Governor's lawyers examining Green Party petitions.

[Radical Activist]

I haven't seen too many posts on the Green Party Candidate for Governor, Rich Whitney. Pretty soon we'll know if he's going to appear on the ballot. This article from the Southern Illinois is pretty good.
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2006/07/02/top/16816776.txt

This quote from the article stuck out for me:

"I don't want to demean Mr. Whitney and his efforts, but we don't see him as a 'factor,'" said Steve Brown, spokesman of the Illinois Democratic Party. "All I can say right now is that the petitions are being examined by the governor's lawyers. We generally believe that everybody ought to play by the rules."

The response from the Governor's campaign is characteristically arrogant. It sounds A LOT like what Al Gore's people were saying in early 2000 about Nader. Honestly, I don't know why the Governor keeps hiring press representatives that make these boastful comments all the time. I don't know if that plays well on the north side but most people I know don't like it.
Obviously, if Rod wasn't worried about the Greens he wouldn't spend staff time and money looking at their petitions, so the quote comes off as insincere as well.

Of course, Rod also believes that third parties should have to play by different rules than the Democrats since third parties have to gather more than twice as many signatures. I can't be the only one who rolls his eyes at hearing a Democratic spokesperson talking about Greens playing by the rules when the rules are so strongly written to benefit the two major parties.

The Democrats seriously need to come up with a better way to respond to Whitney if he stays on the ballot. He'll be the only candidate not connected to state corruption scandals and that has some appeal.