Illinois Election Results: Pat Quinn Defeats Bill Brady In 2010 Governor's Race
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CHICAGO — Election results still trickling in Thursday made it clear Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn won his extremely close bid for a full term, allowing him to avoid the fate of other Democratic governors across the country and adding pressure on his Republican challenger to concede.
An Associated Press analysis of uncounted votes from absentee and other ballots showed that Bill Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, won't be able to overcome the just more than 19,400-vote lead Quinn held with 100 percent of the state's precincts reporting.
"I think the people of Illinois know I won the election," Quinn said at a Chicago deli where he thanked voters and called his lead over Brady "insurmountable."
But Brady said he wasn't giving up.
"There's a number of votes that have yet to be counted – military, absentee and others," Brady told reporters in Springfield, the state capital. "We're going to deal with all the data that's there, and we'll then deal with the decision-making process as we gather data."
State officials have until Dec. 3 to certify all results.
Brady spokeswoman Patty Schuh said despite the AP calling the election for Quinn, Brady would press ahead gathering information about uncounted absentee and provisional ballots. But Schuh acknowledged the campaign did not have a specific scenario that would produce a victory.
Close elections aren't new for Brady. He squeaked out a Republican primary win in February by fewer than 200 votes and was not officially declared the winner until more than a month later. Tuesday's election was the closest governor's contest since 1982, when incumbent Republican Jim Thompson defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson by 5,074 votes.
Unofficial results compiled by The Associated Press showed Brady trailing Quinn by a margin of about half a percentage point in an election where 3.6 million ballots were cast. That's a tiny difference, but there was no way Brady could make it up, the AP analysis found.
Thousands of provisional ballots were cast in Tuesday's election, but experts say few of those will end up being declared valid. And if they are, most come from Cook County, a Quinn stronghold.
There also are tens of thousands of absentee ballots that were sent to voters and haven't been returned, as well as some that have been returned but not counted yet.
Republicans have said privately that Brady had only an uphill chance of prevailing when he didn't come out ahead on Election Day. Republican state Sen. Kirk Dillard, who finished second to Brady in the primary, called the 19,000-vote split a "steep hurdle" for him.
Experts say absentee ballots that haven't been sent in yet probably never will be. "When you get a few days out from the election, most of them don't come back," said Ken Menzel, an attorney with the State Board of Elections.
Even if all the absentee ballots wound up being counted, they would not help Brady close the gap with Quinn if they followed local voting trends.
Brady was back at work in Springfield Thursday where Illinois Senate Democrats bowed to Republican pressure and didn't call for a vote on Quinn's plan to borrow money to pay pensions.
The former lieutenant governor, Quinn inherited the governor's mansion nearly two years ago when lawmakers ousted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich after his arrest on federal corruption charges. Tuesday's election gave him his first full term.
Quinn held on to office even as many other Democratic governors were voted out and Republicans in Illinois claimed the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama, along with a majority of the state's congressional delegation.
Exit polls showed Quinn received overwhelming support in the city of Chicago and had solid support among those from households with less than $100,000 income, labor union households and those with a family member who had lost a job in the last two years.
Quinn campaigned on a politically risky proposal to raise the state income tax by one-third as Illinois struggles with one of the nation's worst budget problems and a deficit that could top $15 billion. Brady flatly rejected raising taxes.
Derek Rank, 38, of Chicago, said he voted for Quinn because he was forthcoming about the state's fiscal mess, even if that meant higher taxes.
"He was honest about actually having to increase taxes. If you're saying you can eliminate the hole we're in without raising taxes, you're lying," said Rank, an information technology expert.
State worker Dena McGill of Springfield backed Quinn mainly because her union endorsed him.
"I'm a union activist, and we've been working with the governor for several months on layoffs and preventing any more office closures. I think he is more flexible than Brady in his support of the union," the 41-year-old said.
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Associated Press writers John O'Connor in Springfield and Carla K. Johnson and Christopher Wills in Chicago contributed to this report.
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DEANNA BELLANDI 11/ 4/10 10:00 PM ET Associated Press