Lauzen returns Rose Bowl tickets after Oberweis goes on the attack
It's what Chris Lauzen tried desperately to avoid: An attack from his rival in the GOP congressional primary over Lauzen using his status as a state senator to purchase face-value tickets to one of the hottest area sporting events around.
On Friday Lauzen canceled his order for six tickets to watch the Fighting Illini compete in their first Rose Bowl in 24 years after a newspaper reporter called him out on it, but by then it was too late to stop a spanking from Jim Oberweis' camp.
"Only when the reporter questioned Lauzen's use of his insider status to get these highly sought after tickets did he decide to forgo this perk," Oberweis spokesman Bill Pascoe said in a news release. He goes on to criticize Lauzen for calling the University of Illinois' president's office to score the tickets instead of purchasing them from a ticket broker like most people must.
"The very fact that Chris Lauzen's first -- and, clearly, only -- thought was to call the office of the president further proves the point that we've made on earlier occasions -- 15 years in Springfield, 15 years in the George Ryan-Rod Blagojevich mindset, has corrupted Chris Lauzen's thinking," Pascoe said.
Lauzen defended calling the president's office, saying he contacts the legislative liaison in the president's office anytime he has a question involving U of I. The liaison told Lauzen he could put his name on a waiting list if he wanted any of the 300 tickets set aside for state lawmakers, so he put in for six tickets for his family and found out he could purchase them for full price, $135 each.
"I didn't realize that perhaps there's the perception of that (being) a privilege that my constituents wouldn't enjoy, so that's why I returned the tickets," Lauzen said. "In just the question being asked I immediately realized there's potential criticism of it. And sure enough, Jim Oberweis and his highly paid out-of-state media consultants and political consultants, they're ready to pounce. That's why I returned the tickets."
Tossing the Fermilab football: Fermilab's announcement this week that 200 workers will have to be laid off because of pending federal budget cuts turned into a blame game among some of the 14th Congressional District candidates. Democrat Bill Foster, a scientist who worked at the Batavia high-energy physics lab before launching his campaign, was the first to weigh in, blaming President Bush for the funding shortfall.
The next day, Oberweis responded: "For Bill Foster to blame these outrageous cuts on the president is to deny the obvious: Democrats control the House, Democrats control the Senate, Democrats control the conference committee."
There simply wasn't much room left to fund Fermilab after the Democrats doled out millions of dollars in pork-barrel earmarks, Oberweis said.
On Thursday Foster slammed Oberweis for turning Fermilab's crisis into an occasion for partisan bickering.
"As a former Fermilab scientist, I don't need to be lectured on Fermi's value -- certainly not by someone who wants to turn the lab into a political football," Foster wrote in a news release.
lsmith@dailyherald.com