WurfWhile

In today’s Naperville Sun article, “Local GOP leaders predict Obama success,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gets a lot of praise - just not quite enough. From the article:

“While Obama still may not exert enough pull to win heavily Republican DuPage County, state Rep. Joe Dunn, R-Naperville, said his charisma will help to continue in Illinois a trend that showed up in Iowa last week: more interest in Democratic primaries than in Republican primaries.”

While the context is a bit ambiguous (who is saying Obama may not win DuPage County - and what is winning (the primaries?) in this case mean - most votes overall among candidates from all parties?) - the fact is that Barack Obama has already won DuPage County in 2004 for U.S. Senate against current presidential candidate Republican Alan Keyes (64% Barack to 32% Keyes). Likewise, last state election (2006) the top vote getting Republican standard bearer, gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka, got enough votes in DuPage for…third. Judy’s total was eclipsed by Democrats Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Secretary of State Jesse White - and Democratic Comptroller Dan Hynes’ DuPage vote actually came within about 5,000 votes (less than 4%) of Judy’s DuPage totals too.

So, no matter how you define it, I wouldn’t bet against Democrat Barack Obama winning in DuPage - Barack’s won DuPage before…and so have other Democrats.