Why IL-14 mattered:

It didn't take long for Bill Foster to make an impact in Congress.

Foster, a Democratic scientist/businessman, won a special election Saturday to replace retired former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in the House. He was sworn into his seat representing the exurban 14th Congressional District on Tuesday afternoon. By evening, he was casting what was arguably the deciding vote on a white-hot ethics bill.

The bill, pushed aggressively by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), creates an independent, outside panel to investigate ethics complaints against House members. The House approved it last night, 229-182, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed. That margin is deceptive: Before final passage, the bill first had to clear a much closer procedural vote, which gave House members a chance to kill the idea without, technically, voting against it.

The bill survived that test by a single vote, with Foster voting in favor.

And we all know what Hastert's or Oberweis's vote would have been; only 4 Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats on this one. This is why we do what we do and this is a perfect example of how every congressional election impacts us all, not just those in district.

Bill Foster:

People on both sides should take the message that we want people who are less divisive, less ideological and more problem-solving.

Bill Foster's victory in the gerimandered Republican 14th Congressional District sends the message that this looks like a huge year for the Democrats. If "tax-and-spend Democrat" are the best attack ads the Republicans can come up with, and all they can come up with are attack ads . . . ? Wow!

Democrats are the party proposing solutions. Imperfect solutions but at least we're offering the voters something. What's happening among voters, I think, is a "'what the heck' the Dems aren't perfect but at least they're offering us real solutions" attitude. The Republicans offer nothing except tired, very tired, attack ads. I mean Foster's opponent, Jim Oberweiss, his 'solution' to the health care crisis is killing off malpractice law suits? The Republicans are in very bad shape right now.

Savor this victory, Democrats, whether you're a Hillbot or Obamamaniac. The only thing that can prevent a big November victory for the Democrats are . . . well, I can't think of any.

first of all, congratulations to bill foster, our newest member of congress.  it will be kind of weird calling him congressman.  and congratulations to his staff and all the volunteers who helped elect foster.  what a tremendous achievement!

foster's election is vindication of all those who believed that a serious democratic candidate with a great campaign organization could turn il-14 blue.  and now we have!  it is also vindication for the plan that bill and tom put together, and especially the networking they did to create a solid pool of campaign workers who went out and delivered the vote for foster.  this should serve as both proof of what a good campaign can do and an example for the local democratic parties and their future candidates.

it's probably too early to really dissect how bill foster won denny hastert's open seat but we can put some things into context.

Polls are now closed in IL-14 and results should start coming in any time now HERE and HERE. We'll all be out of pocket this evening so won't be able to update the results but please update away in the comments.

Update [2008-3-8 20:29:12 by Todd Beeton]:Walt Starr is liveblogging the results HERE.

Update [by Jonathan Singer]: Here are the results at this hour:

√ Bill Foster (D): 52,010 votes (53 percent)
Jim Oberweis (R): 46,988 (47 percent)

568 of 568 precincts (100 percent) reporting at 10:11 PM Eastern

It's a win!

Turnout in the special election in IL-14, in which Democrat Bill Foster is fighting to serve out the term of former Speaker Dennis Hastert, was expected to be relatively light today:

Like a typical election, polls are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham said he does not expect more than 20 percent of registered to voters to come to the polls. About 40 percent turned out for last month's primary.

Officials say that means they expect far fewer than the 197,000 voters who turned out in November 2006 or even the 155,000 voters who filled out a ballot Feb. 5.But that's not to say there's zero interest in the race. In Kane, home to more than half the district's voters, early and absentee voting has been stronger than anticipated.

Funny, i was just checking out Foster's website and the image on the front page is a big ole picture of George Bush with the warning:

If you don't vote, Bush wins!

Now, if that doesn't drive turnout...

But just because voter turnout may be light doesn't mean Foster doesn't have a solid army on the ground in district. As Prairie State Blue reports there's a real team effort going on on the ground on behalf of Foster:

The scientist and engineer activists are out in full effect, including current and former Fermilab scientists and support staff and academic colleagues of Bill's. There are several people here from around the country who went to grad school with Bill and are incredibly excited about his campaign.

Labor is on board with folks from IUPAT, SEIU, AFSCME, IBEW, and Letter Carriers everywhere. The Letter Carriers local in Aurora is one of the most militant unions I've had the pleasure to know and work with! You've got to love militant mailmen and women who want to see a change in their government.

The Seals campaign has sent a bunch of people and the Harper campaign, too. Obama's Illinois organization is on board, too. In fact, I received a call from Obama's Chicago headquarters this morning asking me to volunteer!

And this is always good to hear:

There's no sign of Oberweis' people on the street ANYWHERE!

But with just under 4 hours left before polls close, Foster can still use all the help he can get to drive voters to the polls, so if you're in-district and can volunteer, see how HERE but even if you're not, Barack Obama has set up a phonebank from home function on his website.

As you no doubt know, tomorrow is the IL-14 special election to serve out former Speaker Dennis Hastert's final term in office and Democratic challenger Bill Foster is looking better and better to take the seat in this PVI R+5 district. Not only has Barack Obama endorsed Foster, even making an ad for him, but the most recent poll shows Foster up by 7 and to cap it all off, Foster's Republican opponent is, well, I'll let The Chicago Tribune tell it:

[...]we watched Oberweis in his races for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004, and for governor in 2006. We've watched this race for Congress. His campaign style has consistently been nasty, smug, condescending ... and dishonest.

A perfect example is a mailer that the Oberweis campaign sent out, which featured an all-American nuclear family named the Wadsworths who, guess what? Again from The Chicago Tribune (a conservative paper, by the way...)

Jim Oberweis made up the Wadsworths!

He also made up Juan and Maria Garcia, a construction worker and a bank teller from Aurora who have three kids and haul in $54,778 a year. And DeKalb office manager Sheila Johnson, a divorced mother of two who makes $47,333. And Juan and Elena Marcos, who have a precious little baby boy and live on his $68,044 salary.

They're all pictured in a mailer for Oberweis' campaign for Congress in the 14th District. [...]

Total fiction. All of it. These people don't exist. They were created by Oberweis' campaign, which bought stock photos to use in the ad.

So the DCCC went on the attack with the following ad:

So what does Oberweis do? brownsox has it:

Needless to say, Oberweis didn't care for the ad. He couldn't really think of a good reason to complain, though...so he has his company, Oberweis Dairy, file suit against the DCCC, alleging that their ads were hurting business.

Now, this has backfired, as the DCCC has filed an FEC complaint against the Oberweis campaign for so using the resources of one's business to benefit one's campaign.

Classic.

Looks like an Oberweis implosion to me. We're lucky we have a solid candidate in Bill Foster, now we just need to make sure people turn out for this Saturday special election, likely to be a fairly low turnout election. Are you in-district, or even in-state? The campaign is looking for election day volunteers. This is an amazing opportunity to give the Republicans a taste of what's to come in November so help out however you can. I really want to be able to announce tomorrow night that we flipped this seat. As CQ reminds us:

Should Foster win -- and private and public polls suggest that is a plausible scenario -- it would mark the first time in nearly four years that a special election caused a shift in partisan control of a congressional district.

Survey USA, which has been remarkably reliable this cycle at the presidential level, has a new poll out of Illinois' 14th (conducted for Roll Call) showing Democrat Bill Foster ahead of Republican Jim Oberweis by 7 points two days out from Saturday's special election. Brownsox brings us the subscription-only Roll Call story:

The House seat recently vacated by former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is in danger of flipping to the Democrats in Saturday's special election, according to a poll conducted this week for Roll Call.

In the poll of 517 likely special election voters, conducted by Survey USA exclusively for Roll Call on March 3 and 4, physicist Bill Foster (D) led dairy company executive Jim Oberweis (R) 52 percent to 45 percent. The poll had a 4.4-point margin of error.

Foster appeared to test particularly well with women and independent voters, who preferred him by a 3-2 margin. The survey also suggested Foster had locked down his party's base, taking 97 percent of likely Democratic votes and perhaps stealing 10 percent of likely GOP votes.

If these numbers hold up on Saturday, the return on investment for the NRCC will be sad indeed. As Jonathan wrote yesterday:

Crunching out the math, then, the $1.2 million the NRCC has had to spend defending this Republican seat in a Republican district amounts to 29.2 percent of the committee's net cash-on-hand, or nearly a third. In contrast, the D-trip has spent about 3.0 percent of its net cash-on-hand on the race.

An Oberweis loss, especially of this magnitude, could mean the end of Rep. Tom Cole's, er, distinguished tenure as chair of the NRCC and will be seen as a sign of things to come in the fall for Republicans in red or purple at best districts (IL-14 has a PVI of R+5.) It also serves as the first test case for how Obama's message and endorsement (see his ad for Foster here) may trickle down to the congressional level in November. Granted, Illinois's demographics are shifting and Obama is the hometown senator, but this is a district that Bush won 55-44 in 2004 and Hastert won 60-40 in 2006.

Update [2008-3-6 17:23:46 by Todd Beeton]:Per Dick Durbin's dailyKos diary, contribute to keep the Obama ad on the air for the next 48 hours HERE.

Why are Republicans spending a million dollars to help Oberweis?  I don't understand.  Oberweis has lots of money and Congressional Republicans don't.

jonathan singer of mydd writes, NRCC Blows Nearly One Third of its CoH on IL-14 Special Election.  but there's a very good reason why congressional republicans are betting the farm on this special election.  the core of republican campaign doctrine is winning special elections and leveraging those wins into bigger wins in the general.  that's what they are trying to do here.

voters in il-14 are uniquely in the position to either send republicans packing in 2008 or give them a win that can lead to the election of john mccain and more republicans in november.  now that's power.