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Candidate Blogs: Illinois

Illinois' first-in-the-nation candidate filing deadline was Monday, so I decided to visit the Web sites of the congressional and gubernatorial candidates to see how many have blogs. The unsurprising answer: not many.

Of the eight gubernatorial candidates and the 64 House candidates in 19 districts, only eight have blogs on their campaign sites. Six are Democrats, and two are Republicans. Two other Republican incumbents -- Speaker Dennis Hastert and Mark Steven Kirk -- have blogs on their congressional sites, where campaign activity is not allowed.

The most interest in campaign blogging among Illinois candidates is in the 6th District, which has a competitive Democratic primary. Two of the three candidates, 2004 Democratic nominee Christine Cegelis and Lindy Scott, have blogs. Tammy Duckworth, who announced her candidacy just a day before the filing deadline, does not have a blog at her campaign site.

Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky wins the prize for the most unique campaign blog. Hers is aimed not just at her re-election but at helping candidates in "tough districts" nationwide.

You can see a list of federal and state candidates in Illinois here. Beltway Blogroll's list of the blogs for gubernatorial and House candidates is below, and I will update it as I hear of more.

The next filing deadline is Jan. 2 in Texas, to be followed by filings in West Virginia and then Kentucky later next month. My goal is to post similar entries of candidate blogs by state -- though that could take a while in months like March, April, June and July, when several states have deadlines.

Keep checking back for the lists, and if I miss a blog, please e-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.

Illinois Candidate Blogs
-- Bill Brady, Republican, governor
-- Christine Cegelis, Democrat, 6th District
-- Mark Fredrickson, Democrat, 5th District
-- David Gill, Democrat, 15th District
-- John Laesch, Democrat, 14th District
-- Kathy Salvi, Republican, 8th District
-- Jan Schakowsky, Democrat, 9th District
-- Bill Scheurer, independent, 8th District
-- Lindy Scott, Democrat, 6th District

UPDATE: I added the blog of Bill Scheurer, an independent candidate in the 8th District. "The life of a blog is community," Scheurer wrote in an e-mail explaining his campaign's approach to blogging. "We decided not to try and replicate this phenomenon but to highlight existing blogs instead."

The blog consists of eight brief, link-only entries since late July. Most of them point to the blog at Working Life, a site run by Jonathan Tasini. He is now a Democratic primary challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York and also has a campaign blog.

Posted by dglover | 12:20 PM

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» Candidate Blogs from The Club for Growth Blog
Daniel Glover, writing for National Journal’s Beltway Blogroll, has started an ambitious new project. He’s going to provide a list of all candidate blogs as we head into the 2006 mid-term elections. Yesterday, he started with Texas (because... [Read More]

Tracked on December 23, 2005 09:15 AM

Comments

Very interesting... I clicked on all the sites. Just wondering why you included Kathy Salvi when all her site says is "Welcome! Thanks for visiting my site" and there's been no other posts since then, which was November 29th when presumably the blog was set up.

Other observations: Bill Brady tends to do a sales pitch on his blog, (or his webmaster); Mark Fredrickson does this off-putting writing style by talking about others instead of himself; the others tend to have personal voices in their posts which is a very nice thing to read.

resignedidealist | 01.04.06 06:22 PM

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