With Judy Baar Topinka entering the Illinois gubernatorial race, the race for state treasurer has brought candidates from both sides of the ticket to claim the upcoming vacant seat.

Within the past week, candidates State Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont) and Alexi Giannoulias (D) for state treasurer visited the Champaign-Urbana area to meet with local constituents.

Sen. Radogno spoke to the Champaign County Republican Headquarters on Jan. 19 and said that she is running for the treasurer’s office to gain a bigger role in the state budget process.

“As a state senator, I am one of 59 voices,” Sen. Radogno said. “By running for treasurer, I will be an independently elected executive office and so I believe my voice on budget matters will be much louder.”

On Tuesday, Giannoulias, currently Vice President of Broadway Bank, met with the College Democrats, who hosted the second of their statewide candidates speaker series. Giannoulias called for an audit of the treasurer’s Bright Start College Savings Program, which holds $1.6 billion in funds for more than 75,000 participants.

“We just need to make sure that it’s being run in the most efficient manner possible,” Giannoulias said.

Giannoulias said the treasurer’s office has been somewhat neglected, and it has the tools and resources to help communities that need economic reinvestment.

“There are always ways to improve an office,” Giannoulias said. “It’s good to have a different angle and different perspective. We need leaders with innovative ideas and fresh perspectives and a new way of thinking on social and economic issues.”

On issues facing the higher education funding, Sen. Radogno has said she has been critical of Gov. Blagojevich’s administration.

“For the first two years of the Blagojevich administration, higher education was cut by about 10 percent and last years was held flat,” Sen. Radogno said. “That is a very big concern to me, because I think that higher education is a very important part of economic development in the state and in this day and age, it’s critical that our students have access to good higher education systems.”

Giannoulias will have a contested primary against Paul Mangieri, who is a state’s attorney from Knox County. Sen. Radogno has an uncontested primary.