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Saturday, January 19, 2008

Newsalert has more about the Governor campaigning at a black church

They linked to an article posted by the Sun-Times on Monday. They way he panders to a particular group is almost pathetic. The AV which sought to really garner the support of senior citizen and while I'm sure he got a few in his camp there by some accounts doesn't seem to be a lot of support for that among seniors.

I talked about this before recently. If it's his GRT for health care and public schools or his AV for senior citizen's free ride on public transit he finds his way to a black church or he finds some black religious leaders. Take a look at his inflection...

Gov. Blagojevich sounded as if he grew up in Memphis, instead of the Northwest Side, while campaigning Sunday at a black mega-church for his plan to give free transit rides to senior citizens.

In between rhyming, dropping his g's and sprinkling in a few "ain'ts," the governor zinged Mayor Daley. The mayor has questioned Blagojevich's last-minute demand for free rides for seniors in the mass-transit funding bill.

"It's hard to be a senior citizen in Chicago these days," Blagojevich said at the House of Hope, 752 E. 114th St. "Man, it's tough. Costs are going up. The price of everything is goin' up. Mayor Daley just raised your property taxes." The crowd murmured agreement.

Blagojevich said Daley should stop raining on his proposal.

"Mayor Daley just yesterday expressed some concern that maybe the legislators won't get back down to Springfield to bail out the CTA and give seniors free rides on buses. Well, Mayor Daley shouldn't be so pessimistic. Maybe he needs to come to the House of Hope and have a little bitta hope," the governor said at the 10,000-seat stadium and house of worship built by the Rev. James Meeks, a South Side state senator and pastor of Salem Baptist Church.

"How many of you agree with me that it's the right thing to do to give your grandmother a free ride on a bus?" Blagojevich asked to rousing cheers.

He even paraphrased the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, saying: "Some men see things as they are and ask why, but I dream things that never were and say why not?"

He urged churchgoers to contact lawmakers and push for his plan, which would establish free rides from transit agencies statewide for those 65 and older.

How pathetic! They got on Hillary Clinton for this, way before there was a single primary election. He was probably trained well that or it was instinctual since it's probably not too difficult to think you can copy the style of a country preacher. It probably resonated with people too.

The fact is that it's still pandering in the worst way. I would dare say it's insulting in some respects. Even more insulting is that he had a captive audience at a black church and I wonder how receptive his speech was there. All I got to see was a few clips on CBS2 when I could have watched the broadcast of Salem Baptist Church live on Channel 62 WJYS.

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