“Isn’t that something that would just make your day, to read the headlines on the morning of Nov. 3: ‘We took back that U.S. Senate seat’?” Dan Cronin, chairman of the DuPage County Republicans, hollered to an expo center filled with Republicans.
“Oh my God!” Mr. Cronin went on. “I’d have to lie down! I’m telling you; it would be a remarkable experience.”
More is at stake in the race here than merely the balance of power in the Senate. Senator Roland W. Burris, a Democrat who was appointed to the post and is not seeking election, may hold this seat for the moment, but it remains, in the minds of loyalists of both parties, Mr. Obama’s.
And that is adding a layer of intensity and ferocity — and the attention of the president himself — in the final weeks of a campaign that has been punctuated by unexpected developments.
Representative Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican who has long represented a north suburban Congressional district, and Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat and Illinois treasurer, remain locked in a close fight, some polls suggest.
A large chunk of voters — 17 percent in one recent Chicago Tribune/WGN television poll — is undecided, despite seemingly endless, harsh television advertising and a constant run of news coverage. To hear some voters tell it, left to decide is a basic question that has taken a central, often ugly, role in this race: Who can one actually believe?
Mr. Kirk, 51, was once seen by some as having an upper hand. He had years of experience and a voting history that could appeal to a state that has, historically, elected moderate Republicans. But then came a string of questions about his descriptions of his own history, and he ended up acknowledging misleading statements about his record as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer.
Despite his relative inexperience, Mr. Giannoulias, 34, has pulled off a statewide election once before, and was expected to benefit from his party alliance. These days, Republicans hold no statewide offices in Illinois, and Democrats control both chambers in the state legislature.
But Mr. Giannoulias’s campaign, too, was upended by events: This year, federal regulators seized the bank his family owned, where he had once been a senior loan officer. Reports that the bank had made loans to people with connections to organized crime did not help. Mr. Giannoulias has insisted that the struggles of his family’s bank were not unlike those of many Americans whose businesses were devastated by the recession.
The questions and revelations have had an effect on the images of both candidates.
“I don’t trust either one of them,” said one voter, Nancy Melin, as she ate lunch Wednesday in downtown Chicago, “so I wouldn’t feel good about voting for either of them.”
When the Chicago Tribune poll, conducted Sept. 24-28, asked which candidate was more honest and trustworthy, the results were mixed: 35 percent said Mr. Giannoulias; 30 percent said Mr. Kirk; 16 percent said neither; and 18 percent did not know. Ms. Melin, who said she often voted for Democrats, said she was considering not voting in this race.
Mr. Obama’s relationship to Mr. Giannoulias has drawn special notice on all sides. Although the White House initially encouraged at least one other Democrat to run for the seat, Mr. Obama is making his second visit home on Mr. Giannoulias’s behalf. On Thursday, he is to appear at two fund-raising events (one is a small dinner party). Next week, Michelle Obama is scheduled to come. And others in the administration have offered encouragement, too; on Saturday, Arne Duncan, the education secretary, played in a basketball tournament here with Mr. Giannoulias and told reporters he was a “big, big fan of Alexi.”
Republicans (who note that Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator Scott P. Brown and others have come here to help Mr. Kirk) often point to Mr. Giannoulias’s ties to the president as a rallying cry for their own candidate and as a way to dismiss Mr. Giannoulias.
Mr. Cronin, for example, offered this description of Mr. Giannoulias before his Republican rally: “A basketball buddy and a pal of Barack Obama, and that’s his résumé, period.”
Republicans, too, are pleased to remind voters that the seat in question was at the center of a corruption scandal that enveloped the former governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat. Mr. Blagojevich, who is awaiting a second trial on charges that he tried to sell an appointment to complete Mr. Obama’s Senate term, appointed Mr. Burris.
If voters here are talking about their doubts about the candidates, the candidates are talking about the economy. “Why would we want to put the same people who created this mess in charge and give them a promotion to the United States Senate?” Mr. Giannoulias said in an interview on Wednesday, referring to Congressional Republicans.
Mr. Kirk said he believed the race would turn on the economy. “I’ll give it to you short and sweet,” he told the crowd here. “I’m the candidate who would spend less, borrow less and tax less to fix our economy.”
As if this Senate seat were not wrapped in enough unusual circumstances, there is another one. Voters will be asked to vote twice in this race on Nov. 2: once for the six-year term to start in 2011, and a second time for the few remaining weeks (yes, weeks) of Mr. Obama’s term, which, a court has ruled, must be filled in a simultaneous special election.
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago
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