On the eve of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, a statewide poll showed the native son was leading his Republican opponent by 17 percentage points here.

The poll of 1,382 likely Illinois voters was taken September 5 by We Ask America. It had Obama at 54 percent to Mitt Romney's 37 percent. Another 3.33 percent said they'd be voting for an unnamed third-party candidate, and 6 percent were undecided.

That's way below where Obama was four years ago, when he won Illinois with 62 percent of the vote.

"We've got to activate the taxpayers of Illinois," Governor Pat Quinn told reporters after his legislative special session failed to move any sort of pension reform forward. He promised to lead a "grassroots" effort to push legislators to pass a reform bill.

But will the voters actually listen to him? A recent poll conducted for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle found that 54 percent of the county's likely voters disapprove of Quinn's handling of the public-employee-pension issue. Just 29 percent approved.

Keep in mind: This is Cook County we're talking about. It leans strongly Democratic. Quinn's job-approval numbers are radically upside-down throughout the state, but 54 percent of Cook County voters still disapprove of how he's doing his job in office. So if he's getting this sort of pension-issue disapproval in Cook, of all places, it's most likely a whole lot worse elsewhere.

The Illinois Republican Party has relentlessly bashed House Speaker Michael Madigan almost every day via press release during the past few months. Not many of those statements have been covered by the media, but the GOP is obviously hoping to make Madigan an issue in this election by blaming him for just about every problem in Illinois, even more than it did two years ago.

Madigan has also been hammered by the Chicago Tribune in a series of stories about his alleged conflicts of interest. Madigan initially dismissed the criticisms as "garbage" but eventually responded point-by-point in a letter that was mostly ignored by the media, and never addressed by the Tribune itself. The Tribune's editorial board has led the charge against the speaker over the years, demanding his toppling as the House's top guy.

House Republicans have tried for at least two decades to make the speaker an issue in campaigns. It's never really succeeded, mainly because people hadn't heard enough about Madigan to be moved by the GOP's negative advertising.

The House and Senate Democratic leaders have once again dominated the quarterly fundraising race. The Democrats are currently sitting on almost three times the amount of cash as the Republicans.

House Speaker Michael Madigan's three committees raised a combined $591,000 in the quarter that ended June 30. Madigan had more than $3.5 million cash on hand. Senate President John Cullerton's two committees netted about $655,000 during the quarter. Cullerton finished with more than $2.7 million in cash and investments.

House Republican Leader Tom Cross' two committees raised $353,000 during the quarter. Cross ended the filing period with $789,000 on hand. Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno raised just under $263,000 during the quarter but had more than $1.4 million on hand.