Walsh faces uphill battle against Bean

In recent weeks, whenever Republican Joe Walsh spoke publicly about his bid for the suburban 8th congressional district seat, he opened with the same remarks.

"I feel like I'm losing my country," the Winnetka resident said earnestly, over and over and over again.

Proclaiming himself the tea party candidate, Walsh expressed disappointment with Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C., and he spoke of the fear and anger people across the country feel today.

"If I'm way off," Walsh told the Daily Herald last month, "I'm not going to win this primary."

He wasn't way off.

Despite facing hurdles that included a lawsuit by his former campaign manager, lackluster fundraising and criticisms of earlier liberal stances on some political issues, Walsh easily won the GOP primary Tuesday.

He'll face Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean and Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer in November's general election.

Walsh faces an uphill climb if he wants to beat Bean, who's a member of the high-profile House financial services committee and cruised to re-election in 2008, suburban Republican leaders said Wednesday.

He'll have to raise enough money to spread his message and be competitive - something Bean's last GOP opponent couldn't accomplish. He must also appeal to voters in a district that once was solidly Republican but has sent Bean to Congress three times.

Fortunately for Walsh, he has nine months to do it, said Dan Venturi, leader of the Lake County Republican Party.

"If the election were today, I would say Bean would win," Venturi said. "But we have (nine) months, and that's an eternity."

Walsh topped a field of six candidates to win the Republican nomination in the 8th District, which includes parts of Cook, Lake and McHenry counties. All of the candidates espoused conservative Republican beliefs - opposing abortion, for example, and criticizing the Democratic health care reform plan.

But only Walsh claimed to be a voice for the activists who held tea party protests last year, and it was only Walsh who talked of their anger and frustration and the need for, as he put it at a public forum last month in Barrington, a "revolution" in Washington.

He took the vitriol further at that forum by saying the race against Bean would be a war and that "she will be overrun."

The strategy was a hit with GOP voters. Walsh won with 34 percent of the vote, far ahead of second-place finisher Dirk Beveridge, who managed 25 percent, unofficial results showed.

"I won pretty big, and I didn't veer from my message," said Walsh, 47, who works in private equity funding and lost a congressional bid in the 9th District in 1996 and a campaign for the state House in 1998.

Beveridge conceded Wednesday even though three Cook County precincts had not reported results. He said he'd support Walsh's general-election campaign.

Walsh believes pre-election news stories about his campaign's troubles - the lawsuit from his campaign manager, attacks from other GOP candidates about his out-of-district residency and an accusation of copyright infringement by musician Joe Walsh, to name a few - actually helped him at the polls.

"It certainly put my name out there the last three or four weeks of the campaign, more than any of my opponents," Walsh said. "And it energized my support."

The GOP's Venturi called Walsh's win "a bit of a surprise."

"I think Joe did a better job getting at the tea party groups and the conservative base," Venturi said. "He did a good job running a grass-roots campaign."

That effort must build momentum if Walsh hopes to get the support of the national Republican Party and attract the millions of dollars a competitive congressional campaign requires, Venturi said.

The GOP already is focused on the neighboring 10th District race, which will pit Republican Robert Dold against Democrat Dan Seals for the seat being vacated by Senate candidate Mark Kirk.

If Republican forces think Walsh poses a real threat to Bean, they might sink some energy - and cash - into his campaign, Venturi said.

"If it's a seven- or eight-point race, they'll put money into it," Venturi said. "But they won't spend $3 million if it's a 20-point spread."

The GOP has noticed Walsh's win. Referring to Republican Scott Brown's surprising win in the Massachusetts Senate race last month, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Tom Erickson said it would be "a grave mistake for Democrats to take any seat for granted" in November.

Erickson didn't say if the GOP would contribute to Walsh's campaign.

A Bean spokesman on Wednesday refused to comment on Walsh's win or whether the congresswoman would take him more seriously than she did her GOP opponent in 2008, the soundly defeated Steve Greenberg.

Walsh said his goal now is to "round up every Republican, independent and Democrat who's fed up and angry" about government spending and get them behind his campaign. He plans to stick with the "I'm the tea-party-candidate" approach that got him this far.

"When I started, I was a guy with a message," he said. "That message resonated with this movement, (which is) really growing."