Were you as viscerally upset as I was when Governor Blagojevich played the race card and appointed Edmund Burris to the open Illinois Senate senate?

Then do something about it and help elect Tom Geoghegan to Blagojevich's old congressional seat.

Geoghegan recently had an op-ed in the New York Times.

In the blogosphere, Josh Marshall said

Don’t know what his chances are - he seems more like the type of guy you’d like to see in the House than the type who actually gets there. But let’s see. It’s important to aim high.

Matt Yglesias responds

I would have said something similar about Al Franken, and now he’s a US Senator. And I think of Glenn Nye who’s being sworn in today as a member of the US House of Representatives - you haven’t traditionally seen guys leap from the foreign service into congress. But why not? And couldn’t the House use a labor lawyer slash major intellectual? Part of what happens in times of political change is that new people get pulled into the process. People who don’t usually vote, go vote. People who wouldn’t normally run for office run for office

A native of the 5th district comments in response to Yglesias:

If the machine doesn’t slate a candidate, there could be a dozen (who knows, maybe more?) machine regulars running, and the County Party will be officially neutral (though whoever is favored by Daley and the other bosses on an individual basis will get help), allowing those guys to slug it out.

Then Geoghegan may be able to slip through and get the special election nomination. Beating the Republican will be a cake walk (The only republican candidate I’ve heard about so far is the Ultra-racist head of the Illinois Minuteman Project - she won’t stand a chance).

That’s kind of how the State’s attorney race played out this past fall. The County Party did not endorse, several Party heavyweights slugged it out, and the career prosecutor with no political experience and few connections won the primary and then thrashed Tony Periaca.

Heck, Geoghegan’s probably in a better place than Alvarez was given his history as a Labor lawyer. Some union folk might buck the machine to back one of their own.

No matter what happens, its going to be a fun primary. I’ve got a front row seat, and I’ve just got to pick a side now. I want to see some evidence that Geoghegan can run a strong race, and then I’ll be there to volunteer. Otherwise, I’ll probably go with John Fritchey, since he exorcised the last vestiges of the old Rostenkowski machine from my old neighborhood (he ran Rostenkowski’s successor (I forget his name) out of the Ward Committeeman seat).

I don't know about Fritchey - Blagojevich also ran as a "reform" candidate - but Geoghegan is definitley uncorruptible* and frugal - he once told me he will wait for books to come out in paperback before purchasing them. He's sort of a combo throwback/modern personality. On the one hand he reminds me of Ioan Gruffudd's William Wilberforce, from the movie Amazing Grace, which had moved Annasophia Robb so. On the other hand, he has demonstrated again and again in his writings his appreciation of the absurdities of modern life. But then again he discusses these absurdities in a plainsong, common sense manner, which makes him seem like a very observant, often extremely humorous throwback inserted into the 21st Century.

The primary is March 3, the general is April 7.

Mickey Kaus at Slate approves.

Kathy G at the G spot is ecstatic.

James Fallows is excited.

Katha Pollitt gives him a nice plug in her column.

Hertzberg had published him in The New Republic.

Thomas Frank** in his column in the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages (yes we have entered a bizarro alternate dimension)

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* the term Boy Scout comes to mind.
** Frank and his cohorts would regularly run Geoghegan pieces in The Baffler.