Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg’s staggering $2+ million investment in Robin Kelly in the Illinois 2nd district race to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr., the Democrat primary garnered enough attention to leave many residents thinking the race was over after the February primary. But Kelly, who has gone completely missing since her victory over the Democrat field, faces a serious challenge from Republican counterpart Paul McKinley. Adding to her troubles, she is forced to face a district that is tired of Chicago politics as usual, and namely the Chicago Machine.
Legal Insurrection points out Kelly’s connections to Chicago “apparatus” of power, from her connections to Barack Obama, to her time spent as Chief of Staff for former State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.
Robin Kelly not only worked on Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, but Kelly’s close friend and campaign chair is Dr. Cheryl Whitaker, the wife of Eric Whitaker, who had become a figure of media focus during Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The Whitakers “are extremely close friends of Michelle and Barack Obama,” and have frequently socialized together.
Previously Chief of Staff for Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, whose brothers were later sued by the FDIC in connection with failed loans issued by his family’s Broadway Bank. Obama called Giannoulias “his friend” and publicly endorsed him during Giannoulias’ run for Obama’s vacated Senate seat.
$2 million in outside financial support from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence PAC (a donation which, by the way, upset even the folks at MSNBC). (added) Bloomberg was the sole donor to the SuperPAC which spent $2 million to get Kelly the Democratic nomination.
More than $130,000 in donations from Daily Kos, a staple of the far-left’s infrastructure. Kelly even thanked the Daily Kos community personally in one of her victory speeches.
Support and outreach from Democracy for America, another staple of the far-left’s infrastructure. Democracy for America was founded by former DNC chair Howard Dean, and it’s been blasting fund-raising emails to its more than one million members to “defeat the NRA” and elect Robin Kelly.
Kelly’s pollster and adviser Jason McGrath is also well-connected to the political machine himself.
Former adviser/strategist for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, and many other Illinois politicians.
Has worked with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Has worked with numerous labor unions and entrenched progressive organizations like Center for American Progress.
It’s not only Kelly’s ties to the radical left that are so troubling. One week prior to the February 26th primary election, the Chicago Tribune reported that while Kelly was serving under State Treasurer Giannoulias, “the office’s chief investigator alleged she violated ethics laws by improperly reporting time off from her taxpayer-funded job.”
Kelly was running to replace Giannoulias as treasurer, during his losing campaign for U.S. Senate.
From the Trib:
The treasurer’s personnel rules required all of a worker’s time off to be approved ahead of time by a supervisor. But from August 2009 through December 2010 — when Kelly was campaigning for treasurer — Kelly filed 107 requests for unpaid time off, the audit found. Of those requests, 82 percent were not approved by a supervisor, but by a human resources director who reported to Kelly, the audit found. Many of those requests were submitted well after the time off had already been taken, the audit found.
In addition, the audit stated that 19 of Kelly’s 24 monthly time-off calendars in 2009-10 were OK’d before her time-off requests had received final approval. It also found 17 of those 24 calendars were approved late and three were never approved.
It appeared Kelly “could come and go as she pleased without consequence,” Ringler wrote. “It also appears that (her time-off) calendars were made to match the times that they needed to, in order to end up with a 35-hour work week and/or 7-hour day, because of the number of times they were approved, reversed, reapproved, reversed again, approved a third time, etc.” The Tribune also reports “Executive Inspector General David Wells recommended that Kelly be disciplined, according to a letter from Giannoulias.”
Kelly has ran her campaign on extreme positions against the Second Amendment, stating in a candidate forum, “I’m all for banning guns, and I will lead on that,” and boasting of her F rating from the NRA. Illinois Review reports she was also endorsed by Planned Parenthood–America’s largest abortion factory–for which, she sat on the board of the local Peoria branch.
Her opponent Paul McKinley (R) has taken the exact opposite stand when it comes to supporting life, saying, “I am 100% pro-life, and believe our young women and men are ashamedly manipulated by the pro-abortion lobby and Planned Parenthood. This black genocide is destroying families and the community, and using the women of our community to carry out the left’s culture of death.”
With Kelly now in virtual hiding, seemingly to prevent any catastrophic gaffes of errors in public that could derail her chances of assuming a congressional seat she stands to inherit from the Chicago Machine, voters will have to ask themselves, Robin Kelly will be the one to provide the new leadership the 2nd district is looking for, and more importantly, will Kelly be any kind of leader at all?
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