Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson will be forced off the campaign trail for at least two weeks and will remain in the hospital for about three more days to recover from a back injury suffered in a riding accident, campaign and hospital spokesmen said Monday.
Stevenson, 55, suffered a slight fracture of the third lumbar vertebra in his lower back when he was horseback riding Sunday with his daughter, Katie, on his farm near Hanover in northwest Illinois.
The candidate`s aides made adjustments Monday in what was to have been a modest schedule of campaign appearances over the next several days and related Stevenson`s frustration over his latest misfortune.
Stevenson`s wife, Nancy, will substitute for her husband at campaign appearances for the next two weeks, according to Larry Hansen, Stevenson`s campaign manager. Stevenson is planning to address a Tuesday night Democratic dinner in Jacksonville by making a long-distance telephone call from his hospital room.
Campaign press secretary Robert Benjamin said Stevenson is talking about renting a van and a private airplane in order to ”stretch out” between campaign appearances. But, Benjamin said, ”The doctors are really against that.”
Being thrown by the horse was the second setback for Stevenson in the last month. His campaign for governor was jolted in the March 18 Democratic primary when two of his running mates were defeated by followers of extremist Lyndon LaRouche. Stevenson has since indicated that he plans to quit the Democratic ticket and run in the November election on an independent slate.
In Springfield Monday, the chief attorney for the State Board of Elections said the State Democratic Central Committee probably would not be required to name a candidate for governor should Stevenson decline his nomination.
But A.L. Zimmer, general counsel for the elections board, also said he doubted that the courts would rule favorably on any attempt to remove Mark Fairchild, the LaRouche supporter who was nominated for lieutenant governor, from the ballot as Stevenson`s running mate.
Zimmer said many of the questions raised following the upset victories by the LaRouche candidates, including the filling of a vacancy on the ballot, are untested in Illinois courts and unclear in state statutes.
Explaining Stevenson`s riding mishap, Benjamin said the former U.S. senator was on one of several horses that he owns, and it was the first time since last fall that he had ridden the horse.
”He`s not a steady week-after-week rider. He`s not a regular horse rider,” Benjamin said. ”He was riding Sunday so that he and his daughter could spend the afternoon. The horse reared and sort of bucked. . . . If Stevenson had landed with all of his weight on one spot, it could have been much worse.”
A spokesman for Mercy Health Center in Dubuque, Ia., where Stevenson is recovering, said his condition was upgraded Monday from satisfactory to good. Stevenson wasn`t taking telephone calls or receiving visitors, according to the hospital. He is said to be eager to resume campaigning and is frustrated by being sidelined. Stevenson is taking anti-inflammatory medication that Benjamin described as a ”super aspirin.”
”His mood is good, although he is a little cranky that he isn`t fulfilling his campaign obligations,” Hansen said. ”Adlai Stevenson is a very tough guy. He is a fighter, a farmer, a veteran; this is only a temporary delay.”
Gov. James Thompson, Stevenson`s Republican opponent in the November election, said through a spokesman that he wished Stevenson a speedy recovery. The injury will not require surgery or heavy medication, only a period of immobility at the hospital and rest at home, said Pat Fleming, a hospital spokesman. ”He will be out of here in a few days. He will have some pain,”
Fleming said.
The State Board of Elections met Monday to formally certify the results of the primary election. The official results showed that Fairchild received 352,427 votes to 317,700 for State Sen. George Sangmeister (D., Mokena), Stevenson`s choice for lieutenant governor. It was 52.6 percent of the vote for the LaRouche candidate to 47.4 for the endorsed Democratic Party candidate.
Another LaRouche supporter, Janice Hart, defeated Aurelia Pucinski, the endorsed candidate for secretary of state, by 17,173 votes, winning with 51.2 percent of the vote.
Ron Michaelson, executive director of the elections board, said final figures showed that only 25.9 percent of the state`s 6.1 million registered voters went to the polls to vote for statewide, legislative and judicial candidates. That is a decrease from the previous four primary elections in which an average of 27 to 30 percent of the state`s registered voters cast ballots, he said.
