On Being a Good Neighbor

In a city as large as Chicago, there are many congressional districts.

Illinois' 14th District is one of those districts. For 20 years, from 1987 until Nov. 26, 2007, Republican Dennis Hastert represented the 14th. He was speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007 and was forced to relinquish his post after the Democrats captured the majority in the House in the 2006 election.

Hastert had announced his intention to retire after this term, but when the party lost its majority and Hastert gave up the speaker's post, he appeared to lose whatever joy he derived from serving in the House, and he announced his resignation in November of last year.

A special election was held in the district in March, with Democrat Bill Foster (who was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune) defeating Republican Jim Oberweis (who was endorsed by the Chicago Sun-Times), 52.5% to 47.5% (which was a margin of about 5,000 votes).

Illinois' 14th slithers along the northern part of the state, straddling an imaginary line between the boundary of the city of Chicago with its metropolitan, ethnically diverse voters and the more rural — and more rustic — blue-collar, downstate voters of Illinois.

Foster and Oberweis will be facing each other in a rematch in November. Larry Sabato writes that the district "leans Democratic" right now, but there are some questions that remain to be asked:

"Was it only a battle between the flawed candidate (Oberweis) and a political outsider without external import? Was Oberweis a casualty of a contentious primary ... or his own political shortcomings? ... Was this only an isolated incident or a sign of things to come for Congressional Republicans in the fall?"

I expect John McCain to make an appearance for Oberweis. McCain campaigned for Oberweis during the special election.

But if Obama is a good neighbor (even one who lives in one of the ritzier parts of Chicago), he'll make an appearance or two on behalf of Foster.

Whoever wins the presidency will need allies in Congress. If Obama occupies the White House, it would be helpful if some of his allies were from his home state.

And Foster's margin in the special election was close enough (especially when one considers that less than one-quarter of the district's voters bothered to participate in March) to warrant a little political attention from the presidential nominee.