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Illinois Issues
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Ends and Means: The Latest, Never-Seen-Before Episode in the State's Storied Political History

Charles N. Wheeler III
WUIS/Illinois Issues

The Illinois State Board of Elections will meet soon to officially proclaim the results of last month’s primary, thus ending (maybe) the latest, never-seen-before episode in the state’s storied political history.

The uncertainty marking the board’s declaration reflects two facts: the candidate deemed the victor in the seven-person Republican primary for governor — at this writing, Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington by some 420 votes over Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale — could well face a recount. Meanwhile, the top-vote-getting Democrat for lieutenant governor already has bowed out of the race amid controversy over what most charitably could be termed a checkered past.

However things sort out in coming days, the outcome of the earliest primary in state history lends itself to a number of intriguing observations.

  • For months, national pundits and TV talking heads have yammered about an angry electorate, enraged voters ready to take up pitchforks and flaming torches to storm the castles of incumbency. The revolutionary fervor apparently missed Illinoisans — roughly three out of four registered voters weren’t energized enough to make it to the polls. Perhaps the no-shows are so deep in despair that even voting seems futile. Still, the ballot included two dozen sitting federal and state lawmakers facing primary challenges and thus potential voter wrath. Twenty-three of the 24 emerged victorious; the only casualty was state Rep. Suzie Bassi, a moderate Republican from Palatine, bested by a more conservative challenger.
     
  • Irony was the watchword in the battle royal for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. In this corner, Gov. Pat Quinn, who cut his political teeth almost 40 years ago helping maverick Dan Walker win the party’s nomination for governor over the Daley machine’s slated candidate, Lt. Gov. Paul Simon. Since then, he’s made a career as a populist outsider with special ties to downstaters. In the far corner, state Comptroller Dan Hynes, a bona fide scion of the 19th Ward Democratic Organization holding the quintessential Chicago educational pedigree, Notre Dame University and Loyola Law School.

    So Quinn narrowly wins the nomination, 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent, roughly 8,100 votes, thanks to money — such as a $250,000 loan from Ald. Ed Burke (14th) — and voting muscle from Chicago and Cook County Democrats, who gave him a 40,000-vote edge over the comptroller. Hynes, meanwhile, carries 85 of the 96 counties outside the metropolitan area, garnering 57 percent of the downstate vote, a 30,000-vote margin, and carries the collar counties by about 2,000 votes.
     

  • Quinn’s margin was the closest for a Democratic nominee for governor in at least 50 years, but his win was a landslide, compared with the GOP cliff-hanger. Brady and Dillard were separated by just 0.05 percent — 1/20th of a percentage point — according to the unofficial tally. Whoever gets the board’s nod on proclamation day — or may prevail in a later recount — one thing is certain: four out of five Republican voters wanted somebody else, meaning a lot of fence-mending and reaching-out will be on the winner’s agenda.

    The bigger challenge would seem to be Brady’s, given his abysmal showing in the Chicago suburbs, where he ran a distant sixth, besting only a candidate who had withdrawn. Brady got just 22,000 suburban votes, fewer than 6 percent, compared with Dillard’s 76,000. And the Hinsdale lawmaker finished third in the suburbs, behind Andy McKenna’s 96,000 and former Attorney General Jim Ryan’s 85,000.

    But Brady piled up 132,000 downstate votes to Dillard’s 74,000, a 37 percent to 21 percent edge. Newcomer Adam Andrzejewski, a favorite of Tea Partiers, finished a respectable third downstate, with 54,000 votes, while McKenna and Ryan barely cracked double digits, percentage-wise, outside the suburbs.

    Brady’s task of wooing suburban voters could be complicated by his strong conservative views on abortion, school prayer, gun rights and other hard-right issues that historically have had limited appeal to suburbanites.
     

  • Having the same primary produce the two closest races for gubernatorial nominations in the last half century certainly is one for the books. But overshadowing the suspense for governor was the “you- gotta-be-kidding-me” aura surrounding the Democratic nomination for the No. 2 spot. Scott Lee Cohen spent more than $2 million of his own money to best five other hopefuls for lieutenant governor in a low-key race. Only after the votes were counted did folks start looking more closely at Cohen, and then Democratic faithful were appalled to find that their nominee brought more baggage than Ringling Brothers, certainly enough to sink Quinn. After several days of party hand-wringing, Cohen agreed to step down on Super Bowl Sunday, thus allowing Democratic leaders to find someone less colorful.

    The episode triggered a round of finger-pointing: at voters who didn’t look beyond clever TV ads and slick mailers in evaluating candidates, at reporters who didn’t pay enough attention to a relatively minor office to chronicle a candidate’s serious shortcomings, even at an election season compressed into four hectic weeks.

Valid criticisms all, but in truth, the major culpability should rest with Democratic Party leaders, from state chairman Michael Madigan on down. They’re the ones with the most at stake should voters nominate a candidate who could pose a threat to the entire ticket. That’s especially so for the office of lieutenant governor, “one heartbeat away,” as the cliché goes, from the state’s top job.
Indeed, Democratic leaders should have been particularly attuned to the danger after their experience in 1986, when two followers of extremist Lyndon La Rouche won Democratic primaries for lieutenant governor and for secretary of state. The party’s gubernatorial nominee, Adlai Stevenson, refused to run paired with a La Rouchie, instead forming a third party that went down in flames in November.

While Cohen’s liabilities pale in comparison with the La Rouche beliefs, a little background checking this time would have uncovered the problems, allowing party workers to encourage the faithful to mark for someone else, thus sparing Illinois Democrats another round as the late-night comics’ favorite target. To paraphrase the party’s best known piñata, “What were they thinking?”

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. 

Illinois Issues, March 2010

The former director of the Public Affairs Reporting (PAR) graduate program is Professor Charles N. Wheeler III, a veteran newsman who came to the University of Illinois at Springfield following a 24-year career at the Chicago Sun-Times.
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