{"id":2087,"date":"2004-07-09T10:59:05","date_gmt":"2004-07-09T15:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2087.html"},"modified":"2004-07-09T10:59:05","modified_gmt":"2004-07-09T15:59:05","slug":"senator-ditka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/senator-ditka\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Ditka?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s come to this. The Illinois GOP, reeling after pushing Jack Ryan from his Senate campaign, is so desperate for a competitive candidate, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehill.com\/news\/070804\/ditka.aspx\">they&#8217;re turning to Mike Dikta<\/a>. I wish I were kidding.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the wake of Steve Rauschenberger&#8217;s withdrawal from the Illinois Senate race, former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka has surfaced as a favorite of many Hill and state Republicans, according to interviews with GOP members and staff in Illinois and Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Super Bowl-winning coach and Hall-of-Fame player is a Chicago icon whose name identification and stature would make him a well-known, if inexperienced, candidate in the race to replace Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R), who is stepping down at the end of this legislative session.<\/p>\n<p>Ditka has not made a public statement about his candidacy, but Republicans on the Hill and in Illinois said they would be eager for him to enter the race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I knew they are desperate, but this is embarrassing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s come to this. The Illinois GOP, reeling after pushing Jack Ryan from his Senate campaign, is so desperate for a competitive candidate, they&#8217;re turning to Mike Dikta. I wish I were kidding. In the wake of Steve Rauschenberger&#8217;s withdrawal from the Illinois Senate race, former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka has surfaced as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}