Dear Friends,
First off, I apologize for not writing sooner. We spent all day Wednesday moving out of our campaign offices and my staff and I are finally getting a chance to take a breath.
I know you that by now you have probably seen the results from Election Day here in Cook County. Like many of you, I was very disappointed. Our hard work was not enough to cut into the incumbent vote and we lost by a fairly wide margin. There were many fine, reform-minded candidates who lost across Cook County. In just under six weeks, we'll get to see exactly how the numbers broke down precinct by precinct. I feel like we did everything we could during our campaign and I'm proud of our effort. We stretched every dollar we raised. Overall, more than 82 percent of our expenditures, including taxes, went toward voter contact.
I want to personally thank the DailyKos community for adopting our campaign, for supporting me and for taking the time to research and report on the important issues that were talked about during this campaign.
The work you did on our behalf was truly inspiring. I know Miss Laura and Markos put a lot of thought into figuring out what they could do to help us win and they did a great job. Thank you.
I take some comfort in the fact, and you should too, knowing that, collectively, we brought to the fore some very important issues, such as Iraq, the environment, the direction of our national energy policy, corruption choice, immigration and the economy. We moved the conversation of these issues forward a great deal here in the 3rd District.
By highlighting these issues we had an amazing group of people all pushing in the same direction — the Netroots, Democracy for America (DFA), NARAL Pro-Choice America, NOW and local constituent organizations in the Arab, Muslim and Latino communities, like Mexicanos for Political Progress and United Muslims and Arabs for a Better America. It was quite a coalition, one that hasn't been put together ever before in our district. This was something entirely new in this part of the Chicago metropolitan area and we gave it our best for the last five months. I'm disappointed that the numbers didn't break our way on Tuesday night.
I hope you take heart in the fact that our campaign gave voice to people in our district who have been ignored and that our campaign raised issues that had been ignored. You have made a difference. You should all be very proud of that.
So, once again: Thank you. I wish you all the very best.
Sincerely,
Mark