Alexi Giannoulias: All Audacity, All the Time

At some point in the past few weeks, Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias was sitting in his million-dollar Chicago condo wondering how he could possibly stop the death spiral of his campaign for the United States Senate.

It had all seemed so perfect just a few months ago–The dashing and urbane Alexi had burst on the political scene only four years ago spending millions of his parents money to win statewide office in his very first foray into politics. He shot hoops with his role model and political patron, Barak Obama. He had wealth, charisma, connections and unbridled ambition and a solidly blue state in which to make all his dreams come true.

But things started to go poorly from the start. His entry into the race for his idol’s Senate seat was met with a collective wince from Democrats. From the White House on down, political operatives made overtures to nearly every possible alternative candidate short of Rod Blagojevich. State Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, Chris Kennedy, and Dem mandarin Bill Daley are just the alternatives that readily come to mind. Even with all these A-listers taking a pass, Alexi still drew four primary opponents. The scuttlebutt was that Democrat insiders felt Alexi lacked depth and that, coupled with troubles at his family’s Broadway Bank, he would be a very weak candidate.

He spent a ton of cash to eke out a primary win. But 61% of Democrats wanted someone else to be the nominee. Meanwhile, moderate GOP Congressman Mark Kirk cruised with nearly 60% of the Republican primary vote against six challengers. Since then, things have gotten progressively worse for Alexi.

The Democrat’s plan to paint Kirk as a callous Wall Street Republican who cares not a whit about the suffering of Americans never got off the ground because the Chicago media seemed a little more interested in the issues surrounding the impending failure of Broadway Bank.

When the political neophyte Giannoulias sought the State Treasurer’s office in 2006 his only claim of legitimacy was his highly-touted work as a Vice President and Senior Loan Officer at the stunningly successful Broadway Bank that his immigrant dad had founded. He claimed he was a financial wunderkind who could manage the state’s finances with the same innovative style that led to Broadway’s success. The repeated six-figure donations to his campaign from his immediate family helped push this narrative in spite of some emerging questions from the press.

Now that Alexi sought to make a quantum leap in the political world, those lingering questions came back and, to put it mildly, Alexi’s answers did not all add up. There were conflicting representations of how much authority Alexi had had at the bank. Had he been the hot-shot executive on the cutting edge of the bank’s success, or was he parked in a job with significantly less responsibility as he now claims? Was he just doing what his dad and brother told him when he loaned $20 million to a couple of convicted mobsters and visited their Miami hotel to check on the bank’s investment? Was he unaware of the federal investigation of political fixer Tony Rezko as he continued to loan him millions as his empire crumbled? As Broadway sank into insolvency in the recession, did he help devise a plan to cash out $30 million of the family’s equity to “diversify holdings,” before the bottom dropped out?

Sadly, many banks that got greedy in the real estate bubble have been busted in the downturn. But it is important to note that for every bank that has failed, hundreds have survived through sound management, better diversification, and, to some extent, luck. But the narrative that was inexorably taking hold in the media and among the political classes in Illinois was that these issues raised debilitating questions about Alexi’s qualification and character–his fundamental fitness for office.

In the meantime, what was supposed to be the signature program of the State Treasurer’s office, the Bright Start college savings program has been hammered in the market, raising questions about the way Giannoulias meted out lucrative contracts to invest the program’s funds. Hundreds of thousands of families are negatively impacted.

Democrats began making snippy comments about Alexi in public and some pundits began calling for Alexi to get off the ticket before it was too late to find a suitable replacement who might not drag the whole slate down with it. And then the poll numbers started coming in. After the primary Alexi held small leads in several independent polls. Now, his numbers were tanking fast. Kirk hasn’t moved an inch. But negative opinions of Alexi jumped, particularly among independents. Kirk had barely lifted a finger and the numbers had flipped in six weeks.

Back to Alexi sitting in his high-rise bachelor pad, wondering how to get his mojo back. As he flips through the cable channels he lands on a re-run of Patton and hears George C. Scott (inaccurately) quote Fredrick the Great–“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.” And it hits him. He will turn the tables in this battle by being utterly audacious. No matter what, he will drive his message forward in the face of, well, reality.

When anyone wants to question how his shaky resume, his shady business associations and his family’s management decisions reflect on him, Alexi and his apologists go on the attack. They respond that Mark Kirk wants to take health care away from sick children and that Kirk is a right-wing extremist. One Giannoulias claim that is legitimate, but immaterial, is that Kirk has sought to focus attention on Alexi’s bank-related problems and has said much less about policy issues. There will be plenty of time for Kirk to go toe-to-toe with Alexi on the issues. Kirk would just prefer that Alexi come into that debate with a giant albatross around his neck.

But Alexi’s handlers recently disclosed that they had hit upon a new strategy that would make Patton proud. Mustering up every ounce of audacity available on the earth, they recently told reporters that their focus groups had shown that voters don’t really care if Alexi misrepresented his qualifications and consorted with pimps and bookies. What got a response was portraying Alexi and Broadway Bank as, yes, indeed, victims.

Alexi and the Giannoulias family, who squirreled away $30 million as the bank regulators circled and who funded the mob’s real estate investment portfolio, are innocent victims of the Kirk/Bush recession. The Giannoulias Building and Loan was done in by George W. Potter. Alexi, like the average American, is down to his last few million, barely able to buy his next Brioni suit. And Kirk, whose father worked for the phone company and who has supplemented his public servant salary for twenty years by serving as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves, is supposedly living the high life with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Alexi recently whined to an audience that Kirk is being mean by constantly bringing up the bank issues and that it is just Kirk’s way of avoiding the issues. He wants voters to believe that his experience, his qualifications and his character are off limits. True, his only hope appears to be a straight up debate over the candidates’ competing visions of doctrinaire liberalism versus center-right fiscal conservatism. Polling numbers indicate that, even in this blue state, the electorate is pretty split this year. Add into that mix, Alexi’s chance to become the ethical heir of Blagojevich it is clear why he and his allies are deeply worried.

Giannoulias seems to be so comfortable with the new “All Audacity, All the Time” strategy that he now calls Kirk’s moderate credentials “absolute farce.” Considering that National Journal has consistently rated Kirk as one of the most centrist legislators in Washington, considering that Kirk is pro-choice and has moderate positions on gay rights and the environment, considering that nearly every conservative pundit, including Laura Ingram has publicly vilified him, considering that nearly every right-wing activist in Illinois opposed his nomination, considering that some conservatives actually want to run a third-party candidate in the race, Alexi may not be able to make this accusation stick. In fact, it may exacerbate his credibility problems even more.

And now, Alexi continues to push the audacity envelope. He told reporters that, if elected, he will aggressively seek a position on the Senate Banking Committee saying he could bring “very important perspective” to the Committee. If it weren’t for the fact that Cuba and China are members of the UN Human Rights Council, this would set the global standard for irony.

While Kirk has yet to tap deep into his considerable war chest to make his case for why he deserves to be promoted to the Senate, it appears he can bide his time while Alexi continues to struggle harder against this quicksand.