* Scott Lee Cohen hasn’t yet filed his formal withdrawal papers with the State Board of Elections, but he will tomorrow, his spokesman Baxter Swilley said this afternoon. The campaign was simply distracted with media interviews today and hasn’t had time to file the paperwork.
Swilley also tried to tamp down speculation that Cohen would run as an independent candidate. Here’s the NBC5 report….
[Cohen] alluded to the possibility he would run independently in an interview Monday.
“I ran for office to help the people,” Cohen said. “The problem was the media was hammering me so bad…This is more outrageous because I gave the people the opportunity to know. It was out there, they all knew!”
Asked whether he wouldn’t run for office, Cohen said “I never said that. I realized from this whole thing that every single thing you say is on the record.”
As for the signatures required to run as an independent, Cohen says it wouldn’t be a problem.
“You know how many signatures I had before? 47 thousand.”
The spokesman emphasized to me today that Cohen never actually said he is intending to run for any office as an independent.
Nerves are obviously a bit frayed over at HQ and the media may be trying to make more of something than is actually there.
...Adding… Cohen had this to say to Channel 5 today…
“There were no promises,” Cohen said. “[Speaker Madigan] never promised he was going to fundraise for me.”
Madigan’s spokesman just said that there were zero promises made to Cohen and that Madigan would neither directly nor indirectly help Cohen raise money in any form whatsoever.
Just FYI.