Posted on 05/21/2003 9:55:10 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Little can be said for sure about the race for retiring Illinois Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald's seat, one of only two open Senate contests in the country in 2004.
No one has taken a clear lead. No one knows how the budget battle in Springfield will play out. And, as is the case elsewhere, no one can forecast how the war on terror or the economy will play out, either.
But one thing appears clear -- the next junior senator from Illinois will be either an entrenched politician or a captain of industry.
In both camps, the best funded, most widely known possible contenders are insiders such as Democratic State Comptroller Dan Hynes and Republican state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, or businessmen such as Democrat Blair Hull and Republicans Andrew McKenna, Jack Ryan and James Oberweis.
Other possible candidates also fall fairly neatly into one of the two camps -- politicians state Sen. Barack Obama and Republican former state Attorney General Jim Ryan, former state Rep. James Durkin (who also won last year's GOP Senate nomination) and former Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood.
Gery Chico, head of Chicago's board of education and chairman of the Chicago law firm Altheimer and Gray, is more of a hybrid, straddling the government and private sectors.
As Rauschenberger framed it: "I'm the only [Republican] candidate . . . who has passed a bill or done a budget. The other candidates considering running are certainly bright people, but they're kind of bored, second-career people looking for something to do who assume the entry level into politics is the U.S. Senate."
The wealthy-outsider-versus-political-insider dynamic is nothing new in Illinois or other states, said Ken Gross, a Washington attorney who specializes in election law. But, Gross said, in recent years the barriers to entry have jumped, making it more difficult for other would-be candidates to get involved.
"I think that with TV being more expensive and politics getting to be so fine-tuned, making such a science out of getting elected . . . that along with that sophistication and increase of cost is this categorizing of candidates among those who are wealthy and those who are already well-known because they work their way up the system," Gross said.
Peter Onuf, a professor of American history at the University of Virginia, said political parties have traditionally enabled "ordinary people" to take part in public life.
The McCain-Feingold reform curbed parties' fundraising power, meaning Democrats and Republicans are likely to rely more than ever on wealthy candidates, or "self-funders," as Democratic Party officials put it.
Onuf warned against celebrating the past.
"When we get nostalgic about having a different kind of politics, we usually frame this in terms of really qualified people from all walks of life taking part in the process," he said, adding that the Founding Fathers were unique in embodying Americans' ideal of "highly educated, disinterested, committed patriots."
"On the one hand," Onuf said, "there's a romantic-democratic [element to that nostalgia]. On the other hand, there's a real elitism there, a disdain for money, looking down on the nouveau riche."
Susan Lagana, spokeswoman for Hull, the Democratic candidate who made a fortune in the futures and securities business, has said Hull's background -- as a Teamster, a U.S. Army officer and a financier -- qualifies him to serve in the Senate.
Whoever wins won't have big shoes to fill, Gross said, adding that for a large state Illinois has had some fairly unimpressive representation.
"I've always been struck by the lack of prominence, if you will, of the senators coming from a state like Illinois," Gross said. "They haven't had top-tier senators for some time, not since Paul Simon."
On Tuesday, the Teamsters Joint Council 25 endorsed Hynes, the Democratic state comptroller, Hynes spokeswoman Chris Mather said. The umbrella group represents 22 unions with 125,000 members in the Chicago area.
The Teamsters Joint Council 65 will formally endorse Hynes on Thursday, a source close to the campaign said. Joint Council 65 covers downstate.
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