The Problems Facing Alexi Giannoulias

Alexi Giannoulias' troubles with his family bank are beginning to resonate. He had to call a hasty news conference yesterday in a clear act of damage control, but declined to answer directly which loans he authorized while chief loan officer at Broadway Bank. Meanwhile, the Tribune editorial board today blasted Giannoulias while reiterating its endorsement of David Hoffman:

As we wrote in our endorsement: Hoffman, the former inspector general for the city of Chicago, "is an incorruptible man who tells truth to power..."

Hoffman is the Democrats' best choice to bring the highest ethical standards to the U.S. Senate.

The heyday of newspaper endorsements is long passed, but the Tribune picks up a sentiment that is circulating among the Democratic rank-and-file in the final days of the primary campaign, and not just in Illinois. Namely, Alexi Giannoulias is beginning to represent the very thing the president and national Democrats are attacking at the moment.

Exhibit A: President Obama on Jan. 17 in Boston: "Bankers don't need another vote in the United States Senate -- they've got plenty."

You didn't have to listen to the president's State of the Union speech, nor his other speeches in the last two weeks, very closely to pick up the note of ant-banker populism coming from the White House. One of the consequences of the Massachusetts special election is that the White House -- and national Democrats -- are going populist in a big way. That leaves a guy like Giannoulias outside holding the bag.

Liberal pundit and columnist David Sirota, writing in the Huffington Post, puts it this way:

Illinois' U.S. Senate Democratic primary is coming up in less than a week, and it poses a potentially enormous problem for the Democratic Party, in Illinois and therefore nationally. That "therefore" is important: Because President Obama is from Illinois, and because Republicans have invested so much time and resources trying to nationalize the concept of the corrupt "Chicago politician," whoever ends up the Democratic nominee for Obama's old seat will likely be made by the GOP into a face of the Democratic Party as a whole.

That's why the candidacy of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is so problematic. Holding a slight lead in the polls against other Democratic challengers, he has become a poster child for everything that is wrong with the American economy -- everything that the Republican Party's right-wing populism desperately needs to find traction. ...

With him as the nominee, Democrats could lose yet another senate seat, and more broadly, they could lose any national high ground they need to reclaim. At a time when the Democratic Party desperately needs to reclaim the populist economic mantle and prevent Republicans from being able to mount their own right-wing populist campaign, Giannoulias would become the face of a Democratic Party that has already become increasingly synonymous in voters minds with the most hated aspects of the financial industry.

Those are the national implications. But there are local ones as well haunting Giannoulias at the moment. The populism we'll see coming from voters in Illinois this year is likely going to represent an anti-establishment sentiment, but Giannoulias is perceived as entirely establishment: A well-to-do Chicago pol who is where he is because of family connections and the rewards of the Chicago patronage machine. Add in the banking problems, and the GOP attack line for the general election writes itself.

Which is not to suggest that David Hoffman just rode in from the prairie. But Hoffman has a

David Hoffman

few things going for him at the moment. One, he is in the unique position of having grassroots liberal support along with moderate support, as evidenced in the Tribune editorial. In other words, though the netroot progressives like him, he's not wallowing in the fever swamps, as so many of their preferred candidates do. Also, his former position as Chicago Inspector General allows him to present himself as a corruption-fighter: The very thing Democrats are looking for at the moment.

Hoffman's big problem is that he has almost no support in the black community -- just 5% in the recent PPP poll, compared with 30% for Giannoulias and 48% for Cheryle Jackson. That alone might cause him to lose the primary. And while his poll number are improving, it's not at the clip that we can define as a surge. The Giannoulias bank story might have broke just a bit too late. Or perhaps not. 

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