Hamos' qualifications are excellent. In an Illinois House controlled by one man -- Speaker Mike Madigan -- she has been an impressively independent and yet effective legislator since arriving in Springfield in 1998.

Two years ago, she was the brains and energy behind a successful scheme to fund the Chicago area transit system to keep the buses and trains moving. She pioneered electronic health records as state policy. She passed legislation to create a statewide energy-efficient building code, even getting homebuilder groups on board. She has been a leader in efforts to keep dangerous invasive species, such as Asian carp, from entering the Great Lakes.

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CFO Alex Sink, who touts her private business acumen in her Democratic campaign for governor, just announced that she has helped save state taxpayers $12 million over the past year by more quickly settling lawsuits against the state, by preventing workers' injuries, and by getting medical care more quickly to workers who are injured so that they return to the job sooner.

"And there are still many, many opportunities in state government to ... give us a new way to how we do state business," Sink said during a press conference in her Capitol office.

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It's become all too clear over the past several years that policy makers and regulators in Washington failed to do their job by allowing irresponsible players on Wall Street to drive our nation's economy into the ground. The outsized risks taken by big Wall Street firms have reverberated not only on Main Streets throughout Missouri, but also with every Missouri family trying to save for retirement, buy a home, pay for a child's education, or pay their medical bills.

As Missouri's secretary of state and chief securities regulator, it is my job to oversee the actions of advisers and brokers, educate Missourians about safe investing and help victims of fraud get their money back.

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U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka and several prominent union and political leaders stood behind state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa yesterday, lending the weight of the Democratic establishment to her campaign for Congress. Quantcast

Hanabusa is facing former congressman Ed Case and Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou in a special election to fill the remaining months of U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's term in urban Honolulu's 1st Congressional District. Abercrombie is resigning to concentrate on his campaign in the Democratic primary for governor.

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