Your elected pol is well, um, um, um . . . breathing

From The Chicago Tribune:

Your elected pol is well, um, um, um . . . breathing
Casting a ballot for bad or really bad politicians Tuesday

By Cornelia Grumman. Cornelia Grumman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board
Published November 3, 2002

During election season, most people focus on the candidates we already know too much about.

It's my job to focus on the littler people.

These are the stepchildren of the ballot, the ones voters read virtually nothing about, the strangers whose smiling yet concerned faces grace our doorknobs and crowd our mailboxes this time of year.

They are the candidates running for the Illinois legislature.

They are an interesting and important, if media-neglected, lot. And it's just that neglect that helps explain why only a disappointingly small number of candidates live up to our 7th grade social studies notion of how representative democracy should work.

Since September, as the person who coordinates the Tribune's political endorsements, I've interviewed 96 of these candidates vying for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly. I interviewed another 127 before the spring primary.

Many would sustain a voter's faith in the system. In the northern suburbs, Democrat Pat Hughes and Republican Beth Coulson are informed, worldly, pragmatic and hard-working. Whatever the outcome of that 17th District House race, voters will wind up with an excellent representative. The same holds true in a handful of other districts around the state.

In too many races, though, the competition is exceptionally weak. The incumbents are shoo-ins, and everybody knows it--including their opponents. A surprising number never take a step on the campaign trail, are woefully unqualified or make little sense.

One west suburban candidate attempted to explain how, if the state invests more money in poor communities, somewhere down the line it will save trees. A one-issue Senate candidate from central Illinois wants state-funded mammograms and colonoscopies for everybody, and assured with a wink he will get the estimated $200 million funding for it (no problem) because he's a pal of powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan, who sometimes gives him tickets to White Sox games. One north suburban House candidate spent almost his entire interview talking about his prolonged child-custody battle as though he were in a psychotherapist's office. In the primary, one incumbent wrote that she represented the "10th Districk" and that she "past" legislation in her first term.

The sad thing is, the ballot is filtered with hayseeds, hacks, cranks, mopes, phantoms, slimeballs, sheep and folks who would have to cram to pass the 3rd grade Illinois Student Achievement Test.

Illinois' legislative redistricting system is partly to blame. A coin toss decides which party gets to protect its incumbents with creatively drawn district boundary lines. The losing party often doesn't even bother coming up with a credible opponent in many races.

Too often endorsement decisions boiled down to this: The mope or the slimeball? The numbskull or the hack? The sheep or the phantom?

A few have arrest records. Many let others think for them--particularly if it means their campaign will get bankrolled by that group.

In McHenry County, Democrat Gloria Urch asserted in her questionnaire that she opposed expansion of charter schools in Chicago, a teacher union position. When asked why, she conceded she had no idea what charter schools were.

GOP Rep. Bob Biggins, a House leader on an appropriations committee, repeatedly refused to offer a single idea for what might be cut from state government to deal with the current budget crisis. "It does no good to cite specific examples before the election because then my opponent and interest groups would just attack them," he explained. Voters can be a hindrance in elections, it's true.

Asked about whether it was appropriate for leadership to dole out pork money according to which legislator had an upcoming tough election, Democrat Don Harmon of Oak Park, now running unopposed in the 39th Senate District, said he saw no problem with the practice of using taxpayer money for political gain: "To the victor go the spoils."

Democratic State Sen. Bob Molaro of Chicago, who was redrawn out of his district and is running now for the 21st District House seat, exhibited a charmingly bold brand of honesty. He once opposed privatization of jail food services, he explained, because he was under enormous pressure from unions to do so and "I didn't have the courage to stand up to them." Upon hearing later about successful privatization experiments in Cook and DuPage counties, he now supports the measure.

On the issue of how to reform the death penalty, the responses by scores of candidates were disappointing in both their parochialism and their hypocrisy. Nearly everyone said they supported the moratorium on executions, agreeing that our capital punishment system was flawed and needed to be fixed. But many then opposed all the proposed fixes. Others said simply, "That doesn't affect my district" to explain why they knew nothing about the issue.

Maybe legislative salaries aren't high enough to attract better quality candidates. Or maybe legislative money and power in the General Assembly is so concentrated in the hands of only four leaders in the House and Senate that it's a waste of time for most candidates to think about anything beyond narrow interests that pertain only to their district, rather than to the entire state.

That's too bad. Because many of them turn out to be mopes, hacks and hayseeds, and one of them may be your next state legislator.

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E-mail: cgrumman@tribune.com