Meeks Polling

Rich Miller at his Capital Fax blog has polling from the possible 3rd party Meeks campaign for Illinois governor. Also link to his column and reader comments here.

Meeks is pulling some GOP support, presumably from largely single-issue pro-lifers/ marriage amendment supporters, as the rest of his platform so far looks straight liberal Democrat.

But to me the critical issue to bring more support to a 3rd party candidacy would be if Meeks embraced school choice. That would bring in a broader range of voters who already send their kids to private schools, (which last I knew included 40% of Chicago's public school teachers) and others who would look at this as an historic opportunity to elect a principled, family-oriented black candidate for governor.

And now that Congressman Luis Gutierrez has embraced charter schools in his possible run for mayor of Chicago, perhaps that will give Meeks some political cover with the teachers' unions. We can always hope.