Just over a week to go before Illinois’ primary election day. Candidates for all sorts of offices are knuckling down and knocking on doors.

That includes the multitudes running for the 177 seats that’re up in the Illinois House and Senate. We looked at a pair of those elections, which couldn’t be more different.

Last year when Democratic leaders drew new boundaries for state legislative districts, they manufactured some match-ups that otherwise would not have been. Take the 24th state Senate District in the Western suburbs: held by Republican Kirk Dillard, a senator since 1993.

“You know, essentially I went Northward, very much like a glacier would move,” said Dillard on Sunday in his campaign office, looking at a map of his new district. “You know I think [Democratic leaders] did it because they needed to take care of some senators on the south suburban area.”

Dillard could be governor right now if he’d managed to swing a couple hundred votes in 2010. In the GOP primary, he fell just short of beating fellow state Senator Bill Brady, who later fell just short of beating Democratic Governor Pat Quinn.

Dillard v. Nybo

But instead of ruling the state, Dillard is going door to door to fend off a Senate challenge. His campaign is buying no TV ads, no radio. Just mail - and lots of it.

“It is amazing how fast when you really focus on it, you can get mail out the door. But literally in the last weeks, you could be talking upwards to 800,000 to a million pieces of mail,” Dillard said.

And that’s to a district with about 217,000 residents, by the last Census count.

Most of Dillard’s mailings are positive, he says, but one this week will knock his opponent, state Rep. Chris Nybo.

“You know, if you put a sign up, you just mark it down ‘Yes,’ you know, ‘YS” for yard sign, and the notation that you placed it. But it should be a good day out there. I mean the weather’s nice so people should be in a good mood,” Nybo said in a pep talk Sunday to about a dozen volunteers wearing his green campaign T-shirts.

He’s a state representative with little more than a year of House experience. But he’s running for Senate against Dillard in part because Democrats drew him into a district with another Republican House member. Nybo chose instead to go for the promotion, against Dillard.

“You know, I mean, Kirk is a nice guy, but he’s been down there a long time,” Nybo said. “And I think we need some new energy down there. I don’t think anybody should be making careers of this stuff.”

And with all those votes in Dillard’s career, Nybo’s found quite a few to criticize. Dillard’s campaign, meanwhile, put up an attack website featuring “The Chris Nybo Report Card.”

Oddly enough, both these Republicans have ties to the Democratic president. Dillard appeared in a TV commercial for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama during the Democratic primary for president, praising him for bipartisan work. Nybo volunteered on the congressional campaign of Mr. Obama, who was his law professor at the time.

As you can imagine, both men are quick to deflect blame for their cracks in party loyalty.

“I don’t think he should say anything about my 15 nice words about President Obama about an ethics bill he sponsored with me when he was walking precincts and a student coordinator at the University of Chicago,” Dillard said.

“Kirk Dillard is criticizing what I did as a 22-year-old college student with what he did as a 50-something-year-old party - acknowledged - party leader,” Nybo said.

This is one of four Illinois Senate primaries statewide that feature two current Republican members of the General Assembly. Not an uncommon occurrence in elections following redistricting.

Boundaries changed all over the state, though not all that much in one Chicago Senate district that nonetheless is seeing a big Democratic primary fight. The 5th District is entirely within Chicago - a bit of the North Side, but mostly on the West.

Collins v. Watkins

“How you doing? God bless you,” Patricia Van Pelt Watins greeted potential voters in the entranceway of a charter school in the Lawndale neighborhood.

Some parents tell Watkins they voted for her last year when she ran for Chicago mayor. Watkins hears that a lot, but doesn’t always believe it.

“Right. Because there’s too many of them,” Watkins said. “Wait a minute. I only got [9,704] votes. How in the world did all these people vote for me? I guess they wanted to in their hearts.”

The state Senate, some voters tell Watkins, is where she ought to be.

“Yeah, because they think this position fits me better,” she said.

The seat used to be held by the outspoken Rickey Hendon, until he resigned - suddenly and without much explanation - early last year. Watkins applied for the vacancy, but Democratic leaders chose Annazette Collins, who’d served a decade in the state House.

“Well, if I win [a full term], people will have recognized that we’ve done a good job,” Collins said in an interview last week at her office.

Collins talked of her efforts to overhaul the state’s youth prison system. She boasted of bringing lots of state money home to the district, a positive symptom of seniority she said Watkins would be without.

“If I lose, it means that there are people who want change, and they want something different. And our community is upset. People are mad. They’re mad at the president because things aren’t changing fast enough. They’re mad at everybody, except themselves,” Collins said.

A loss could also mean that voters gave weight to some of the negatives lobbed Collins’ way in recent months. Media reports have questioned whether she really lives in the district, as required by law. Last week the Sun-Times reported she gave university scholarships to people who live outside her district.

“I don’t know that [this election is] so much tougher [than in the past], but it’s very nasty,” Collins said.

Collins had a public showdown recently with Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, a Watkins supporter who compared Collins to former Governor Rod Blagojevich.

But with turnout expected to be brutally low, Collins is counting on a strong get-out-the-vote game. Helping lead those efforts as a paid member of her campaign team: Rickey Hendon, the onetime politician whose abrupt resignation a year ago put this seat in play.