Illinois Central

The one U.S. Senate race people are watching closely this election year more than any other, with the sole exception of Nevada (and the less said about that, the better) is in Illinois. Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias are vying for President Barack Obama's old Senate seat. If Kirk wins, it will be a psychological blow to the President. This is ironic, as Kirk is a moderate with a few liberal positions on social issues who is less likely to fall in line with the Senate Republican caucus on everything than, say, Ron Johnson in neighboring Wisconsin. If not for the fact that this is Obama's Senate seat, a Kirk victory on Tuesday wouldn't upset Obama much.

The problem with calling this close race is that Kirk and Giannoulias are both attractive candidates that are greatly flawed. Giannoulias is dogged by the checkered history of his family's bank, which dealt with shady characters before going under, while Kirk is accused of inflating his war record. Seems Kirk, as a Navy pilot, won an award for outstanding support during the Kosovo air campaign in 1999 that was given to his entire unit rather than to him individually but that he's talked about winning the award in the singular first person rather than the plural, and he said he won the Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year prize when he in fact did not. But the award he did win with his unit was called the "Rufus Taylor Intelligence Unit of the Year" award. He's made a few other exaggerations, as reported earlier this year by the Huffington Post in this article.

Some of these exaggerations border on lying, but Kirk's overall military record is quite impressive. Now, in the interest in being bipartisan, I don't understand why this is such a big deal. As you know, I defended Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut for misspeaking about his military service. So now I'm going to defend Kirk. Kirk was technically telling the truth about his award, even in talking about it in the singular first person, because he did win it individually. So did everyone in his unit: each of these service personnel have it on their records. As for the name of the awards, well, the two separate prizes are similar. So I would call it an honest mistake. As for his other exaggerations, I'll leave it to the voters of Illinois to decide how relevant they are.

If I lived in any other state with a Senate seat up for election this year - and, somewhat thankfully, I don't - I'd assuredly vote Democratic. But if I lived in Illinois and had to choose between Kirk and Giannoulias, I'd probably toss a coin. As to the fact that it was Barack Obama's seat, well, it was. It was also the great Everett Dirksen's seat. It was the seat of Adlai Stevenson's namesake son in the seventies. It was also the seat of Peter Fitzgerald, the only Republican elected to the Senate from Illinois (in 1998) since 1978. The truth is, this seat doesn't belong to anyone except the people of Illinois. If the Democrats maintain control of the Senate without winning in Illinois, who cares if Obama held this seat?

And quite frankly, the Democrats are given a roughly 90 percent chance of holding the Senate by Nate Silver. Now, that has to be good news. If the weather forecast says there's a 90 percent chance of rain, you'd take an umbrella with you.

I can't call the Senate race in Illinois. As for the Illinois governor's race, though, expect Republican Bill Brady to beat Democratic caretaker governor Pat Quinn easily.