From the Daily Southtown:

Kristen McQueary

Turn off the TV, tune into the election

October 22, 2006
It's ugly, this time of year.

Not the gray skies, but the campaigns. I don't need to tell you. You see the TV ads.

The problem is, negative publicity works.

It works to dissuade you, the voters, from certain candidates. It works because it plants inaccuracies into your subconscious. It works because half-truths and distortions become The Full Truth, via repetition. After you hear enough mud-slinging about a certain person, you think some of it must be true.

My advice: Ignore the ads. If you want to know more about the candidates, rely on media outlets you trust, try to meet the candidates yourself at a campaign stop or go to their Web sites to get more informed.

As I write, I'm thinking of the race for state treasurer between Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Christine Radogno -- two impressive candidates who each, I believe, would be good stewards for the taxpayers.

Do I think Giannoulias is a mobster? No.

Do I think Radogno is a product of George Ryan's corruption? Double no.

But the race is tight, and each side is feeling the pressure.

Radogno, of Lemont, goes on the air this week. Giannoulias is sitting on a nugget purporting to tie Radogno to Ryan. Her campaign received three contributions from Ryan's political fund totaling $5,450 in 1996 and 1998 -- long before the extent of corruption in his administration was widely known.

Giannoulias has demanded she donate the money to charity, as other Republicans have done with Ryan's campaign money.

But she has resisted, and I appreciate her candor: "The money is gone," she told me. "It's spent. I don't have it. I stopped associating with George Ryan as soon as a there was a hint of a problem."

Politicians have made a ritual of returning "tainted" money, as if it somehow cleanses them of impropriety. Write a check to charity from your campaign fund, and you may resume Communion without guilt.

It's a meaningless act. Members of Congress, like do-gooders at a book-burning bonfire, lined up to return campaign money from Jack Abramoff. And then they could scrub their association with him, regardless of the intimate conversations, vacations and dinners that milked the money spigot in the first place.

The cash from Ryan to Radogno holds no substantive value in terms of her ability to run an ethical treasurer's office.

It's particularly meaningless coming from Giannoulias whose late father donated $1,000 to Ryan in September of 2000 when the licenses-for-bribes scandal was in full swing. Add to that a fat $10,000 check Giannoulias' dad wrote to Gov. Rod Blagojevich last summer, and it doesn't appear campaign contributions are a platform from which Giannoulias ought to throw stones. Blagojevich's fund-raising and pay-to-play practices have been under scrutiny for more than two years.

There are other accusations the Giannoulias campaign is slinging at Radogno -- a $300 donation from a man whose child later received a legislative scholarship and a state grant for a swimming pool in her district, which Giannoulias is calling "pork."

Radogno says she awards scholarships blindly. She sees students' qualifications from an aide who condenses the applications, but Radogno said she selects the winners without seeing names.

As for the 1997 swimming pool for Bridgeview approved under Gov. Jim Edgar's administration, Radogno was quoted in the Daily Southtown back then saying she didn't ask for the pool money and she wished it had gone to a higher priority.

The pool never ended up being built due to a new administration in the village; instead Radogno believes the money was spent on street improvements near the Bridgeview mosque.

So will she characterize Giannoulias as a member of the mob in her ads this week?

Will he take issue with a swimming pool that never got built?

I'm bracing for either one of them to hit the airwaves with distortions.

If you see it, turn it off.