IL-14: More Than A Tossup

Stu Rothenberg finally catches up and notices that Bill Foster is very well-positioned to smoke perennial candidate Jim Oberweis in IL-14 this weekend and pick up a seat for the Democrats in the House. This comes on the heels of a public poll showing Foster up by 7 points.

This seat would really break the backs of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has enough problems:

According to The New York Times this morning, it all began to unravel when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), a CPA, asked to meet with the audit firm that was supposedly checking the NRCC's books, an idea that apparently no one had had for several years. Christopher Ward, then the NRCC's treasurer, finally relented, but then chickened out 30 minutes before and fessed up that there actually hadn't been any audits.

It was ultimately discovered that Ward had been faking the audits since 2003. The Politico, which laid out this general outline of events early last month, reported that Ward had forged everything, including the letterhead. So when it came time to actually talk to the people who'd supposedly written those fake reports, it all unraveled.

The FBI is currently investigating, and it's not clear yet why Ward was so keen to hide the real numbers. But as the Times reports this morning, the signs are not good. NRCC internal audits since Ward's discovery show that "hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen." And it gets worse: there are apparently indications that "the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative."

We're going to take this seat, and the NRCC is going to be so tied up with legal issues that they'll be rendered virtually powerless in the fall. If you can help Bill Foster in any way please do so. His website is here.