Laesch for Congress's blog

John Laesch held a healthcare forum yesterday. I, unfortunately, was not able to personally attend, as I had to work. I was going to gather reports from those who had attended. Then I got this beautiful write up from Al, one of our volunteers on the communications team, and with a little editing to make it bloggable, I decided to simply use his write-up. So, follow me below the fold for the full report from Al.

This campaign has been a long, fun, exciting road, and while the road ahead is short, it's about to get even more fun and exciting. The primary is 16 days away. That's two weeks and two days. We are -doubling- tripling our efforts on getting yard signs out, on identifying voters, on fund-raising... everything that will be crucial to our GOTV efforts on Feb 5th and then again on March 8th in the special election to replace Denny Hastert.

We have quite a bit of news to report this week. Follow me below the fold for the full update, including our exciting new endorsements, upcoming events, and online action opportunities for you to help out the campaign!

The League of Women Voters held a forum last night for all the candidates running for the open seat in Illinois' 14th congressional district, which was formerly held by Dennis Hastert. The debate will be put up on the League website, and we'll link to it on our campaign website when it goes up.

Excitement and interest in this race are high, and this showed in the number of people who came out to see the debate. We were told the LWV expected about 200 hundred people but today's papers report the crowd was 600.

The most interesting part of it to me were the alliances that formed on the stage. Two of the three Republican candidates were there, as well as three of the four Democrats. The interesting thing was, even though they were at two tables, seated by party, Republican Chris Lauzen made this race not about Democrat vs. Republican, but about grassroots vs. big money. Bill Foster was compared to Jim Oberweis many times last night, and Jim Oberweis stated agreement with Bill Foster on issues more often than with Lauzen, his fellow Republican. I'm not sure if this says more about Bill Foster or Chris Lauzen... you can be the judge of that.

First off an announcement. I am the new blog team coordinator for the Laesch for Congress campaign. Or should I say new-ish? That's right, I have my old job from the '06 cycle back. So, as my first duty, I am writing to give you all a general update on the Laesch campaign. Included in the update are a great article on John in the Sun-Times, plenty of new endorsements, and our big event for tonight.