Bob’s perception was that the juvenile gangs that have brought death and despair to the streets of Chicago were heading for Arlington Heights. He was also concerned someone would steal his new Weber grill.
Jasmine was distressed about the quality of schools, arguing that Illinois should set one clear, high standard of performance then work to help local school districts meet it.
Marissa saw the central issue as the collapse of the family, that children no longer have dependable families to turn to, so they act out and embrace gangs for support.
Carol’s concern was that the workers of the 1950s-secure in the knowledge that they probably had jobs for life-have shifted into retirement, leaving no one to pass along those values and wisdom.
Then Bob said the real problem was “violence,” but he added a curious addendum to the comment, “Especially on the evening news.”
Jasmine jumped right in. In the suburbs, she said, “There might actually be family values, but mom and dad are never home. There are no guidelines. Kids have nothing better to do. They go out and cause trouble.”
For well over two hours on a hot June night, the nine members of this group, nominally dubbed the non-voting young suburbanites, shifted back and forth and argued in a basement room in the Behavioral Sciences Building at the University of Illinois at Chicago while a panel of political scientists and activists behind one-way glass watched and took detailed notes.
They were making their contribution to the Illinois Voter Project’s push to bring some sense of reality to this year’s gubernatorial race. The goal is to nudge the process beyond the sound bites and quick-fix solutions that are like potato chips in the diet of American politics.
The Illinois League of Women Voters and University of Illinois at Chicago are behind the effort, which is funded by the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust, the Pew Charitable Trust and the New Prospect Foundation.
The project began in March, when a survey of voters identified crime, education and taxes as the most important issues for likely voters. Since that time, “taxes” mysteriously has almost melted away as much of a cause for concern, as least during the focus sessions, while the attention paid to crime and education has heightened.
Now that the focus groups have ended their work, the project will set up two citizens’ agenda panels that reflect the Chicago area’s population. They will interview experts in the fields of crime, education and public policy, then draw up recommendations-a citizen’s platform if you will-that the gubernatorial candidates are expected to discuss in a televised session in October.
The project directors held one of their regular news conferences last week to issue a progress report, along with some early conclusions about what the focus groups had to say, a look at the kinds of issues gubernatorial candidates will be facing later in the year.
Joan Beaubaire, directing the project for the League of Women Voters, said what is most surprising about the focus groups, which included 13 groups reflecting the Chicago area’s racial and political diversity, is that after hours and hours of talk, they arrive at the same basic conclusions.
What everyone wants, she said, is economic stability, intact, dependable families and safe environments for living, learning and working. That is neither surprising nor remarkable, of course. But it is clear the message has not yet been received by the politicians they turn to for solutions to problems.
In almost all of the groups there was a sense that the gubernatorial campaign has been chugging along on its own dynamic, not dealing in any depth at all with the issues that are most important to likely voters.
As might be expected in the summer before an election, no one has much of an idea about candidate positions.
There was also a sense that voters are tired of having campaigns filtered through media that are interested only in the most superficial discussion of issues and signs of weariness with the media’s continuing intensive focus on city-based crime.
Crime was one of the few areas in which differences separated the attitudes of suburbanites from Chicagoans.
Suburbanites tend to worry about property crime and see most of the cause as city based, perhaps because that is the story the media pushes with such numbing regularity. City dwellers worry the most about violent crime and recognize its roots in the community.
Whatever the perception, everyone seems to recognize that crime is not an isolated problem, but a complex one demanding sophisticated solutions tied to a string of other issues.
UIC political science professor Barry Rundquist says it is clear from watching the focus groups that people are no longer satisified with the single solution proposals so common in the political arena. For example, they know that building more prisons is not really the solution to the crime problem.
In fact, some of them think that only will make matters worse because it will contribute to the further decline of family structure. What they want to hear from Gov. Jim Edgar and Democratic challenger Dawn Clark Netsch is exactly what they are going to do to change the situations they believe are directly connected to crime, family decline, poor education and economics.
And that is where the whole process gets a little uncomfortable for the politicians who are on the receiving end. After years of crafting campaigns based on public opinion polling and simplistic themes, this is an effort to tell the political structure that people realize life is more complicated and that they want a better standard of performance from their politicians.
Rundquist says, judging from the focus groups, voters no longer believe politicians have the ability to solve problems. They think the candidates do not understand the needs of communities. Because of that, the government spends millions of dollars on solutions that don’t really address the most serious problems, at least in the eyes of the voters.
That may be the heart of the problem for the suburban non-voters who gathered to talk politics in June. Some of them had been voters at one time; others had never even considered it. Across the board, there was a sense that Illinois politicians are not speaking to them and don’t understand the problems in their lives.
“I used to vote all the time and then I just stopped four years ago,” Carol said. “I just got frustrated. Nothing changes. There is just so much waste. I can’t borrow $10 million when I only have $10 in my checkbook. But this government can do that.”
The panel moderator then put on his politician’s hat and asked the focus group what he would have to do to get them to vote.
“Tell me you are not a politician,” Carol said.
“I don’t want to hear what you are going to say because I know you are going to lie. I want to hear from someone who has a plan and then who will go out and do it. I want you to say there is too much red tape. I want you to say `No, this is not right.’ “
The expressions of frustration moved around the table for about 15 minutes before Jasmine sat back and summed it up.
“We have lost faith in the political system,” she said. “It doesn’t work for us anymore.”
To be sure, the young non-voters were more cynical and pessimistic than most of the focus groups, but they were just as direct as the others in identifying the issues they want to dominate the gubernatorial campaign.
The politician who wants to reach these people will be talking in great depth about very complicated problems in the Illinois economy, in education and in the criminal justice system. The one who gets the votes will be as quick to make connections among those problems as the people who spent some time in the basement of the Behavorial Sciences Building.
