It was by all accounts a sell-out crowd. For the first time in the memory of many of those in attendance, people with money-in-hand were turned away at the door.
”If you would have told me a year ago you were going to have a fundraiser in Du Page County charging $50 a head and that we would have to turn people away, I wouldn`t have believed it possible,” said U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.), the featured speaker at Sunday`s Du Page County Democratic Party gala.
Looking around the packed ballroom of the Naperville Sheraton, Michael Donohue, chairman of the rebuilding Du Page Democratic organization, acknowledged the impossible might have been accomplished. More than 500 people were packed into the ballroom.
”There were skeptics who said this couldn`t be done,” he said, noting the turnout indicated the group might be coming of age.
It has been more than a decade since Du Page Democrats, without importing union leaders from Cook County, have been able to fill a ballroom for a fundraiser.
Slightly more than a year ago, no more than 50 Du Page Democrats could be found to welcome home Du Page County Board member Jane Spirgel, who was campaigning as Adlai Stevenson`s running mate for secretary of state. Stevenson, Spirgel and Michael J. Howlett Jr. formed the Solidarity Party rather than run on a ticket with two Lyndon LaRouche candidates who won the Democratic primary nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state. ”It`s quite a difference, isn`t it?” Spirgel asked.
A little more than a decade ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal that weakened the GOP, crowds of 500 or more were not unusual at the annual Democratic fundraisers.
”These people wouldn`t remember that though,” said former Addison Township Democratic Chairman Hubert ”Bud” Loftus, referring to the crowd that was liberally sprinkled with young professionals.
Many of Loftus` generation have now drifted away from the old organization, and Donohue is looking for fresh faces to rebuild. While Du Page Democrats never were in a position to challenge the Republican domination of the county, in the 1970s there were as many as 4 Democrats on the 25-member Du Page board. Now there are none.
The size of the crowd Sunday was all the more surprising because Du Page has not been particularly kind to Simon. He lost the county to Charles Percy by 109,000 votes when he was elected to the Senate in 1984. He lost it to former Gov. Dan Walker by a 3-1 margin in the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
He did, however, win the 1984 Democratic senatorial primary by more than 5,000 votes over three other candidates.
For Simon and other Democrats, the rebuilding of the Du Page organization is important.
Du Page may produce the largest plurality of Republican votes of any county in the state, but it also produces 40,000 or more Democratic votes in major elections–the second highest total behind only Cook County.
”Some of you now have to be sacrificial lambs and run for the County Board in order to help build things up,” Simon said. ”You`ll win one here and one there and then suddenly you`ll be very surprised.”
