: affordable health care, a sound Social Security system and a sensible policy on immigration, to name a few.
But for the change we need and hope for, Foster is the better candidate.
Voters must also hope, as we do, to see a higher level of campaigning in the fall than Foster and Oberweis have conducted since winning the Feb. 5 primary election. Their television and direct-mail advertising has taken a distinctly negative approach that has relied on exaggeration and misrepresentation of the opponent's policy positions.
We are grateful, at least, that the campaign for this special election has been brief.