Let’s have some post-election Kendall County analysis…I’ll get things started.

Linda Holmes – The most successful candidate for the Democrats.  Took Republican Ed (Fight the War on Christmas!) Petka’s old seat.  She only lost the Kendall vote by about 200 votes which is an impressive accomplishment.

All the other IL level seats – Only Blago and Alexi lost.  If you add in all those Whitney protest voters, then Blago would have likely won too.  Not bad for a bunch of Democrats who all had a Republican opponent…unlike Cross and Weis who sadly all went unchallenged.

County Board – District 2 candidates got pretty good support for basically doing nothing.  Imagine if they had tried.  John Crawford is a well regarded candidate and I hope he’ll run again in the future.  Arden has a long future in front of him…good show Arden.  Thanks.

Craig is a going to be involved in our political environment for a long time to come…good job Frank!  I look forward to your leadership in the future.

John Laesch – This man deserves our thanks and gratitude.  He fought a battle that few others could have waged…and he gave Denny his smallest margin of victory in history.  I know he wanted victory…but I will thank him personally for standing up for our values and our Party in a very difficult situation. 

Paul Anderson should be replaced. From the pathetic approach to Early Voting, to the non-existent communication of precinct changes, to the 1980’s era website, our County, one of the fastest growing in the US, acts like it just came out of the last century.  My precinct was combined with three others at Plank Middle School, and while it was OK, there was ZERO parking and it was fairly crowded.  I would like to see that remedied before the next election. 

Road tax passed, but only by 5 votes in my precinct.  I’m anxious to learn why so many voted that down in my precinct since our roads are very bad, and that’s being charitable.

Oswego 308 passed, but lost in my precinct by 4 votes.  I’ll be using this factoid to inspire more progressives, independents and moderates to vote next time.  Pretty scary that as the area some of the fastest growth (Eastern Kendall), we would vote a school referendum down.  Plus in the middle of my precinct, we have a brand new elementary going up, and new middle school planned.  

Veterans Tax passed, and in my precinct too.  Who would vote against it?  Quite a few actually…

It's pretty easy to be a Democrat right now.  While Kendall did not provide us with much to cheer about, our Party has certainly taken many steps forward nationally.  Even locally we tendered some good candidates and came away with one unexpected victory.  I am glad to be a part of this organization and I'm looking forward to our growth in Kendall County for years to come.

So that’s it from Oswego 27…How bout the rest of you???

Words of wisdom from Atrios...

that if you don't play you can't win, but every game has an entrance fee. If you don't have credible candidates in place - and, yes, even ones who are probably going to lose - you can't take advantage of a potential "wave," or a sudden scandal, or surprise retirements. If nothing else it seems like every election about half a dozen or so incumbents are knocked out at the last minute by scandal or surprise retirement, and those are easy (sometimes automatic) pickups if you have a candidate who is actually running a credible race.

Also, if you don't run credible candidates regularly, and run real campaigns, you don't build networks of support, you don't build local knowledge, and you don't build a pool of talented and willing volunteers.

Words of wisdom from Kos...king of the NetRoots.

And most importantly of all -- my biggest bit of gratitude goes to the candidates who ran, even the long-shot ones who made it possible to expand the playing field. Truly, without those who make the sacrifice of running for office, knowing they'll get slammed and slimed and dragged through the mud -- those are the real heroes this election cycle.