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Illinois Issues
Archive2001-Present: Scroll Down or Use Search1975-2001: Click Here

Editor's Notebook: Nothing like the adrenaline rush in a hard-fought campaign

Peggy Boyer Long
WUIS/Illinois Issues

The 2002 primary season should be in full swing when this magazine reaches your mailbox.

By late last month, in the days before we sent our February edition to the printer, two of the Republicans who want to be governor had displaced the hard-hit auto industry’s zero percent financing pitches with televised ads of their own — counter-punching one another’s positions on abortion. And cheerful, but no-nonsense phone bank volunteers were interrupting dinners to ask whether the name of one of the Democrats who wants to be governor rings a bell.

What gives? Illinois voters won’t go to the polls to choose their party nominees for executive and legislative posts until March 19. But then, Election Day is really the icing on the cake. It’s these last weeks leading up to the balloting that lend Illinois politics its distinctive flavor.

And I, for one, am not complaining. True, some might rightly argue there are far too many elections, and way too much politicking in this state. But that’s a decidedly narrow view of the matter. As for the alternative, where would be the fun in that? 

A focused and informed electorate is crucial, of course. No one here would argue otherwise. Candidates matter. Ideas have consequences. That’s why we’ve gone to such lengths, in this and in our January issue, to introduce the candidates in the statewide, legislative and congressional races. 

But let’s face it. They’re only part of the story. There’s nothing quite like the adrenaline rush that goes with a hard-fought Illinois-style campaign. Even for those who are merely watching. 

I’ll admit it. I like the high drama, and the high jinks, of those dueling TV ads. I admire the energy of phone bankers and door knockers, the kind of folks who have enough strength in their convictions to interrupt regular programming, let our dinners grow cold. 

And, yes, I have even encouraged the intrusive attentions of the “push” pollster, especially when the candidate who covertly commissioned the call has had an especially nasty “negative” to overcome. 

One election, I was thrilled to get a call from former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, who took the time to remind me to vote and recommend whom I might vote for. Sure, he had recorded the call earlier, but who could cut off a Paul Simon, even an electronic one? I listened politely, thanked him, then hung up.

To those who remind us that elections have become big business, I counter that, for the most part, local and state campaigns are still waged close to the ground. They are run in the margins of those plus and minus tally sheets organized block by block, in the stop-the-heart, down-to-the-wire voter pull on Election Day. Not for nothing do strategists warn novice campaigners that elections can, and have been, won or lost by as little as one vote per precinct.

We have written in this magazine, too, that “career” motivations drive much of Illinois’ political culture. In Springfield, and some portions of Chicago, it’s hard to miss the validity of this notion. But that doesn’t entirely explain the homemaker who can be counted on to host candidate coffees, the student who stays up all night planning voter forums, the guy who displays tacky billboard-size posters on his otherwise perfect lawn. 

And it doesn’t explain the enduring attraction of political paraphernalia. Not really. My own collection of political buttons, for instance, numbers somewhere around a hundred, not counting duplicates. Most of the candidates they promote are long dead, or well beyond anyone’s aspirations to the public payroll. Yet each still radiates the hopes of a moment in time. 

That’s what it’s about, too. 

Everything the critics say about political campaigns may well be true. And yet, elections are still about the hopes, and yes, the aspirations of our moment in time. 


Illinois Issues, February 2002

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