Sen. Dick Durbin slipped into the West Wing last week to ask Rahm Emanuel for White House help in saving Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.
But he didn’t leave with any ironclad commitments.
Durbin told Emanuel that Democratic nominee Alexi Giannoulias could use some serious presidential intervention in his uphill race against Republican Rep. Mark Kirk.
At the moment, the White House seems open to the idea of losing Obama’s old seat rather than putting the president’s prestige on the line for Giannoulias, the brash and boyish Illinois state treasurer — and onetime Obama basketball buddy — whose campaign has been rocked by the financial meltdown of his family’s bank.
Durbin said Emanuel was sympathetic to his pleas but ultimately noncommittal, telling him that the White House was “considering the race, weighing their options and weighing a decision on what to do.”
Emanuel, a former congressman from Chicago, tried but failed last year to get Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan into the race. Now, he told Durbin, it’s up to Giannoulias to prove his campaign has enough “viability and strength” to warrant Obama’s involvement. - Politico Story
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