The [Thursday] Papers

More notes from the election, plus some other stuff at the end.

1. Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen has stolen the spotlight from Pat Quinn, Dan Hynes, Kirk Dillard, Bill Brady, Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk this morning. I've got it covered in Lite Guv Lunacy.

2. "Last night, my intern Barton Lorimor talked to Quinn campaign finance director David Rosen about the election results," Rich Miller writes. "'I think that one person cannot divide the party any longer,' Rosen said. Rosen also called the victory a 'mandate,' and said that even a 'one-point' win would be a 'mandate'."

I wonder if Rosen thought George W. Bush had a mandate after the 2000 election.

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Quinn himself has said that even a one-vote win is a landslide in his book.

Welcome to the Pat Bush administration.

3. Someone should ask veteran political strategist Don Rose if he intends to vote for Alexis Giannoulias next fall, given that he wrote this in December:

"It's hard to really screw up being state treasurer, but Giannoulias and his handpicked crew managed to do so, big time."

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Part of that crew is Robin Kelly, the Democratic nominee to replace Giannoulias as treasurer.

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Better yet, someone should ask the Democratic nominee for state comptroller, David Miller, if he supports his party's candidate for the U.S. Senate, given his stream of vicious attacks Miller volleyed against Giannoulias's office during his campaign against deputy treasurer Raja Krishnamoorthi.

Was it for real or just politics? If Giannoulias (and his crew) were as bad as these folks say, they can't justify supporting any of them for public office - unless party comes before competence and honesty.

4. "I am the only candidate talking about jobs," Giannoulias said on Wednesday.

Except all the others.

5. "One phone call Tuesday night proved Toni Preckwinkle is now a player in Cook County politics," the Tribune reports.

"Commissioner John Daley, the powerful head of the board's Finance Committee, called to congratulate her on winning the Democratic primary for board president. Her calls to him in recent months had gone unreturned, she said."Asked if she would reach out to Daley to discuss county issues, Preckwinkle smiled and said, 'Yes, now that he'll talk to me again'."

It would have been more satisfying if she had said, "Hell, no!" but we'll see.

6. Thanks to early voting schedule, Todd Stroger "faces what may be the longest lame-duck period in county history," the Trib notes.

Somehow fitting.

Worst. Lame. Duck. Ever.

7. Pat Ryan contributed $15,000 to Toni Preckwinkle's campaign, the Sun-Times notes.

And Daley told his friends to support her.

Her votes for the Olympics and Daley's budget shenanigans literally paid off.

8. Mary Mitchell showed up for work again and got paid to peddle more nonsense. To wit:

"I couldn't help but notice that in Tuesday's Democratic primary for Cook County Board chairman, County Board President Todd Stroger landed in the same spot he drew in the ballot lottery to line up the field last November.

"Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) took the top spot and held on to it to become the Democratic Party's nominee.

"And, yes, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien was second, and Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown was third, which is exactly how these candidates ended up.

"As the old folks would say, 'In life, there are no coincidences.'"

Um, what are you saying Mary? That the fix was in? Stroger chose (or was forced into) the last ballot spot because he was the last to deliver his petitions. That voters just went with the order they were faced with? Then Preckwinkle would have gotten every single vote. I'm not sure how this was anything but a coincidence.

9. Here's that Giannoulias-Soprano ad if you haven't seen it yet.

10. Taylor Swift makes her second appearance in our Trivial Pursuit feature today.

11. "To make a long story short, Chef Gordon did what he always does on any of his programs requiring drastic makeovers, which is to rename the place (The Junction this time, since it's next to a railroad crossing, duh) after remodeling it into something relatively attractive, and scale the menu back far enough to prominently feature meat loaf as a special," our very own Scott Buckner writes in What I Watched Last Night.

"This frees the head chef from indentured servitude as a line cook to rediscover his joy of cooking and head-chef a signature dish (chicken-shrimp jubilee this time). As it so happened, 70-year-old Tony had a meat loaf recipe up his sleeve that he'd been just dying to whip up during the eight years Adele's been forcing him to dodder around behind a food pushcart of some sort called 'the trolley' like it was a walker."

12. Shopping for Point Guards in Fantasy Fix.

13. Chicagoetry: St. Francis of My Ass.

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