Alexi Giannoulias

With recent polling consistently showing the GOP nominee, Mark Kirk, leading mob banker Alexi Giannoulias in the Illinois Senate race, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to try and steal any Republican advantage. 

In September, Big Government first reported that Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias may have dodged the Greek military service requirement when he lived and worked in Greece in the late 1990s:

Just in case you didn’t think the Illinois Senate race could sink any lower, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is planning to launch a final ad campaign featuring a “veteran” to attack Mark Kirk’s service record.

The most telling line of today’s Meet the Press debate between Illinois Republican congressman Mark Kirk and Democratic state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias came from the Democrat, who proclaimed: "I didn't know the extent of their activity." The line was in reference to the loans to well-known convicted mobsters that Giannoulias serviced while working for his now-defunct family owned and operated Broadway Bank.

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias doesn’t have many accomplishments he can run on. His family bank, where he worked as a vice president and a senior loan officer, was taken over by the FDIC in April, costing the government $394.3 million. The Bright Start College Savings Program, which Giannoulias oversees as Illinois’s state treasurer, lost $150 million in 2008 and investors were only able to recover half.  So Giannoulias has resorted to perhaps what he does best—attacking his Republican opponent Mark Kirk.

Why would a Democrat in Illinois running for the Senate seat that Rod Blagojevich tried to sell want a top Blago adviser speaking for his campaign?

That’s a befuddling question. But one that must be asked about Alexi Giannoulias – the mob banker running for the president’s old Senate seat.

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that mob banker Alexi Giannoulias will attack his Republican opponent for being among the many dozens of Democrats and Republicans who believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Earlier this week, Big Government posed an interesting question that remains unanswered: If Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias is a dual U.S.-Greek citizen, and lived in Greece for more than a year in the late 1990s, how did he get around Greece’s military service requirement?

Today, Wesley Clark is campaigning for Alexi Giannoulias. Interestingly, though, it is Giannoulias’s opponent in the Illinois Senate race, Republican congressman Mark Kirk, who goes back a long way with the former Army general, Clark. 

In 2000, there was Kailey. Today, there’s Debbie. 

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias made waves earlier this week when he announced his support for the Ground Zero Mosque.