nancy loo is live in the arlington heights neighborhood with more on the mayor s race. well, allison and steve, after failing to earn the support of the african-american coalition, state senator james meeks is spending much of today in chicago s latino community. but he claims his outing today has nothing to do with mayoral politics. now the reverend and state senator spent the morning touring a number of schools on the southwest side including the uno veterans memorial charter school. he cited the ongoing problem of overcrowding in chicago schools and afterwards left for a luncheon and round table discussion with latino leaders. meeks again dismissed the african-american coalition support of congressman danny davis instead of him. and chicago voters seem to be questioning the influence of those coalition anyway. we spoke to a number of voters today who claim that race has nothing to do with has no place in mayoral politics and reverend meeks was here today to say tha
totals. cook county resumed counting at 8:00 this morning. it s in the process of counting 10 how to ballots. on the city side they resumed at 10 with 11,700 ballots to gsm late yesterday quinn led brady by 19,000 votes so it appears pat quinn may have avoided fate of other democratic governors nationwide and won his first full term. quinn has stopped short of calling on his opponent to concede but sure talked like a winner when he showed up at manny s deli at lunchtime. he said it was time to put the bitter campaign behind and he has a lot of work to dosm he re- iterated his support for an income tax hike to help deal with budget deficit that could top $15 billion. bill brady told reporters in springfield yesterday his campaign was still collecting data and evaluating that data. election results don t have to be certified until december 3. spokesman for the chicago board of election commissioners tells us this time there are a lot more absentee ballots to count. both repub
where the counting continues. reporter: well, i just spoke with the lead council for counsel for the republican party and he claims the illinois governor s race is definitely not over. despite the odds ofs quinn lead widening more with the absentee balloting underway here at the county building, the brady campaign has no plans to throw in the towel. absentee ballots are still coming in to the cook county election board where workers will spend another day processing and sorting. another 900 ballots arrived yesterday. with about 15,000 envelopes to verify, it may be another 24 hours before workers begin to open those envelopes to tally the votes. though bill brady stressed need for a thorough count, the absentee balloting may work against him since the vast majority are coming in to chicago in cook county. mean time governor quinn has got an congratulatory call from president obama. with a 19,000 vote gap, a brady win is mathematically improbable. by tuesday the 16, even
the election. democrats were handed a major defeat as republicans took control of the house. so far the gop has picked up 60 house seats. 218 are needed for control. republicans now hold at least 239. quite a bit more than they need. representative john boehner of ohio is expected to be the next house speaker replacing nancy pelosi. democrats held on to 51 seats in the senate. republicans gained at least six seat for a total of 46. and back to the illinois governor s race, it appears too close to call and it may be weeks before we know who the winner is. with 99% of the precincts counted, patd quinn leads bill brady by 8300 votes. because it is so tight, brady says he still has a chance. wgn s we will go to a report to tom negovan later on. right now let s take you live to the white house where president obama is addressing the nation. the leaders of the house and the senate and reached out to those who had both won and lost in both parties. i told john boehner and mitch
voters here in the city. but republican mark kirk likes his chances. kirk s people say they moved ahead in the race. most recent poll shows the congressman has a three to four point edge. traditional strong holds like chicago s collar counties and downstate illinois are expected to turn out for the gop. it could very well boil down to independent voters deciding who will sit in barack obama s old senate seat. i think there is a growing wave of independents that want thoughtful independent leadership. and someone who won t rubber stamp everything that nancy pelosi wants to do. reporter: but aleksei giannoulias hopes those independents will go democrat. he spent the morning shaking hands at union station hoping to win over any late undecides. have the independent vote but he is depending on a big democratic turnout. yesterday he worked to fire up the base in greektown traveling north to lincoln park hoping that he could summoned up enough excitement to pull out a come from