http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/10/laesch.htmlBy Josh Harkinson
October 5, 2006
Before this week, John Laesch was one of the most obscure congressional candidates in America. His fanciful bid to unseat the most powerful man in the House had drawn a yawn from his own party, barely 100 grand to match his opponent’s war chest of $3.6 million, and scarcely a mention in the national press. A carpenter, former soldier, and erstwhile gas station manager, Laesch, 32, has never held elected office. And 2006 didn’t look like any sort of year to start, until, that is, a political firestorm erupted around House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Sunday and Laesch’s campaign against him took off.
Since then, phones at Laesch’s Yorkville, Illinois headquarters have been ringing so often that he’s installing two new lines. Emails fly in faster than his volunteers can read them. People mob his office with $100 checks and requests for yard signs. Some $20,000 streamed in over the weekend alone and Laesch’s handful of staff hasn’t had time to tally the rest. They’ve brought on so many new volunteers over the past four days that they’re having a hard time keeping track of them. “I called the office a couple of minutes ago looking for a staffer and talked to someone I’ve never spoken to in my life,” Laesch spokeswoman Lisa Bennett said yesterday. “It was like, ‘Oh, who are you, and can you find me someone I recognize?’”
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Like many “fighting democrats,” Laesch believes the U.S. needs to set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq—arguing that a widespread belief among Iraqis that U.S. forces are on an imperialist mission is fueling the insurgency. He also wants to see a wider peacekeeping role for the United Nations and the Arab league, but doubts the Bush administration possesses the diplomatic resources to pull it off.
Anti-war, anti-pedophilia sentiment isn’t the only thing going for Laesch in Illinois District 14. Locally, he says, Republicans have been less outraged by the sex scandal than revelations that Hastert used a federal road project to pad his bank account. A former high school wrestling coach who entered politics a man of modest means, Hastert secured a $207 million earmark in the highway bill last year for the Prairie Parkway, a road that serves about as little purpose as its name implies, many locals say, but which will run within a few miles of land Hastert bought in 2002 near Plano, Illinois. Hastert and his business partners then sold the land to a developer, netting a cool $1.8 million.
If this week is any indication, Laesch will certainly find plenty more opportunities to bring Hastert’s record to light. He’s appeared on CNN, NBC, Fox News, Univision, National Public Radio, and most recently, Chris Matthews’ Hardball. He’s convinced he can win; his campaign’s most recent internal poll, taken before Foleygate, put support for Hastert at 55 percent. And at any rate, running has already been worth it—in May he got engaged to his campaign manager, a former ex-girlfriend and former Republican who he’d encountered on the campaign trail. “I got through the primary, and I got the girl,” he says, “so now I’ve just gotta to take down the speaker.”
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