The other Illinois Senate race

All the buzz is about Burris in Illinois so the House race to replace Rahm Emanuel has been pretty much overlooked and it's shame because they have a really good candidate running. I did a post about Thomas Geoghegan earlier this week at DetNews. He was billed in a WSJ op-ed as an "unrepentant New Dealer with an old-fashioned sense of civic duty and an admitted fondness for Washington," and doesn't carry any baggage for promoting free market larceny. And he's a strong proponent for investing in mass transit.

Since then I ran across an op-ed he wrote himself on replacing senators with special elections. He has a good understanding of the constitution as demonstrated by these select grafs.

IN 2009 four new senators will slip into office — all in violation of the Constitution, which requires a special election to fill a Senate vacancy. Colorado, Delaware, hapless Illinois and star-struck New York will have senators “elected” by a single voter, the governors who appoint them. [...]

While this has been happening for decades, the corrupt nature of the practice has finally become too obvious to ignore in Illinois, now that the United States attorney has a court order to have the governor bugged. Yes, the F.B.I. complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich paints him as especially corrupt. But the fact is that a certain amount of political horse-trading is inherent if officials, rather than voters, fill Congressional vacancies.

He makes me want to move to Chicago just so I can vote for him. He's the kind of better Democrat we really need right now.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]