While Illinois Republicans are engaging in a public family squabble over the shape of their 1998 ticket, Democrats have decided to move their ballot battles behind closed doors.
The state Democratic Party is scheduled to hold two candidate forums Downstate next week and another in Chicago on Nov. 8 as party leaders seek a consensus on a ticket heading into the slatemaking season.
At those forums, the more than a dozen announced or potential candidates vying for Illinois’ six statewide elective offices are to present their views and then field questions from an audience of invited party leaders and labor officials. All others will be kept on the outside of the sessions at the Rend Lake Resort near Mt. Vernon on Tuesday, a carpenters union hall in Springfield on Wednesday and the Chicago meeting at a site still to be selected.
The decision represents a departure from the openness that has marked the tenure of state Democratic Party Chairman Gary LaPaille, himself a potential candidate for state treasurer.
The party’s state central committee meetings have remained open, despite sometimes contentious questioning over how Democrats were shutout for major statewide office in the 1994 election. But LaPaille said he has held previous closed-door candidate forums in an effort to prevent candidates from attempting to one-up each other before the media.
“You have a potential for people who might get up and say (inopportune) things. The people who will go to these–county chairmen, state representatives and state senators–feel better if they can ask tough questions,” LaPaille said.
“It is designed so that it doesn’t turn into a rally . . . (and) people will act in a more professional type of atmosphere,” he said.
LaPaille also said the closed-door setting will provide “a good training ground for some of these candidates to see how they do on their feet.”
The forums are aimed at providing the Democratic State Central Committee with enough information to decide on whether to issue endorsements when it convenes Nov. 24 in Chicago.
