There are a couple of problems with the comparison.

SEIZING VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY: Lisa Madigan wins!!! And so does Jesse White!!! Having no opponents helps.

THE RIGHT SHOWS ITS MIGHT: Or at least its impact on GOP primaries. For awhile last night it looked like so-called moderates might be making a comeback in the form of gubernatorial candidate Kirk Dillard and Senate candidate Mark Kirk. But then conservative Bill Brady slipped past Dillard by a few hundred votes (they’re still being counted) and Mark Kirk delivered a victory speech comparing his campaign with the American fight for democracy in WW I. It sounded like 2004 all over again.

What was interesting was that he didn't act surprised or angry. And of course he didn't say no.

"I haven't heard anything like that," he said.

Yesterday, of course, Carothers pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting bribes and failing to tell the tax man about some of the political favors he's received. He then resigned his seat in the City Council.

“Someone needs to talk about infrastructure!” proclaimed Wallace Davis III, who supervises sewer maintenance for the city’s water department. He pushed himself away from the table, where we were eating a late breakfast of catfish, cabbage, and mac 'n' cheese in the back of Wallace's Catfish Corner, a west-side institution owned by his father, former alderman Wallace Davis Jr. “Someone needs to talk about catch basins! Someone needs to protect our basements from flooding!”

It’s not the kind of speech that catapults people to the upper reaches of politics, but it made sense for Davis, one of nine Democrats, three Greens, and two Republicans running for the board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago.

What's changed is that he’s gotten a lot better at dodging those questions and convincing other local Dems that even with his problems he’s got the smell of a winner.

Maybe he really is ready to go to Washington.

People who work at the firms that made millions of bucks on the deal have given generously to a range of political candidates, as Ben Joravsky and I reported in this week’s issue. Among them are gubernatorial candidates from both parties, who if elected could weigh a proposal to privatize the state tollway system; Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who last year said she was investigating the city’s deal; the state Democratic Party, headed by Lisa’s pop, house speaker Michael Madigan; and a number of other Chicago-based pols who’ve courageously remained silent about the meter sell-off.

But two of the fiercest critics of the deal are also up for election.

But as Ben Joravsky and I write in this week’s Reader, times are changing in his west-side district.

Put another way: it's never good when the incumbent has to spend time defending his association with the Reverend Moon.

Meanwhile, one of his rivals, Chicago Urban League president Cheryle Jackson, is calling on Giannoulias to withdraw from the race. "The Giannoulias family’s money has directly bankrolled the state treasurer’s political career and that money has been made off of the backs of working families, small businesses, and taxpayers," she said in a prepared statement. "Giannoulias’s actions have made him unelectable, probably in the primary and certainly in the general. For the sake of Illinois families and for the good of the Democratic Party, I am calling on the treasurer to do the honorable thing and withdraw from this race today."

I don't see him complying with her request, but he will have to say more than he has so far—especially given the consent order [PDF] detailing the steps Broadway agreed to take in response to charges of "unsafe or unsound banking practices and violations of law, rule, or regulation alleged to have been committed in relation to weakness in capital, asset quality and liquidity."

But the bank's liberal lending policies and troubled health have been dogging Giannoulias's political career, and today he received news almost as bad as a shutdown: Crain's is reporting that the FDIC and Illinois banking officials have stepped in to place restrictions on Broadway. The bank must come up with more capital, stop paying out dividends—the Giannoulias family reaped millions of dollars from the institution even as its performance plummeted—and agree to additional oversight of its management.

"'The poll confirms that our message of standing up to special interests and creating jobs is resonating with voters,' said Giannoulias, who has maintained double-digit leads over his primary opponents despite their negative attacks. 'Voters have a clear choice next Tuesday for someone who can move this country forward, turn our economy around and create opportunity for all Americans.'"

Alexi's referring to the Tribune poll released yesterday showing that he continues to lead four rivals in the Democratic primary for Barack Obama's old Senate seat. It makes sense that he'd want to tout his frontrunner status—but like almost everything else in this race, his statement has less to do with facts than with his discipline in sticking to a campaign script.

But he's worth every single word and thought, so in his honor I'm queuing up the soundtrack to Superfly—Carlos loved both Curtis Mayfield and blaxploitation flicks—so I can add my amen to all of it.

That would be Jim Sulski—not that his friends, colleagues, or students called him by his full name most of the time. He was just Sulski.

Ever since Sulski died last week at 52 after fighting cancer, I’ve been trying to process all that he meant to me and my other friends who knew him. I know I still can’t get it all quite right, but in my own limited way I’m going to try. (And while I think “fighting” is way overused to describe the determination most seriously ill people can muster, if anything it’s inadequate in the case of Sulski, the most laid-back badass I’ve ever met. As I hope to explain . . .)

Fleet Management commissioner Michael Picardi has been sent to his room without supper—or pay—for the next three months, the mayor's reponse to a revelation by the Sun-Times that a contractor convicted of fraud two decades ago has since received millions of dollars to fix city vehicles.

It's the kind of swift, decisive action we've come to expect from the mayor when he's presented with evidence that the public has learned about corruption and mismanagement on his watch.

As with previous scandals and embarrassments, it doesn't mean that anything has actually been done to address the problem.

For much of the last year, ever since he was identified as “Senate Candidate 5” in the initial criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich, Jackson has kept a pretty low profile—no op-eds railing against City Hall corruption, no public vows to finance candidates who can help topple the machine, no talk about his own potential runs for Senate, mayor, mosquito abatement district board, or anything other than the congressional seat he currently holds.

Vallas is now running the New Orleans schools but was back in town this week—and in top form yesterday, when he stood before reporters and announced his support for Democratic Senate candidate David Hoffman.

Looking trim, tan, and assured, Vallas said lots of great things about Hoffman, calling him "the type of individual we need in elective office," praising his "great integrity" and "record of accomplishment," and predicting that he would be "an exceptional United States Senator."

That was what was scripted. But Vallas was never one for sticking to the script, and after the cameras—and Hoffman—had left, he elaborated for a couple of us who’d stuck around. And elaborated and elaborated and elaborated.

It's just as interesting to see who doesn't bother to stop by.

Yesterday the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections cosponsored a campaign forum in a banquet hall on West Devon that got contenders for U.S. Senate, county board president, sheriff, judge, and water rec commissioner promising to look out for the rights and interests of Chicago’s Indian and Pakistani communities. It also offered them the chance to rip on their rivals who didn't show up.

Hoffman shot back that Giannoulias and the bank his family owns engaged in the kind of risky lending that brought down the economy. He also insinuated that Giannoulias is a liar.

Yet the most interesting part of the morning actually came after the debate itself was over.

• Paul John Higgins

The document demands further analysis, but a few early observations from myself and my colleague Ben Joravsky:

And it's clear from its document "ABC's of TIF" that the Department of Community Development doesn't understand how the TIF program works.

And based on his letter in yesterday's Tribune, it's clear that Gene Saffold, the city's Chief Financial officer, doesn't know how the program works either.

The city is moving ahead with its next plan to privatize taxpayer-owned property. Proposals are due next Friday, December 11th, from firms interested in leasing the city's three garbage sorting centers, which were byproducts of one of the most striking and costly public policy flops of the mayor's 20-year tenure: his failed recycling programs.

If the city can wring any money out of the sorting centers through privatization it will simply confirm that its own management of Chicago's waste stream has been an environmental and financial catastrophe for 15 years.

It may sound like I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Let me explain.

When John Kass set out to interview the candidates running for governor I wondered if he would stumble over Jim Ryan. It’s not that Kass is blind to Ryan’s flaws, but unlike with George Ryan’s, or Rod Blagojevich’s, he’s just not that into them. So when it comes to Jim Ryan, Kass, for whatever reason, is the wrong writer.

Still, their arguments are getting more pointed. For evidence, consider the diatribe that 38th Ward alderman Tom Allen delivered to explain why he was casting his first vote against a Daley budget since the mayor appointed him to the City Council in 1993. “I have come to the conclusion that this 2010 budget is one that I have no confidence in,” Allen said.