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Andrzejewski’s Army
A Tea Party candidate battles the Illinois establishment.
Adam Andrzejewski refers to his opponents in the Illinois Republican primary as “the Redcoats,” while calling his own grassroots campaign for governor “the ragtag army.”
Revolutionary War metaphors come easily for Andrzejewski, whose showing Tuesday in Illinois will provide an early test of the ability of Tea Party activists to deliver votes in Republican primaries during this year’s mid-term campaign.
“The Tea Party movement in Illinois is a repository of the foundational principles of America,” said Andrzejewski, a 40-year-old businessman with no previous experience in politics. “We are sick of Washington, D.C., sick of Springfield.”
Like George Washington’s ill-equipped colonial soldiers outnumbered by the professional troops of the British Empire, Andrzejewski finds himself up against more experienced foes in the gubernatorial race. His opponents in the seven-candidate primary include veteran state Sen. Kirk Dillard and former state GOP chairman Andy McKenna. Yet their experience may actually prove a liability in Illinois, a state plagued by corruption scandals, including the one that led to last year’s impeachment of former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
“My opponents have 100 years of combined Illinois political experience,” Andrzejewski said in a telephone interview Sunday. “I ask one question on the trail: Do you feel Illinois is running well? Nobody in 11 months has raised their hand.”
Andrzejewski says his opponents are splitting the “business-as-usual establishment” vote, while he stands out as the newcomer offering reform.
“Political experience in this election means two things: It means political failure and baggage,” he said. “If my opponents were leaders, they’d have shown it by now. At best, they have not been part of the solution. At worst, shame on them.”
Andrzejewski was an early supporter of the Tea Party movement that began last Feburary in Chicago with CNBC market analyst Rick Santelli’s impassioned denunciation of President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill, a rant that sparked the first rallies. The movement “has coalesced behind my campaign,” says Andrzejewski, who claims 93 percent support among Tea Party activists in Illinois.
Translating that support into victory in a major statewide campaign, however, presents a tremendous challenge — including the geography that required Andrzejewski to spend hours yesterday driving 300 miles from Chicago to a rally in O’Fallon, a downstate suburb of St. Louis. Meanwhile, his Republican rivals have poured massive resources into the last-minute push before Tuesday’s vote, with McKenna reportedly spending $2 million of his family’s fortune on the campaign.
Andrzejewski has relied principally on small donors and online fundraising, including a “money bomb” last week that netted $36,000 — 50 percent more than the announced goal of $24,000. “It’s hundreds of low-dollar donations,” he said Sunday. “It shows the grassroots enthusiasm and momentum for the campaign.”
His comparatively modest resources may actually prove a hidden blessing in the hard-fought primary. While his opponents are inundating Illinois with automated “robocalls” and flooding the airwaves with negative ads, Andrzejewski’s campaign is relying on volunteers to run phone banks and closing out with a light-hearted TV commercial featuring man-on-the-street interviews of voters pronouncing his last name.
It’s pronounced “an-gee-EFF-skee,” reflecting a Polish heritage that should prove another advantage in Illinois. Andrzejewski brought in former Polish president Lech Walesa for a fund-raising luncheon and Tea Party rally Friday in Chicago, and his campaign last week sent out a mailer featuring Walesa’s endorsement to a list of more than 200,000 Polish-American voters in the state.
Andrzejewski says he was inspired by Friday’s remarks from the Cold War hero who led Poland’s defiance of the Soviet Union. “Walesa said that it was impossible to defeat the tanks, the airplanes and the guns of the communists. Solidarity prevailed because their principles and values were stronger.”
The Andrzejewski campaign has caught fire with conservatives online — including Red State, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, First Things blogger Jim Hoft and Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit mega-blog — and the candidate was featured last week on Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business Channel program. That kind of New Media coverage has helped compensate for the paucity of attention the campaign has received from traditional media in Illinois.
“The Chicago Tribune didn’t even send a reporter to cover the Lech Walesa endorsement,” Andrzejewski said Sunday. “They took seven sentences, 113 words, off the Associated Press wire.… They’re doing everything they can to ignore our campaign.”
About the Author
Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current). He blogs at The Other McCain.
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Andrzejewski’s Army : The Other McCain links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Deborah D | 2.1.10 @ 8:46AM
Good luck, Mr. Andrzejewski. The state where I was born and raised could use a good house cleaning. I'd love to see Obama's state run by a Tea Partier. How ironic and delicious would that be!!?
Downstate Illinois needs to kick the Chicago crowd out. They're sick and tired of their rundown lives and all their taxes being skimmed by criminal politicians -- in both parties -- in the corrupt Chicago politics that is Illinois.
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dave| 2.1.10 @ 12:32PM
Adam's Army is lock and loaded and ready to cast our votes. I honestly believe that we are going to win this because people truely want Illinois to be a state where real change can take place.
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jomo2009| 2.1.10 @ 1:38PM
Go Adam, go! Onward and upward.
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Kathleen Doherty| 2.1.10 @ 5:42PM
I'll be voting for him tomorrow. Illinois needs to get rid of all incumbents, they are all the same regardless of the letter between the parenthesis.
Conservative in Liberal Hands| 2.1.10 @ 6:19PM
The bigger appeal of the Andrzejewski campaign is a pledge to "audit" the State Budget. One wonders how many inventive ways the intrenched Bureaucrats in both Springfield and Chicago will find to outlast, obfuscate or otherwise sabotage these Audits?
Ken (Old Texican)| 2.1.10 @ 6:34PM
Illinois sucks! The brightest Illinoi...have moved to Texas...as fast as they could. ie: my wife.
...nobody left there with any brass ones.
I'm wrong??? Prove it!!!!!!!!!!!
beckncall| 2.1.10 @ 8:49PM
"The Chicago Tribune didn't even send a reporter to cover the Lech Walesa endorsement," Andrzejewski said Sunday. "They took seven sentences, 113 words, off the Associated Press wire.… They're doing everything they can to ignore our campaign."
BIAS IN THE LIBERAL MEDIA?
NAH......CAN'T BE.......
arlo price| 2.1.10 @ 11:11PM
The obamagedon PIMP thugocracy chugs........er........sputters...........is starting to run low on fuel........is there a crisis......er......fuel station around??????
"Show me the money, every dime, online, in real time. That's my phrase for transparency. Barack Obama ran on it, and he lied to you."
What a campaign slogan. Beautiful, Outstanding. Probably a snowball has a better chance in hell than the g.o.o.p or Tea Party using it.
How can you not be for a candidate who actually does speak TRUTH to power???
As for Lech............His picture should be in wiki under 'speaking truth to power'.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....nserv.html
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I'll be glad when THE TURBIN DURBIN'S time is up. OLE TURBIN DURBIN needs to go.
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Actually, Abraham Lincoln was just as radical but in a different way. Ditto FDR.
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