Illinois' Democratic voters picked a pawnbroker as their candidate for lieutenant governor, and that didn't exactly end well.
The Democrats' approach to the candidate selection process is unprecedented in Illinois, according to political analysts. The closest the state has come in recent history is in 2004, when Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan left the race and the party's central committee replaced him with Alan Keyes, a conservative who didn't live in Illinois at the time, said Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Keyes went on to lose to President Barack Obama.
Redfield's comments were featured in a March 3, 2010, Associated Press article published in the Belleville News Democrat.
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