Illinois Government Consultants Incorporated

Amtrak and Illinois Department of Transportation officials will promote train travel as a way to beat high fuel prices and see tourist sites around the state.

“Illinois Tourism Day” on Friday will feature representatives of cities and businesses along routes to and from Chicago. Tickets and other prizes will be awarded from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Chicago’s Union Station.

New this year will be an appearance by Richard “Fritz” Klein of Springfield. Klein impersonates Abraham Lincoln internationally. The Vintage Brass Band of Springfield will play music from the 1840s to 1920s from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

City and business officials along three Amtrak routes through Illinois will also be represented. The routes are from Chicago to St. Louis, Chicago to Carbondale and Chicago to Quincy.
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Source: The State Journal Register - The Oldest Newspaper in Illinois

Rahm Emanuel’s inaugural celebration will be as much about setting a tone for how he wants Chicagoans to perceive his administration as about commemorating his ascendancy to mayor.

The planning team is going for festive, but not too festive. After all, Emanuel enters office preaching the need for shared sacrifice with the city’s wallet short by $600 million or more.

“Togetherness” is the overarching theme. There’s a free concert in Grant Park on Saturday afternoon, preceded by community volunteering in the neighborhoods. On Monday, Emanuel will take the oath outside at Millennium Park, and the public again is welcome.

All of that togetherness is being paid for by private donors. The contributors — some who gave as much as $50,000 — get to spend Saturday night at an exclusive reception and dinner with Emanuel at a hip hall on the Near West Side.

Emanuel’s camp plans to release the list of donors, though it’s not required to do so, a few days later.

Melinda Kelly, one of seven co-chairs chosen by Emanuel to help coordinate the inauguration, said she was tasked primarily with making sure as many residents as possible could participate in the festivities, and to ensure that public events were free. Planners kept in mind the city’s financial problems and the money difficulties many residents are experiencing, she said.

“I think this inauguration is going to show how we’re all going to pull together” during the Emanuel administration, said Kelly, executive director of the Chatham Business Association. The group receives city economic development funds to help improve small businesses in its South Side neighborhood.

Emanuel also is likely to highlight the need for togetherness going forward in the speech he delivers after being sworn in Monday, according to Tarrah Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Emanuel transition.

The outdoor communal event contrasts with Mayor Richard Daley’s first inauguration. In 1989, Daley faced a crowd inside Orchestra Hall as he took the oath to complete the final two years of the late Harold Washington’s term.

And Emanuel’s speech is expected to differ rhetorically from Washington’s first inaugural address in 1983. Chicago’s first African-American mayor criticized outgoing Mayor Jane Byrne and told attendees at his Navy Pier ceremony that reform was coming with him to City Hall. Council Wars began soon thereafter.

Emanuel plans to kick off inauguration festivities by taking part in Saturday morning’s “day of service.”

Four organizations — Chicago Cares, the Chicago Park District, Friends of the Chicago River and One Good Deed Chicago — list 28 projects people can volunteer for. Most involve planting flowers and picking up trash at parks and gardens around the city. People can clean up the banks of Bubbly Creek in Bridgeport or the Chicago River in Lincoln Park, for example.

Emanuel is likely to be joined by Clerk-elect Susana Mendoza and Treasurer Stephanie Neely at one of the sites, where he will pitch in before heading to a couple of other locations to thank volunteers.

From there, the mayor-elect will head to Butler Field in Grant Park, where throwback rockers Chicago will headline an afternoon concert. Free tickets are available upon request at chicagotogether.org, and about 6,000 people had signed up for them as of late last week, Cooper said.

On Saturday evening, Emanuel will head to a reception and dinner at Venue One, an event hall in the 1000 block of West Randolph Street. The guest list to the private event will include “friends, family and supporters,” according to Cooper.

People who contributed at least $5,000 to defraying the cost of the inaugural festivities got tickets to the Venue One reception.

Emanuel will take one page out of the Daley inauguration playbook, hosting an afternoon open house at City Hall after Monday’s Millennium Park swearing-in, just as the outgoing mayor has done after each of his election victories.

Chicagoans will be able to line up to shake the new mayor’s hand in his fifth floor office, just a week after Daley held a farewell open house in the same spot.
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Source: The Chicago Tribune

Chicago aldermen are paying tribute today to Mayor Richard Daley as he presides over his final City Council meeting.

Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, is up first as the dean of the council, praising his onetime political foe.

With many of the 50 council members likely wanting to have their thoughts recorded, the praise could last for hours.

At the start of his last meeting, Daley took the occasion of honoring police officers for their heroism to highlight his longtime backing of gun control laws.

“This is our country, and why is it that we subject, every day, citizens and law enforcement to the destruction of guns in America, without anyone getting upset?” Daley asked.

Daley’s son Patrick and eldest daughter, Nora Conroy are present at today’s meeting. First lady Maggie Daley is believe to still be in the hospital after being readmitted for what her doctor said was flu-like symptoms.

Prior to the meeting, Daley shared hugs and banter with aldermen, including several who will stay on and others who will be departing come May 16, when the new mayor and council are sworn in. He smiled as he posed for pictures with several of the aldermen, as well as some council staff members, while TV cameras recorded the ritual.

Daley started presiding over council meetings in 1989 after being sworn in following a decade marked by racially-tinged Council Wars. The mayor eventually cemented power, partly due to the fact that he got to appoint so many aldermen who vacated their seats due to corruption convictions, new jobs or retirements.

Come May 16, Daley will be a private citizen once again and Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel will learn on the job how to run a council meeting and build the coalitions he needs to get his agenda approved.

Daley has been on a neighborhood farewell tour and his last council meeting marks a historic moment for him.
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Source: The Chicago Tribune

Mayor Daley will end his administration the way he started it: with a City Hall open house to personally thank Chicagoans for supporting him.

Movers-and-shakers will be asked to stand in line outside the mayor’s office alongside everyday Chicagoans from 1 to 4 p.m. on May 9, one week before Rahm Emanuel is sworn in as Daley’s replacement.

In recent weeks, Daley has been on a ribbon-cutting blitz of Chicago’s 50 wards that aides have dubbed his farewell “Neighborhood Appreciation Tour,” complete with, “Thank You, Chicago” banners.

The open house is a variation of the same theme.

Daley personally welcomed Chicagoans into his City Hall office after each of his six inaugurations. The final chapter of his 22-year reign will be similar to the first.

Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper predicted that the line outside City Hall would include “tens of thousands” of people, including business titans.

“We’ve had such a great working relationship with him in helping to build this city to what it is today. His leadership and his vision has inspired the business community to want to be involved. They’ll come and thank him for that on that day,” Roper said.

Roper said he’s amazed at how upbeat Daley has been as he prepares to leave office. At an Art Institute fund-raiser last week held in honor of the outgoing mayor and his wife, people were on stage singing. Daley joined in.

“He was so jovial and so into it. He’s really having fun with this. I don’t know when it will really hit him,” Roper said.

University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, a former independent alderman, predicted that the line to greet Daley on May 9 would not be nearly “as big as when he came in” because his power has waned.

But, Simpson said, “There are a lot of people who want to say goodbye. He’s been doing what I call victory laps in the neighborhoods. The open house seems a perfectly reasonable way to try and end up his term as mayor.”
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

Democratic officials in Chicago have picked an assistant Cook County state’s attorney to fill a vacant seat in the Illinois House.

Kelly Cassidy was chosen from a field of 23 candidates Saturday to serve as state representative in the 14th District. She’s replacing Harry Osterman, who was elected to the Chicago City Council in February.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the 42-year-old lesbian activist will be the third openly gay member of the state House. She reports to Springfield on May 16.

Cassidy says she knows there are some tough budget votes ahead and she plans to work to preserve the social services offered in her district. She plans to run for election in March 2012.
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Source: The State Journal Register - The Oldest Newspaper in Illinois

Hours from a government shutdown, the leaders of the House and Senate offered dramatically different reasons for a budget stalemate and expressed little hope that the two sides would reach an agreement by midnight.

In a terse statement to reporters, the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said there was “only one reason we do not have an agreement yet, and that is spending,” and asked, “When will the White House and when will Senate Democrats get serious about cutting spending?”

Moments later, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, said the two sides were in agreement on dollar figures, and then offered a long, scathing criticism of Mr. Boehner and House Republicans, accusing them of wanting to shut down the federal government by insisting on cutting funds for women’s heath services.

“This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Republican House leadership have only a couple of hours to look in the mirror, snap out of it and realize how truly shameful they have been.”

Attempts to frame the issue in the final hours before the shutdown deadline came after a series of negotiating sessions at the White House, and talks that stretched into the wee hours at the Capitol, failed to produce a deal by Friday morning.

The dueling characterizations of the negotiations added to the frustration, extending far beyond the capital city, among federal employees and the people who rely on their services as they wait to find out whether serious disruptions are imminent, and how long they might last.

Lawmakers struggled to explain what, exactly, was keeping the leaders of the bitterly divided parties from reaching a compromise that could keep the government open.

Mr. Boehner again urged the Senate to pass a temporary House budget resolution that would finance the military for the balance of the fiscal year, cut $12 billion in spending from the current year’s budget and keep the rest of the government operating for another week, as Republicans in the House have voted to do.

“This is the responsible thing to do,” he told reporters.

Democrats in the Senate have rejected that approach as a gimmick, and President Obama has said he would veto it. Mr. Reid told reporters at the Capitol on Friday morning that the Senate would explore the possibility of a brief continuing resolution that simply kept the government open for another week with no changes to spending, an approach the Republicans have brushed aside, saying they have no interest in preserving the status quo.

During the day Friday, Senate Democrats repeatedly insisted that the dispute over women’s health programs was the only obstacle to a deal.

“We have an agreement on the cuts and savings, and that agreement includes a historic level of cuts,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “But now the Tea Party is trying to sneak through its extreme social agenda — issues that have nothing to do with funding the government. They are willing to throw women under the bus, even if it means they’ll shut down the government.”

Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, was even more caustic in blaming the Republicans for the impasse, telling reporters, “If you can find an adult over there, I’m happy to meet with ’em.”

Congressional budget negotiations had broken up before dawn on Friday without an agreement, apparently putting the government on a path to a shutdown when financing for federal agencies runs out at midnight.

Senior Congressional officials said that the negotiations in the Capitol ended about 3 a.m. and that no new talks were scheduled. Mr. Obama late on Thursday had urged negotiators to reach a deal in the morning if possible so the government would not have to put into motion the machinery of a shutdown.

Officials said that Democrats had made concessions on both money and policy, and had moved toward the position of Mr. Boehner on the overall level of spending, agreeing to $37 billion in cuts, with less of it coming from the Pentagon than Democrats had initially sought.

Democratic officials familiar with the negotiations said that proposed restrictions on money for Planned Parenthood remained the chief sticking point, and that attempts to resolve the disagreement through alternatives like allowing a separate floor vote on the issue had not been successful. Democrats said they were told by the Republicans that the votes of anti-abortion social conservatives would be needed to move any budget measure through the House.

Republicans said that no final agreement on money had been struck, and that both policy and spending issues were causing the impasse.

“The largest issue is still spending cuts,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said Friday morning.

By contrast, Mr. Reid told reporters in an exchange broadcast on CNN Friday morning that “this all deals with women’s health” and that other issues had been resolved. “It has everything to do with ideology on that other side of the Capitol,” he said.

The different interpretations showed that, with a partial shutdown of the federal government becoming more likely, both sides were trying to frame the causes of the impasse to their political advantage. Some top Republicans worry that they are in danger of being seen as shutting down the government over social issues and a relatively small difference in money. Mr. Boehner on Wednesday had sought $39 billion in spending cuts, only $2 billion more than the $37 billion the Democrats were ready to accept overnight. (Adding to the sense of uncertainty, Mr. Reid said at mid-morning Friday that the Democrats would accept $38 billion.)

House Republicans were scheduled to meet on Friday to review the status of the negotiations.

Late Thursday night, after the third round of White House talks in 24 hours with Mr. Boehner and Mr. Reid, Mr. Obama had said that they had made progress and that he hoped a compromise could be reached early Friday.

After the meeting, Mr. Obama canceled a planned trip to Indiana on Friday to participate in the final push to get an agreement.

Given the uncertainty and the short time remaining, federal agencies prepared to furlough employees and cut off most services. Workers, contractors and consumers scrambled to understand how a shutdown would affect them, and Democrats warned of harm to the economy. The two parties also maneuvered to assign blame to each other in the event that no deal could be reached, and neither side was certain that it could predict the political repercussions of a shutdown.

Earlier on Thursday, ignoring a veto threat from Mr. Obama, the House had passed a Republican plan that would keep federal agencies open another week, cut $12 billion in spending and provide the Pentagon with money through Sept. 30. Republicans hoped the legislation, which passed by a vote of 247 to 181, would show that they had made a serious effort to avert a shutdown and leave Senate Democrats and the administration facing criticism for cutting off money to members of the military serving overseas.
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Source: The New York Times

Top Congressional leaders will continue negotiations on 2011 budget cuts Wednesday in an effort to stave off a government shutdown, aides said, after back-to-back meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill failed to make progress on Tuesday.

Aides to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said they were at least somewhat encouraged by a late-day meeting Tuesday between the two lawmakers in the speaker’s office.

Although the session produced no breakthroughs, aides to both lawmakers issued identical statements calling it “a productive discussion” — a significant shift in tone after a week in which the two had traded accusations across the Capitol.

Reid closed the Senate chamber Tuesday evening with an optimistic speech describing “good faith” talks that are “not that far apart.”

“The government is not going to shut down — yet,” Reid said. “There’s still air in the tire; at least we still have some miles to travel. I hope we have enough air in the tire to get us where we need to go.”

In the meantime, federal agencies began preparing workers for what would happen if the federal government does shut down for the first time since the mid-1990s, and D.C. residents and tourists considered the possibility of a spring weekend without Smithsonian museums or the National Zoo.

On Tuesday, President Obama and Congress remained billions of dollars apart and at odds over where to find savings after an 80-minute West Wing meeting that included Boehner and Reid. In the meeting, Boehner floated the possibility that he may seek as much as $40 billion in cuts, $7 billion more than the two sides have been discussing for the past week.

Growing irked by the prolonged negotiations, Obama demanded that the congressional leaders “act like grown-ups.”

“If they can’t sort it out, then I want them back here tomorrow. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll invite them again the day after that,” Obama told reporters in a rare appearance in the press room, hours after the meeting.

The president invited congressional leaders back to the White House on Wednesday, but he is scheduled to spend much of the day traveling and, as of mid-morning Wednesday, Congressional staffers said it seemed more likely that the talks would continue in the Capitol complex.

Boehner’s aides deflected reports that the speaker is setting a new target of $40 billion in cuts, but he also rejected the $33 billion figure that Republican leaders in the House and Democratic leaders in the Senate had been working toward.

“There was no agreement, so those conversations will continue. We made clear that we’re fighting for the largest spending cuts possible,” Boehner told reporters moments after Obama spoke.

Reid continued to accuse Republicans of not being “fair and reasonable” in their demands for higher cuts and specific changes to social and regulatory policies. Asked if he would be willing to reach $40 billion in cuts, however, Reid demurred.

“I’m not negotiating here what we’re going to do ultimately,” he told reporters.

A few days left

Without any resolution — either through a full spending plan or another short-term extension — the federal government would shut down at midnight Friday, with the full impact coming when the workweek resumes Monday.

Many of the most immediate effects of a shutdown would be felt in Washington, where the Smithsonian museums and other tourist sites would close, keeping as many as 500,000 visitors locked out of the city’s main attractions, according to senior government officials. If the impasse continues until Monday, a slew of other services would be halted, including the processing of tax refunds.

Aside from agreeing on how much to cut, two key stumbling blocks remain. One is a demand by Democrats to include roughly $10 billion in one-time cuts from programs such as Pell grants and farm subsidies. Republicans have rejected those cuts because they wouldn’t be permanent. On Tuesday, Boehner called such proposals “smoke and mirrors.”

Republicans cited the suggested cuts to rebut Obama’s oft-repeated claim that he has met the GOP “more than halfway” to its goal of cutting $61 billion from the government. Obama rejected that outlook Tuesday, calling his proposed Pell grant reductions “real cuts.”

Another impediment to a deal is Boehner’s insistence on attaching what are known as policy riders to the legislation. One such provision, approved as an amendment to the House bill in February, would keep open a mountain repository outside Las Vegas for storage of high-level nuclear waste — a plan Reid absolutely opposes for his state.

Political consequences

White House officials privately acknowledged that they have become wary of the political consequences of the spending battle, in part because a shutdown would reinforce the notion for many voters that leaders in Washington are unable to resolve key issues.

At the same time, White House officials are reluctant to agree to proposals that would inflame Obama’s liberal base, especially during the same week that the president launched his reelection campaign with a direct appeal to core supporters who provided the energy for his 2008 bid.

Boehner has struggled with his own political base, most prominently the tea party activists who propelled the major Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections. Some of the 87 Republican freshmen who benefited from tea party support have resisted any compromise to their campaign pledge to slash spending to 2008 levels.

Many freshmen, however, are open to some form of compromise, though they aren’t sure about the right mix of spending cuts and policy riders. At this late stage, Boehner still has not sought input from the freshmen about where they would make deals, they said.

Instead of directly seeking their support for a specific plan, Boehner has made it clear that some kind of compromise is necessary, according to Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), who said the speaker has encouraged the freshmen to “fight the battle on the highest ground possible.”

Yoder rejected the idea of “let’s shut down the government as a means to an end,” because at some point, he noted, the Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate will have to govern before the 2012 elections.

“Either the government shuts down until January 2013 [when a new Congress will arrive], or someday, there’s going to be a compromise,” he said.
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Source: The Washington Post

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in mailings and phone calls; thousands of hours putting up signs and passing out fliers — now it comes down to which voters are willing to get out and cast ballots on Tuesday.

The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners predicts fewer than one in four voters will turn out in the 14 wards around the city where run-off elections for alderman are scheduled.

A low turnout generally — though not always — favors incumbents, even recent appointees such as Ald. Tim Cullerton and Ald. John Rice in the Northwest Side 38th and 36th Wards respectively, where they face challenges from property manager Tom Caravette and firefighter Nick Sposato.

In four wards, the 41st, 43rd, 45th and 46th, all on the North Side, the incumbent has retired and the wards will get a new alderman no matter who wins.

Absentee and early voting ballots are running highest in the far Northwest Side 41st Ward, where longtime Ald. Brian Doherty, the city council’s lone Republican, is retiring.

Though the elections are non-partisans, the 41st and 45th wards on the Northwest Side offer voters a choice between Democrats and Republicans with appreciable ideological differences on social and economic issues.

Polls are showing the incumbents — most of them supported by mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel and unions — with comfortable leads in most cases.

“I need a new partner … that partner is a City Council that wants to work in the spirit of reform and change to the way business is conducted in city government,” Emanuel said Monday. Though he has endorsed mainly incumbents who had wide leads over their challengers in the first round of voting, Emanuel said he endorsed those committed to supporting his changes for schools, ethics laws, no-bid contracts and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, he said.

Bernie Stone, 83, one of the longest-serving aldermen, faces a spirited challenge in the Far North Side 50th Ward from CPA Debra Silverstein, wife of State Sen. Ira Silverstein.

The Council already has six new aldermen elected in the first round set to join the ranks. At least four more new aldermen will be elected Tuesday from the open seats.

For profiles on the 14 run-offs, go to http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections

The Cook County State’s Attorney will have prosecutors on hand Tuesday to monitor against vote fraud. In Chinatown, where incumbent Ald. Dan Solis (25th) faces a challenge from community activist Cuahutemoc “Temoc” Morfin, prosecutors fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese will be on hand to guard against electioneering, the State’s Attorney’s office said.

Suburban voters will see races for village boards, school boards and city councils, as well as some high-profile referenda.

Residents in several towns will be electing mayors, including Naperville, Oak Brook, Chicago Heights, Highland Park and Joliet, where voters will choose a replacement for retiring five-term mayor Art Schultz.

Other races of note feature well known atheist Rob Sherman running for Buffalo Grove village clerk and Joanne Ring on the ballot for the Blue Island Park District board, which has been beset by controversy since a Calumet Township official drowned at a park district pool last summer. Ring died suddenly last month, and unless a write-in candidate gets more votes than her, the park board chairman will choose who fills the seat.

And voters in Lockport Township High School District 205 for the sixth time will cast ballots on a tax increase to build a new high school.
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

The Obama 2012 national headquarters will be at One Prudential Plaza, I’ve learned exclusively, a skyscraper whose south front faces Grant Park, where President Obama held his 2008 election night victory rally.

The building — completed in 1955 and known to Chicagoans by its original name, the Prudential Building — at 130 E. Randolph is a very short walk from Obama’s 2008 headquarters, which was on the 11th floor of 233 N. Michigan. Obama’s team has been scouting locations in Chicago for weeks and settled on the Prudential Building in part because of the ability to make it a secure location.

A source inside the Obama operation confirmed what I learned on my own — that the headquarters will be in the Prudential Building and that a skeleton crew of Obama 2012 staffers is already in Chicago, including Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina. The headquarters is not yet up and running; it will open for business at a later date.

I’ve also learned that when President Obama hits Chicago for a Democratic National Committee event April 14, it will be one of a series of gatherings around the country in April — at Democrats’ best donor cities — kicking off the Obama 2012 campaign.

The DNC is running Obama’s political operation until Obama registers as a 2012 presidential candidate with the Federal Election Commission, which will allow him to create a committee to accept political contributions. Until the Obama 2012 committee is formed, the DNC is raising money that will benefit Obama’s drive for a second term.

Biden was the draw last Monday — March 21 — in Boston at a DNC event, not a fund-raiser where someone pays to attend; it was to crank up past and future bundlers to get some face time with Biden so they will take on major fund-raising duties for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. In mid-March, President Obama attended two DNC events in Washington aimed at the megadonors who are, have been or will be on his National Finance Committee.

With Obama facing no Democratic primary — an obvious contrast to his 2008 presidential election battle — prospecting events with major fund-raisers and bundlers — people who use their connections to raise money — are a priority on the Obama 2012 re-elect agenda.

I confirmed with a DNC official that on Tuesday, Obama, while in New York, will headline two events for the DNC in Harlem: a fund-raiser at Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster restaurant (with a $30,800 per-person ask) and a “thank you reception” for supporters at the Studio Museum of Harlem. (Samuelsson was the guest chef for the Obama White House first state dinner in November 2009, honoring the prime minister of India.)

I’ve been reporting on how Messina has been traveling around the country for weeks now, prospecting with megadonors who will be the backbone of the Obama finance operation. On Thursday, Messina does a briefing for the DNC’s Women’s Leadership Forum, a group created to cultivate and generate donations from women.

Footnote: In 2007, the Obama presidential campaign took over a turn-key sublease at 233 N. Michigan from Accenture, 33,000-square feet complete with custom workstations, meeting rooms and space for the various departments of the Obama campaign; eventually the campaign expanded to other space in the building.
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

The 2012 presidential campaign is finally getting underway, in fits and starts.

But there will be no doubt that the 2012 presidential election season has arrived on May 2, when the Republican candidates all gather in Simi Valley, California for a televised debate at the library of their collective hero, Ronald Reagan.

Or, maybe, they won’t.

In the political world, the first presidential debate is a signal that the game has begun. But the fate of this year’s first debate, co-sponsored by Politico and NBC, appears to be a bit uncertain.

So far, with only about five weeks until the debate, most of the big-name potential candidates have not even said whether or not they are running. Most are remaining coy about their timing, but operatives regularly suggest that they could wait until later this spring to announce their candidacies.

Conversations with Republican operatives this week suggest that there is deep skepticism in several of the potential candidate camps about jumping into a televised debate so soon after getting into the race. And several Republicans said they are nervous about committing to a debate hosted by NBC if the moderator ends up being a television host with an acknowledged liberal bias, like Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews.

“Why declare, then set your candidacy back immediately if something goes wrong,” one Republican strategist said. The strategist asked for anonymity because he did not want to be seen as speaking on behalf of a potential candidate.

In 2007, the first Republican debate was also held at the Reagan Library in Southern California in early May. Mr. Matthews and Politico’s editor-in-chief, John Harris, co-hosted the 90-minute exchange, which featured 10 candidates, including Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York; Senator John McCain of Arizona; Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas; and several others.

But the race was much further along by early May 2007. By April 15, Mr. McCain reported raising $18 million in the first quarter. Mr. Romney, who announced his candidacy in February, reported having raised $20.6 million in the first quarter.

By contrast, the April 15 fund-raising reports this year are likely to show almost no official campaign fund-raising, with the exception of Newt Gingrich, who announced the formation of an I.R.S. committee that allows him to start collecting money for a potential campaign.

It is unclear whether Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, is planning to run for president, or when she might join the race if she does. Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and the current ambassador to China, is set to return from that country on April 28, just days before the California debate.

Even if more candidates do start officially throwing their hat in the ring next month — as Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, did this week — there will be little time for debate preparation or road-testing messages in small Iowa and New Hampshire towns.

That appears to be the biggest concern for some strategists. The first few months of a campaign are often spent working out the kinks and working donors for support. Taking the chance on a debate watched by millions of people is risky at best, they say.

Some point to the campaign of Fred Thompson, who announced in early September 2007. His campaign skills proved rusty and were on display at the height of the primary campaign, when everyone was watching, rather than early in the election season.

Those same objections should also apply to a debate on May 5 in South Carolina. There is likely to be a similar dearth of declared candidates for that debate. And those who are there might not want to risk a bad performance so soon after getting into the race.

But the May 5 debate is being sponsored by Fox News, and the Republican candidates who have declared by then might not be willing to risk offending the network or its conservative audience, many of whom are likely to be Republican primary voters. So maybe the campaign will get fully underway in May after all.
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Source: The New York Times