From The New York Times:

In the end, the winner of the Illinois Democratic Party’s open audition to be the nominee for lieutenant governor was not one of the some 200 unknowns who had stepped forward, among them a brick salesman, a police officer and a violinist. Instead, party leaders on Saturday chose a name familiar across the state: Sheila Simon, the daughter of former Senator Paul Simon.

Ms. Simon, a 49-year-old lawyer and former City Council member in Carbondale, some 300 miles south of Chicago, will share the ticket led by Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who was elevated from lieutenant governor last year after a corruption scandal engulfed his predecessor, Rod R. Blagojevich. Political experts said the choice seemed an effort to provide geographical balance for a ticket otherwise weighted toward Chicago, the state’s largest city, and some inoculation (if that is possible) against the memory of the corruption scandal.

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