t a packed "Unity Lunch" in Chicago the day after the Illinois primary election, hundreds of Republicans gathered for the mandatory group hug, where all the candidates who had just spent months savaging each other are suddenly expected to profess a profound admiration for one another. All eyes were looking to the head table, where the combatants from the gubernatorial race were supposed to break bread and sing Kumbaya.Not one of the three GOP candidates who ran for governor attended the lunch, a first since the advent of this post-election ritual. Primary winner Attorney General Jim Ryan made a brief appearance for the cameras, but hurried off before the festivities got underway rather than sit between two empty chairs. Neither of his opponents paid even a brief visit to congratulate him, and there will likely be no endorsement from either losing candidate.
After a 26-year lock on the governor's mansion in Illinois, the state Republican party is in disarray. Ironically, despite an unpopular Republican incumbent who is mired in a scandal that has produced 45 indictments and 42 convictions for his former employees, GOP prospects for winning the top post looked bright until the last weeks before the primary.
In a divisive three-way contest on Tuesday, Ryan beat back liberal Lt. Governor Corinne Wood and conservative state Sen. Patrick O'Malley, but he is undeniably wounded from an unrelenting series of assaults.
Although underdog challengers often attack the leader in unison, Wood and O'Malley formed a rather bizarre tag-team approach to bashing Ryan, one punching from the left, the other from the right. The only similarity between these disparate candidates is that both are largely self-funded-they spent a combined $8 million in personal money-and wildly self-important, even compared to most other politicians. Both also ran primarily on abortion, Wood as a staunch defender of abortion rights, and O'Malley as a steadfast pro-lifer.
In talking with Republican insiders in the state capital of Springfield, a portrait of Wood as a bumbling politician with terrible instincts emerges. Her political skills, or lack thereof, leave a lot to be desired. According to several sources, Wood regularly forgets very important people, such as powerful lobbyists and personal friends of current Gov. George Ryan (no relation). One very well-known Republican strategist and friend of Gov. Ryan has met Wood more than three dozen times, including at small dinner events, yet she cluelessly introduces herself each time as if it is the first time the two have met.
Wood's campaign strategy reflected her political ineptness. She effectively alienated every core Republican constituency, leaving many to wonder why she chose to run in the GOP primary. "We're all scratching our heads that she chose to run in the Republican party," says veteran political consultant Larry Hoffman. "In Republican primaries in Illinois," he notes, "conservatives do a lot better than moderates-and she ran as a liberal."
Early on, Wood made abortion rights the centerpiece of her campaign, a curious strategy to say the least. Although Illinois is somewhat left-of-center, and moving further to the left in recent presidential contests, it is not known as a bastion of abortion activism, least of all among GOP primary voters. Hoffman succinctly expresses the sentiment of many Illinois Republicans when he says, "You wonder how in the heck she dreamt it up. I can't imagine what she was thinking."
Wood defiantly ran to the left of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates by recruiting feminist icon Gloria Steinem to campaign for her in the last week before the election. Steinem recorded a voice message that was delivered by an automated telephone system to 80,000 "hard D's," or solid Democrats, urging them to vote in the Republican primary for Wood. This ploy was not a last desperate act; it followed supposedly independent ads aired several months ago by Planned Parenthood trashing Ryan on his abortion record.
Aside from the long history of Democrats rarely voting in Republican primaries in Illinois, Wood's plan had an Achilles' heel: There was a fiercely competitive, three-way Democratic primary. With three true liberals in the Democratic field, Democratic voters had no need to back Wood in her primary fight.
While Wood was busy futilely courting Democrats, O'Malley actually worked to win over traditional Republicans. He ran as the "true conservative" in the race, but he eventually failed to distinguish himself from Ryan, who has long been popular with conservatives. O'Malley had little reason to be in the campaign, and never managed to articulate one. Although he is a wealthy lawyer, O'Malley ran as an unabashed social conservative in a state where fire-and-brimstone doesn't play well. He repeatedly told church audiences that he was on a "holy crusade" to protect the unborn, proclaiming himself a true descendent of the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln.
O'Malley's message didn't even catch on with pro-life voters because Ryan is also pro-life. They both would allow exceptions to save the life of the mother, but Ryan would also allow abortions in cases of rape and incest. But in a world with Roe v. Wade, such a distinction is purely academic.
In the '90s, a string of wealthy conservative upstarts knocked off establishment moderates in primary battles, most recently with now-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald toppling the sitting comptroller, Loleta Didrickson. But since Ryan was the first candidate to announce, he picked up most of the establishment and activist support early, locking in the conservative base tapped by Fitzgerald and others.
Unlike most losing candidates who concede graciously and pledge support for the winner, O'Malley has vowed to do whatever he can to help defeat Ryan in November. This is in keeping with his reputation as a loner and an ideological purist. Says one senior Republican staffer who works for an Illinois congressman, "O'Malley takes policy differences very personally, and he holds grudges against other conservatives, even on minor squabbles."
Given that Wood and O'Malley were diametrically opposed on the central issue for each-abortion, logic would seem to dictate that they would rule out supporting each other. But in this unusual primary, the "odd couple" declared at the last debate that each would support the other over Ryan. O'Malley and Wood may have merely joined forces out of contempt for Ryan, but it hurt their credibility among core backers.
With final results in, Ryan soundly defeated his opponents, garnering 44 percent of the vote, to O'Malley's 29 percent, with Wood bringing up the rear at 26 percent. This victory is not as good as it appears, however, as Ryan was at 50 percent in the election-eve polls, meaning that the undecideds, and even some of Ryan's supporters, broke for the odd couple in the voting booth. The silver lining, of course, is that roughly three-fourths of the voters picked one of the conservative candidates.
Whether or not Ryan is able to pull together a winning coalition for November remains an open question. Regardless of O'Malley's non-endorsement, it's not likely that those who voted for him would shun a pro-life, pro-gun politician with a long conservative track record. Ryan's biggest struggle will be wooing suburban women who backed Wood.
In his acceptance speech late Tuesday night, the Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich pounced on Republican fissures, exclaiming that "fellow Republicans have it right" that Ryan cannot be trusted.
Ryan faces an uphill struggle this fall, particularly with a state party that he himself admits is "in chaos."