July 1, 2009
"DIVERSITY," OR LACK OF "DIVERSITY," WORRIES PARTIES FOR GOVENOR, COUNTY BOARD PRESIDENT IN 2010
ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART
Initiate the Internet search engines. Bring on Google.
For Democrats, type in "Great White Hope/county board president/2010." With at least three black candidates -- Todd Stroger, Toni Preckwinkle and Dorothy Brown -- running for the post, and with county Commissioner Forrest Claypool taking a pass, white Democratic committeemen are feverishly searching for an electable white candidate.
For Republicans, type in "Sarah Palin/Illinois/clone." With middle-aged white men hogging all the key spots on the 2010 statewide ticket, Republicans desperately need a fiery and credible woman to run for lieutenant governor and a black or Hispanic candidate somewhere else on the slate.
To be diverse, or not diverse enough? That, to wax poetic, seems to be the question. Here's an early analysis:
Cook County Board president: Don't dub it "Back to the Future;" instead, it's "The Future is the Past." Although he indisputably is inept and incompetent, Stroger has a chance to extend his "Reign of Error" for another 4 years -- but only if there is a huge primary field, with a multiplicity of white candidates.
Turnout in the Democratic primary was 619,309 in 2006 and 791,605 in 2002. It will be at least 700,000 in 2010. In 2006 the late John Stroger beat Claypool by 318,634-276,682, getting 53.5 percent of the vote.
African Americans constitute 40 percent of the Chicago vote and 35 percent of the county vote. John Stroger, a key ally of Mayor Rich Daley who suffered a stroke just before the primary, won in 2006 because he got about a quarter of the white vote. Stroger carried Daley's Southwest Side 11th Ward with 62.9 percent of the vote, Mike Madigan's 13th Ward with 62.8 percent and Ed Burke's 14th Ward with 64.4 percent, and he came close in Bill Lipinski's 23rd Ward, getting 46.4 percent of the vote. Count on this: That ain't gonna happen for "The Toddler." He won't get 20 percent of the vote in those wards.
Claypool won the 10 Northwest Side wards by 48,803-19,566, with Stroger getting 28.6 percent of the vote, but pro-Daley white committeemen delivered more than just a smidgen of votes to Stroger. He got 42.7 percent of the vote in Bill Banks' 36th Ward, 32.4 percent in the late Tom Lyons' 45th Ward, 32.3 percent in the 39th Ward, 31.2 percent in the 40th Ward, and even 27.1 percent in the 41st Ward. Count on this: "The Toddler" is anathema to white voters, and he will get less than 10 percent of the vote in those wards in 2010. No ward committeeman will back him.
John Stroger got 84.2 percent of the black vote and 56 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2006. With three black candidates running in 2010, the black vote will be hopelessly fractured, which means that a single credible white candidate will easily win the job, as whites comprise nearly 60 percent of the countywide vote.
But who will be the "Great White Hope"? Claypool's enigmatic exit puzzles observers. He spent 8 years burnishing his reformer credentials, spurned an opportunity to go to Washington as part of the Obama Administration, and was a fierce critic of Todd Stroger. Now he wants to concentrate on a health-care start-up company. The job was his on a platter. He was ahead in the polls, he could have raised $2 million, and he had scared off other white candidates.
A furious behind-the-scenes struggle, based largely on geography, has commenced. Two white county office holders with ties to Tom Hynes's Southwest Side 19th Ward, Sheriff Tom Dart and Assessor Jim Houlihan, want the job. So does county Commissioner Larry Suffredin, a liberal from Evanston. But the emerging consensus choice is Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board of Commissioners President Terry O'Brien, a North Sider with ties to the 47th and 50th ward Democratic organizations and who lives in the 41st Ward.
Although obscure, O'Brien, age 53, has been a commissioner since 1988 and the board's president since 1996. He has won four countywide primary elections, and he has few enemies, a record as an able administrator, no scandals attaching to his name and an Irish surname. He also has $158,105 in his campaign account. If he runs, he need not resign his current post.
That makes him the perfect compromise. O'Brien can eschew racial issues and run on a platform promising "competence." Dart and Houlihan can run for their current jobs, thereby avoiding messy primaries for their succession and allowing the "Daley Machine" to focus all efforts on the board president's race.
Turnout in Chicago's black-majority wards in 2006 was 183,157, and John Stroger got 154,354 votes. In 2010 turnout surely will eclipse 240,000. Stroger lost to Claypool in the suburbs in 2006 by 133,545-86,567 (with 39.3 percent of the vote), which indicates a sizable black vote, amounting to perhaps 300,000 countywide.
However, Stroger, the 8th Ward Democratic committeeman, Preckwinkle, the Hyde Park 5th Ward alderman, and Brown, the clerk of the Circuit Court, are all South Siders. They will split those 300,000 black votes. In addition, U.S. Representative Danny Davis (D-7), from the West Side, also may run, further fragmenting the black base. Preckwinkle is positioning herself as an "independent reformer," and she could get the bulk of the white liberal vote, unless Suffredin runs.
My early prediction: The next board president will be white and have an Irish surname -- which means O'Brien, Houlihan or Dart.
Governor: The economy is still tanking, Illinois' fiscal crisis is unresolved, and the disgraced Rod Blagojevich's corruption trial is set for June of 2010. That should be the "perfect storm" for the Republicans. How could voters not want a change? But a Republican governor could be just too repugnant to voters.
The 2010 Republican gubernatorial field includes a slew of lightweights, none having ever won statewide office. It includes state Senators Bill Brady (R-44) of Downstate Bloomington, Matt Murphy (R-27) of Palatine and Kirk Dillard (R-24) of Westmont. Also running are DuPage County Board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom and publicist Dan Proft.
Brady, a staunch but likable conservative, got 18.4 percent of the vote in the 2006 primary, with the bulk of his vote coming from Downstate. He is positioning himself as the anti-tax candidate, hoping for a state income tax hike. Chicago business tycoon Ron Gidwitz, who got 10.9 percent of the vote in 2006, is Dillard's finance chairman.
The turnout for the 2006 Republican primary was 751,627, down from 946,339 in 2002. In 2006 138,182 votes came from Cook County, 283,475 came from the Collar Counties of DuPage, Lake, Will, McHenry and Kane, and 329,970 came from 95 counties Downstate.
In 2006, 61,169 of Brady's 135,370 votes came from Downstate, but he still got only 28.8 percent of the Downstate vote. "The (Downstate) county chairmen will be with me," Dillard said. To win, Brady needs over 50 percent of the vote south of Interstate 80.
Dillard and Schillerstrom are from DuPage County, a bedrock Republican enclave which has been steadily moving Democratic. DuPage's Republican primary turnout was 98,230 in 2006, 126,767 in 2002, 86,684 in 1998, 91,739 in 1994 and 101,845 in 1990. DuPage casts about 15 percent of the statewide total in a primary. If both DuPage Republicans run, they split their county's vote and lose.
Murphy has been an ardent critic of Stroger's sales tax increase, and he advocated having northwest suburban townships secede from Cook County. His northwest suburban base casts about 35,000 votes.
Although every Republican aspirant is a fiscal conservative, Dillard is the most moderate candidate, and Brady is the most conservative. Dillard claims that he will make inroads Downstate, and he will win a plurality in Lake and McHenry counties and in Chicago. The Republicans must choose between purity and electability.
But is the Republican nomination worth anything? The anticipated 2010 Republican ticket will consist of a white man for governor, DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett for attorney general, state Senator Dan Rutherford (R-53) of Pontiac for state treasurer and former treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, the loser to Rod Blagojevich in 2006, for comptroller.
Republicans are taking a huge risk in fielding a drab and dreary, all-white and mostly male statewide ticket. The party's U.S. Senate nominee likely will be U.S. Representative Mark Kirk (R-10), another white man. Will diversity trump fiscal catastrophe as the key issue?
Emulating John McCain in 2008, Republicans need to recruit a bold and brassy Palin-type woman to run for lieutenant governor and a black or Hispanic candidate to run for secretary of state. No names have surfaced. The only candidates for the number two spot are Carbondale Mayor Brad Cole and state Representative Dave Winters (R-68) of Rockford.
The likely Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor is Chicago state representative Art Turner (D-9), and Secretary of State Jesse White will easily win reelection. So even if Roland Burris gets trounced in the U.S. Senate primary, there will be two black candidates on the statewide ticket.
My prediction: Republicans can win in 2010 if they establish themselves as responsible agents of change. They cannot win if they are isolated as a bunch of bland, boring right-wing men, without minority support. They need a Sarah Palin.