Quick. Which Illinois county swung an entire presidential election by providing enough votes to a candidate running against the current vice president of the United States to give the challenger Illinois?
If you answered Cook County, you’re right. In 1960’s closest-in-history presidential election, late returns from Cook County provided the margin of victory to give Illinois to John Kennedy over Richard Nixon.
But you get only partial credit for an incomplete answer. Eight years later, Illinois made it up to Richard Nixon by giving him the electoral margin of victory over Vice President Hubert Humphrey, thanks to the late return of a single county.
This time, that county was Lake.
Of 128,506 ballots cast (for an 81 percent turnout), Nixon received 68,909 to Humphrey’s 43,409.
No less a 1968 election observer than Julie Nixon Eisenhower, younger daughter of the late president, related the pivotal role of Lake County in the biography of her mother, “Pat Nixon: The Untold Story,” published a decade ago.
On Election Night, she recounted, John Mitchell, the campaign’s director, was on the phone to a Democratic official in Illinois, saying, “We know we’ve won. We’ve got the votes.”
“The message was for Mayor Richard (J.) Daley: Release the Cook County votes, and Republicans would release Lake County,” she wrote. “Republicans could count too, and there was no point in further delay. Thirty minutes later, Daley’s precincts reported, and ABC declared Illinois in the Nixon column.”
Based on that development, ABC declared Nixon the winner nationally. On Election Night 1968, Georgeanne Depke, longtime Gurnee Republican committeewoman, was at the old county courthouse in Waukegan when the votes were counted. She confirmed Eisenhower’s account.
“Lake County held out the vote until about 2:30 a.m. because the Republicans knew Lake County would come in very heavy Republican,” she said. “They were afraid Mayor Daley would do something in Chicago to throw the election to Humphrey. No one expected little Lake County to be the one that put Nixon over the top.”
Added Donna-May Litwiler, Long Lake (Grand Township) Republican precinct committeewoman, who coordinated Illinois’ Women for Nixon organization, “Two weeks before the election, Nixon sat next to me at a breakfast and asked where I was from. When I said Lake County, he replied, `That is one of the most important counties in the U.S. for me because of the potentially big size of the Republican vote.’ “
Lake County’s contribution to Nixon’s first presidential victory hasn’t been the only time the county has served as kingmaker.
“It was the same thing when Thompson ran in 1982,” said Depke, former Gov. James Thompson’s Lake County campaign coordinator at the time. “He only won by 5,074 votes statewide over Adlai Stevenson III, originally from Libertyville, and Grace Mary Stern, then top vote-getter in Lake County.”
Thompson, now chairman of the Chicago law firm of Winston & Strawn, confirmed their remembrances. “I can’t overestimate how important Lake County was in putting me over,” he said. “Its vote was so important, we had field folks going door to door to detect the slightest change in sentiment so that we could give an extra push, if necessary.”
The Democrats unsuccessfully challenged the final vote count with a recount that showed Thompson with 72,375 votes to Stevenson’s 40,739. “It was Lake County after the recount that made sure Thompson was the next governor,” Litwiler said.
The county’s election prominence isn’t confined to its past. This spring, CNN named Lake County as one of 10 bellwether counties for use in analyzing election returns nationally.
“Few counties have the diversity of Lake County,” explained Marc Watts, a Chicago-based CNN national political correspondent. “It’s suburban, urban and rural all in one, has large concentrations of young and old, black, white, Hispanic and other nationalities.”
“Lake County is one of the few counties in the U.S. that’s a true microcosm of America because there are agricultural, suburban and urban voters with different needs,” said John Schulien of Libertyville, Republican county chairman.
Interest in Lake County’s election results is so strong that County Clerk Willard Helander reported receiving numerous calls from national media during last spring’s primary. In March, Lake became the biggest county statewide to operate a Web page (http://www.co.lake.il.us), where election results were posted on the Internet. Results were downloaded more than 2,800 times that night, Helander said. The Nov. 5 election results also will be posted.
What’s underlying the interest in Lake County?
Statewide, Lake provides the third-highest number of votes (after Cook and DuPage Counties) for both major parties. Historically, 65 percent of the votes cast are Republican and 35 percent Democrat.
The number of possible votes–of the estimated 425,000 residents eligible to vote, almost 300,000 are registered–attracts some of the attention, said Schulien, GOP county chairman, and Terry Link of Vernon Hills, his Democratic counterpart.
That’s a giant leap in 50 years, said Lake County native Michael Barone, a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report magazine and one of the nation’s foremost analysts of county election patterns. In 1944, Cook County cast 2.2 million and Lake cast 61,000. In 1992, Cook cast 2.1 million and Lake cast 223,000, a 5 percent decrease for Cook, a 266 percent gain for Lake.
Another attention-grabber is the unusually high voter turnout, which politicians attribute to highly educated, politically educated voters. “Where 40 to 50 percent is considered a good turnout for a general election nationwide, Lake County votes 70 percent or higher,” Link noted.
These unusual patterns have helped Lake County play a significant role in recent elections.
Waukegan attorney Jay Ukena was the first county chairman to endorse now-Sen. Paul Simon when Simon ran against Philip Rock, the Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, in the 1984 Democratic Senate primary. Simon received 14,991 votes compared with DuPage County attorney Alex Seith’s 6,967 and Rock’s 4,338.
“In the primary election, Simon had tremendous percentages,” Ukena explained. “As a result of those tremendous percentages, it helped him to carry the state. He couldn’t have won without Lake County’s vote.”
“Lake County was very good to me,” confirmed Simon, who will retired from the U.S. Senate in January. “One of the first signals I received that I was winning statewide was when we got those first preliminary precinct returns from Lake County.”
In the 1980 Republican primary, Lake County voted overwhelmingly for then-U.S. Rep. John Anderson over the organization-endorsed choice, Ronald Reagan. “It was a wakeup call to a lot of Republicans and Reagan forces,” said former U.S. Atty. Fred Foreman, who ran in his first race for county state’s attorney that year.
“They focused on Lake County,” said Foreman, now a lawyer with Freeborn & Peters in Chicago. “Before then, I was losing. When the strong Republican areas came in for Reagan, I won my race.”
In the March 1980 primary, Anderson received 28,023 compared with 22,708 for Reagan in Lake County. Reagan received 96,350 versus 48,287 for Jimmy Carter in the general election.
“Typically when we win Lake County contests with 50-60-75,000 votes, that’s an important margin, when you think of the close elections often decided by 100,000 votes or less statewide,” said Harold Smith, state Republican chairman.
Some analysts attribute interest in Lake County to its strong precinct organizations. Many county political organizations nationwide have shifted from person-to-person contact to more reliance on direct mail and media advertising, said Lake Forest College political science professor Paul Fischer.
Lake County is the exception. The Republican Party has 359 precinct committeemen of 403 precincts. “You have people providing grass roots,” Foreman said. “It made the difference in the (Al) Salvi campaign for Senate this year.”
The local Republican precinct organization was highlighted at last spring’s Midwestern Republican leadership conference in Green Bay, Wis. Lake County was one of three counties selected for its innovative ideas, such as use of door-to-door campaigning by precinct committee people, phone polling and voter identification strategies, said Schulien, 54. Lake County was the model suburban county presented with urban and rural examples.
Democrats cover about 250 precincts and are seeing a surge in interest, particularly in Buffalo Grove, Deerfield and Vernon Hills, said Link, 49, of North Chicago. He estimated a 15 percent to 20 percent growth in voting strength since 1991. “We’ve had a large influx of traditional Democratic voters from Cook County and also a lot of people from outside the state coming in,” he said.
Given such a prominent political past, what do political analysts predict will be Lake County’s role a week from Tuesday?
“I’m watching to see whether Lake County moderates go to the Republican or Democratic side,” said Rich Miller, editor of Capitol Fax, a Springfield-based political newsletter. “That’s where the political focus is today and for the foreseeable future. For Democrats to stay competitive, they’ve got to begin to do well with upscale, informed electorates like Lake County’s.”
Other political analysts watch Lake County’s vote for state legislative races, particularly the tight race between Democrat Lauren Beth Gash and Republican Joel Gingiss, both of Highland Park, in the 60th Illinois House District. Currently, Republicans hold the Illinois Senate and the House by margins of less than six votes.
“If Clinton is winning big, we want to see the effect of his coattails on races that could make the difference in state legislature majorities,” said CNN’s Watts. “A couple of votes difference could change the majority party in either the state House or Senate.”
LAKE COUNTY’S CRUCIAL ROLE
Lake County played crucial roles for Richard Nixon as president, James Thompson as governor and Paul Simon as senator.
1968 — In a book about her mother, Julie Nixon Eisenhower explained how the county played a role in a standoff between Republicans and Democrats over the outcome of the Illinois vote, with Lake’s total putting Richard Nixon over the top against Hubert Humphrey.
1982 — “I can’t overestimate how important Lake County was in putting me over,” former Gov. James Thompson says. “Its vote was so important, we had field folks going door to door to detect the slightest change in sentiment so that we could give an extra push, if necessary.”
1984 — “Lake County was very good to me,” says retiring U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. “One of the first signals I received that I was winning statewide was when we got those first preliminary precinct returns from Lake County” in the Democratic primary.
