Cohen, a little-known candidate who financed much of the campaign with his own fortune, will have to answer questions during the general election race as more is learned about him. He was charged with a 2005 misdemeanor domestic battery charge.
That's just one of several questions he'll have to answer in the general election because no one in the press asked questions during the primary! The meager press coverage gave us little more than two or three sentences on each candidate. Nearly every article followed the same format of bemoaning that the office has no duties, without mentioning the Illinois River Coordinating Council, Rural Affairs Council and other ways it has been used.
I seriously doubt that Democratic primary voters would have supported Scott Lee Cohen if the press had done their job of informing the public. News companies probably didn't mind Cohen's massive media buys as a substitute to articles. They'll be happy to run controversial stories now that it's too late for Democrats to choose anyone else.
I can't blame individual reporters when news outlets devote more resources to sports and crime stories than political coverage. It's not about media bias or lousy reporters. It's a business decision and a bad one. The corporate press is doing a good job of making themselves obsolete by forcing voters to search blogs for meaningful political coverage.
On another note, I'm surprised that Thomas Castillo did as well as he did with 13% of the vote. I thought he'd get around 5%. I've never seen a statewide race use social media as aggressively as Castillo. It was obvious that he invested significant personal time and effort, way beyond setting up a website and email list. It reminded me of Mike Quigley's online campaign.
Castillo finished ahead of Terry Link who was endorsed by Illinois AFL-CIO, many newspapers, a number of State Senators, and others. That's a wake-up call to anyone who doesn't realize that a campaign's online strategy needs to be as well planned and executed as media buys, press strategy, field organizing and so on. Getting your college-age nephew to set up a neglected facebook page doesn't cut it anymore.