The Democrats

They’ve managed to lose the last
seven races for governor. But some
think this election is their best shot in years
at winning the Executive Mansion

by Aaron Chambers
Illustrations by Mike Cramer

The list of losers is long: Michael Howlett, Michael Bakalis, Adlai Stevenson III (twice), Neil Hartigan, Dawn Clark Netsch and, most recently, Glenn Poshard. The Democratic candidates for governor have managed to lose each of the last seven general elections.

There are a number of variables to this, of course. Illinois is a moderate political state that can swing to either party. Issues matter in individual races. Personalities make a difference, too. And regional identity is always a factor.

But here’s a theory on this unbroken string of failure: Each of the Democratic candidates in the last seven gubernatorial elections has managed in one way or another to alienate a substantial portion of that party’s voting base. With the liberal Stevenson in 1982, it was labor unions angered that the U.S. senator opposed the federal government’s bailout of Chrysler Corp. With the conservative Poshard in 1998, it was progressive women and gays, who worried about the southern Illinoisan’s stance on abortion and his attitude toward gays.

This is a new election, and some Democrats think it presents their best shot in years at winning the Executive Mansion. They have a case. As a rule of thumb, candidates of the party opposite the one occupying the White House tend to shine in off-year elections. Then again, eight years of President Ronald Reagan and four years of senior President George Bush weren’t sufficient to propel a Democrat to the top spot in Illinois. And the junior President George Bush is wildly popular for his handling of the terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan.

But there are indications closer to home that the GOP won’t get a cakewalk this time out. George Ryan, the retiring Republican governor, has been tarred by a scandal involving the sale of licenses that went to unqualified truckers while he was secretary of state. Some of the bribe money went into his campaign coffers. The governor has not been accused of wrongdoing, but the federal investigation landed one step from him: Dean Bauer, who served as Ryan’s inspector general when he was secretary of state, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Further, Republicans are caught in a potentially damaging three-way primary to succeed him.

Still, the November general election is a long way off. The immediate concern for both parties is the primary election on March 19. And if division was costly in the last seven guber-natorial contests, the Democrats could have their work cut out for them this fall. They face a four-way primary contest of their own, and if they hope to solidify their traditional, sometimes schizophrenic, base — labor, bungalow-belt and rural conservatives, progressives, women and minorities — they are likely to have plenty of fence-mending to do after what’s shaping up as a contentious primary.

Leading the four main candidates in the polls is former Attorney General Roland Burris, who is making his third run for governor. The poll numbers are no surprise: Burris, the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois, has solid name recognition, especially among blacks. He held statewide office four times, including three terms as comptroller, and he made a run for Chicago mayor.

U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich, despite the early polls, is thought by some party insiders to be the front-runner. That’s because the Chicago congressman has the most money — $3 million and counting — a solid organization, good labor support and the political muscle of his father-in-law, a powerful Chicago alderman. He has served in the Illinois House, but this is his first run for statewide office.

The third candidate is Paul Vallas, a lanky and cerebral former Chicago Public Schools chief executive who has enjoyed over the past six years favorable publicity as the city’s school reformer. He’s behind in cash, claiming to have nearly $1 million by early December, but is promising to raise at least $3 million for the primary. He has held other appointed city posts and put in a stint as a legislative fiscal aide.

The fourth candidate is Michael Bakalis, a former comptroller and state school superintendent who teaches at Northwestern University. He’s an intellectual and a career educator and, as such, is stressing education in his platform. Bakalis hasn’t served statewide since 1979, when he finished his term as comptroller, and he will have to work hard to refamiliarize voters with his name. He was the first to announce but is running last in the polls.

The first challenge for all the candidates is the same: getting voters, exhausted from post-September 11 news coverage, to pay attention at all. Focusing voters on campaigns is always tough, yet the terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have made that task more difficult. “Since 9/11, you’ve really gutted any appetite for politics as usual in Illinois, and that appetite will need to be whetted again by the various elected officials, nonelected officials and candidates,” says Thom Serafin, a Chicago-based political consultant. “And I’m not certain how you go about doing that. That’s what I think everybody is struggling with right now.”

Still, the Democratic candidates maintain that with the holidays over and the race heating up, voters will soon reconnect with state politics. In the meantime, they have modified their messages to incorporate voter concern about terrorism and, closer to home, the state’s budget problems. The national economy has slumped and state revenues are down, forcing Gov. Ryan to impose $485 million in spending cuts last fall to help close a $500 million hole in the $53 billion state budget. Among other cost-saving measures, he cut health services to the poor and ordered 60,000 state workers who report to him to take an unpaid furlough day.

The Democrats can be expected to respond.

As comptroller, Burris called on the state in 1984 to set aside revenue surpluses in a so-called rainy day fund. After Ryan’s cuts, Burris argued the administration could have avoided such drastic measures had officials listened to him. In fact, lawmakers did establish a rainy day fund in 2000 at the urging of Comptroller Daniel Hynes. In November, Hynes, a Democrat, had to drain the fund’s $226 million to help pay the state’s bills. Burris says as governor he would ensure the state kept at least $1 billion in that fund.

Getting lawmakers not to spend money isn’t a simple matter, of course. Nevertheless, the state’s budget is likely to become a hot issue in this race.

And Burris knows budgets. During his three terms as comptroller, he developed a reputation for credible fiscal analysis. Of course, during that time, he played opposite Gov. James Thompson, the big-spending Republican. Burris’ analyses of the state’s financial condition during the economic downturn of the 1980s were more on target than Thompson’s.

Burris opposed a tax hike the governor proposed, taking heat from black legislators who wanted to see Chicago school funding increased. The tax hike failed and Thompson started imposing spending cuts. “I’m the most fiscally conservative Democrat you’ll find,” says Burris, who was a bank official early in his career.

In 1990, Burris won one term as attorney general, besting Jim Ryan, the current attorney general and front-runner for the GOP gubernator-ial nomination. In that office, Burris sparred with another GOP governor, Jim Edgar, over Edgar’s fiscal austerity measures and over the attorney general’s role as the state’s lawyer.

And Burris cites one other act during his tenure in that post: He saw through the execution of one of the nation’s most notorious murderers. “I’m the one who killed John Wayne Gacy,” he says.

More than any of the four Demo-cratic candidates in this election, Burris knows the campaign routine. He ran for governor in 1994 and 1998, failing both times to win the Democratic nomination.

Still, Burris has the early lead in this race. A poll commissioned by Blagojevich concluded that Burris is favored by 30 percent of the respondents, with 32 percent undecided. Blagojevich and Vallas were tied with 17 percent each; Bakalis got 4 percent. Other polls, including one paid for by Vallas, also put Burris in the lead.

The telephone survey done for Blagojevich, which included 604 likely Democratic voters, was conducted by the Washington, D.C., firm of Garin-Hart-Young. It showed that Burris leads Blagojevich and Vallas in name recognition. The three-time gubernatorial candidate had 87 percent name recognition in the Chicago area, 86 percent in the northern part of the state and 77 percent in southern Illinois.

Nevertheless, the race is barely under way. As Brendan Reilly, communications director for Vallas, puts it: “How can you have an opinion poll when nobody has an opinion?”

And while Burris’ name recognition is serving him well, he has not demonstrated the fundraising capability of Blagojevich. Money, of course, translates into media buying power.

At the end of June, Burris’ campaign had $39,690 on hand, according to the state Board of Elections. He hopes to raise and spend $2 million for the primary.

So why would Burris, who practices probate and corporate transaction law at The Peters Law Firm in Chicago, want to run again? “It’s because of the people that have come to me and asked that I not give up all that experience and knowledge that I have of Illinois,” he says. “I can use that to the benefit of the 12 million people in this state to improve their quality of life.”

He wants the state to cover at least 51 percent of the cost of public education, so that local districts can reduce their reliance on property taxes and, in theory, alleviate the disparate quality of education around the state. Currently, schools get 38 percent of their funding from the state, 9 percent from the federal government and the rest from local property taxes.

Burris also is pushing for more state investment in information technology, and tighter controls on gun sales.As for voter turnout this March, he believes anger over the 2000 presidential voting debacle, and reports that votes in Cook County were undercounted, will motivate Democrats, African Americans in particular, to go to the polls. He says some have complained to him about feeling disenfranchised when the U.S. Supreme Court put an end to the Florida recount. “Eighty percent of the African Americans in the country voted in that election and about 95 percent of those were for Gore,” he says. “They felt that they did not get their president.”

Secretary of State Jesse White, also an African American, agrees.

As a committeeman for Chicago’s 27th Ward, White says it will be his job to remind voters of what happened in Florida. “I think [we’re] going to inspire some people to come out,” he says.

Much of the focus among strategists so far in this campaign has been on black voters, a significant portion of the Democrats’ base, and whether Blagojevich or Vallas will succeed in peeling away a substantial number of those voters from Burris. Still, Burris discounts any suggestion that he’s focused on black voters, who are expected to comprise about 30 percent of the Democratic vote in March, or that he has the bulk of those votes in his corner. “I am not the black candidate,” he says. “I am a candidate running for governor in a state of 12 million people.”

All the candidates have centered their campaigns in the Chicago area. Yet, some observers argue that this race will be won or lost downstate. It’s estimated that about 30 percent of Democratic voters in this state live outside the Chicago media market. Burris stresses that he was born in Centralia and educated at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

“You constantly hear that the majority of the votes are cast in the northern part of the state, in particular Cook County and the burbs, but in close races it is vitally important that candidates pay attention to the entire state,” says Clark Gyure, a lobbyist and communications consultant based in Carbondale. “There are many needs here in southern Illinois, from infrastructure to jobs to health care to education, that the voters are studying very carefully. I think whoever has the best message and can connect with the voters of southern Illinois, and who lets them know that they intend to be here, that will bode well for that individual in the primary as well as the general election.”If any of these candidates will be challenged downstate, it’s Blagojevich, who is not well known outside his congressional district on Chicago’s North Side and whose ethnic name may not be attractive to downstate voters. Yet Blagojevich managed to get the endorsement of the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen’s Association, comprised of the 101 Democratic county chairs outside Cook County, and the congressman is counting on the group to deliver votes.

“Blagojevich’s financial advantage and endorsement by 70 [individual] downstate county chairs and the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen’s Association coupled with his American dream/economic security message give him the best chance to take advantage of the huge number of downstate undecideds and voters who are temporarily with Burris because he is the only candidate known downstate,” wrote Pete Giangreco, Blagojevich’s campaign spokesman, in a memo to Illinois Issues.

In Congress, where Blagojevich is serving his third term, he has pushed for a national sales tax holiday and called for a ban on civilian sales of .50-caliber long-range military sniper rifles. He wants Congress to increase survivor benefits for families of firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians killed in the line of duty. He’s sponsoring legislation to give the states more than $1 billion to prepare for bioterrorism attacks. And he voted for an airport security plan that makes screeners in most airports federal employees.

On a national level, he’s perhaps best known for traveling to Serbia in 1999 with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and negotiating the release of three American soldiers who were held there. (Blagojevich is of Serbian descent.) In 1997, he blasted the U.S. Navy’s plan to ship napalm through the Chicago area. The plan was cancelled.

In Springfield, where Blagojevich served two terms in the Illinois House, he was one of the first state lawmakers to push for a truth-in-sentencing law, under which the worst violent offenders must serve 85 percent to 100 percent of their sentences.

On the campaign trail, he has criticized the state’s failure to adequately address its teacher shortage; he wants a greater statewide teacher recruitment effort. Last summer, he criticized the Ryan Administration for failing to fund a state extension of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, saying the move jeopardized up to $200 million in matching federal dollars.

The bottom line for Blagojevich?

He says his experience on Capitol Hill would help Illinois get more bang for its buck. “Because I’ve been here [in Washington] and I’ve had a chance to work in the system and know people, I believe that if I were the governor I would know where to go and how to better work in terms of returning federal dollars to Illinois,” he says.

Blagojevich had not unveiled his prescription drug plan or the bulk of his education plan by mid-December. But of the drug plan, Giangreco says, “We’re going to have a program that expands the range of drugs that are covered and gets more seniors into the program than there are currently.”

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the congressman has what’s regarded as the most extensive organization of the four campaigns. The ward-based political army of his father-in-law, Chicago Alderman Dick Mell, is working for him. He also has support from such high-profile figures as U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski, the powerful Chicago Democrat.

Yet, since announcing his candidacy for governor in July, Blagojevich has been forced to defend his independence and play down the role of his father-in-law, a major force who routinely butts heads with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Though the days are long gone when a thumbs up or a thumbs down from a Mayor Daley meant life or death for a candidate’s statewide hopes, the Democratic organization is still a force in the city, where the largest portion of Illinois’ Democrats live. And one theory among party insiders is that Daley fears Mell would pull the strings in a Blagojevich Administration, and that the mayor will work to keep the congressman from winning. Blagojevich calls that notion “completely unfounded and wrong.” He says his working relationship with Daley is good and he doesn’t think the mayor has any objection to his running for, or being, governor. “In fact, because of the healthy and successful working relationship that I’ve had with [the mayor] over the years, I think he’d be very content with it,” he says.

Vallas may have his own issues with Daley, who, at least officially, has remained neutral in the race. Last summer, he was reportedly forced out by the mayor, his boss, as schools chief. Vallas denies that, saying he left the school system on his terms and that he has a “fine” relationship with Daley. “The mayor’s position was [that] I could stay as CEO as long as I wanted and my position was [that] when I had the system in as good a financial condition as I could get it, that would be time for me to leave,” he says. “Six years was enough and I wanted to leave the system in good shape.”

During his tenure in that post, Vallas is quick to note, he balanced multibillion-dollar budgets. Indeed, Vallas seems to enjoy budgeting so much that reporters sometimes leave his press conferences mind-boggled by the details Vallas offers in five-minute responses to questions.

Before Daley appointed him in 1995 to run to the public school system, Vallas served as the city’s budget director and, before that, revenue director. He earlier served as executive director for the Illinois Economic and Fiscal Commission, the legislature’s fiscal accounting arm.

“I think I have broad appeal, due to the fact that I’ve held senior administrative positions,” he says.

“I obviously had to make a lot of decisions and I’ve been at the forefront of many issues. I think I have a good base.”

Of course Vallas wants to be known as the education candidate.

He supports putting the Illinois State Board of Education under the direct control of the governor, as Chicago’s school system is controlled by the mayor. Under his education plan, exemplary teachers and principals would be allowed to work past retirement age without compromising pension benefits. And he would impose a moratorium on new tests “until there is agreement on a testing system that is fair, consistent, nationally normed and diagnostically useful.”

He also has a plan for beefing up public safety. He wants the General Assembly to increase taxes on riverboat casinos by at least $286 million a year. That money would then be used to help communities expand and pay for the costs of police and fire protection. “The riverboats will continue to reap healthy profits,” he says.

But Vallas says he’s against “general tax increases,” including an increase in the income tax. Instead, he believes the state’s focus should be on reprioritizing spending with a focus on education, public safety, health care and economic development. “There’s no larger issue, no more important issue, than the fiscal health of the state,” he says.

Like Blagojevich, Vallas is promising better prescription drug programs for the elderly. Under his plan, the state would negotiate with pharmaceutical firms for drugs at discount prices, then make the drugs available to seniors and working poor at reduced prices.

He also has a connection to downstate, having lived in Springfield for 12 years.

Vallas may not be the most charismatic of the candidates, but he’s certainly the most intense. Asked to distinguish himself from his opponents, Vallas responds in typical fashion: “I’m the only one with broad-based governmental management experience.” That’s a mouthful.

As for being the “education candidate,” Vallas does have some competition.

Bakalis, the former comptroller and last elected state school superintendent, is also a career educator. After more than 20 years away from statewide office — he finished his term as comptroller in 1979 — Bakalis says he decided to run for governor this year after listening to his students at Northwestern University. He teaches public policy and public management at the university’s Kellogg School of Management. He also teaches history in Northwestern’s history department.

“As I’ve been teaching at Northwestern, it’s become increasingly clear to me that the people I teach, from ages 18 to over 40, are totally disaffected, disenchanted with politics and politicians, and I think that’s really unhealthy,” he says. “And I think we could just have a different kind of politics.”

Along that line, Bakalis says he’s grown tired of what he calls government mismanagement and corruption in both major parties. “Cynicism and disrespect of politics and politicians is the attitude of the majority of our citizens,” he says.

Bakalis would halt mandated standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools and initiate a review of the “accuracy, reliability, fairness, relevancy, and bias of the tests administered to all Illinois students.” He also would begin a review of special education practices, particularly in how they affect black children.

“We definitely need educational accountability, but true accountability cannot be measured by tests which profess to evaluate only a small part of what the process of public education is all about,” he says.

As for dealing with the economic downturn, Bakalis says he would order all state agencies, boards and commissions to reduce spending by 5 percent. He also would impose a hiring freeze on new state employees and suspend any projects funded by Illinois First, Gov. Ryan’s $12 billion public works program, that have not already been initiated.

Since leaving the comptroller’s office, Bakalis has held an array of jobs in the public and private sectors. He served as deputy undersecretary of education under former President Jimmy Carter, as president of Triton College in River Grove and as an administrator at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and Loyola University in Chicago.

Like Burris, Bakalis has run for governor before. He won the Demo-cratic nomination in 1978, but lost the general election to Jim Thompson. His strategy to win the primary this year is to target voters in the Cook County suburbs and collar counties. He lives in the DuPage County community of Darien.

“The city is important, but what I think is going to happen in the city is you’re going to have Mr. Burris, Mr. Vallas and Mr. Blagojevich, who are all Chicago people, divide up that whole [city] and the election is going to be won in the suburbs of Cook and the collar counties,” he says.

Bakalis acknowledges the tough fight ahead of him, saying he’s used to campaigning with less money than his opponents. “This is not anything new to me, but I make up for it, I think, with hard work and organization and targeting where I’m going to spend my money,” he says. At the end of June, he had $48,153 available, according to the Board of Elections. He wants to raise $600,000 to $700,000 to spend on the primary, saying that would make him competitive.

Democrats have a crowded field in the primary. Then the real work will begin. If they want to retake the governor’s mansion in November, they will need to put their party’s base together behind one of these candidates. Surely, they want to put that loser list behind them.

Illinois Issues, January, 2002

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