At 8 a.m. on a recent foggy Tuesday, Roger Conant is among a small group gathered outside the refurbished century-old public library, looking for a cup of coffee and the bus ferrying the statewide Democratic ticket.
“A lot of people in the Chicago area think southern Illinois ends at Springfield,” Conant, a burly retiree from nearby Villa Ridge, says as he waits for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Glenn Poshard of Marion. “To have a man that’s knowledgeable of this region would be great.”
In deep southern Illinois, a region long known as “Little Egypt,” prospects for economic and political opportunity among Democrats have been as arid as its namesake. But that has made the area fertile political ground now for an election that will not take place until Nov. 3.
The area has seen an exodus of jobs, especially in coal mining, which has faced more stringent pollution laws. Within the 27 counties Poshard represents in the 19th Congressional District, there are more prisons than junior colleges. Of more than a half-million people who live in Poshard’s district, 46,000 families earned less than $26,000 in 1996, according to the most recent statistics available.
Against such a backdrop, Poshard’s candidacy has been greeted with almost religious fervor among Democrats in the areas he has represented in Washington for a decade.
That is what makes Downstate the great battleground between Poshard and the Republican nominee, Secretary of State George Ryan of Kankakee.
“In the past, (Democrats) win the city of Chicago by a million votes, we lose the suburbs by a million votes and then we’ve lost Downstate,” Poshard said. “This time, we’re not losing Downstate. We’re winning.”
At a time of increasing cynicism of the political process, Poshard inspires fierce passion among Democrats who believe they have gotten the short end in regional fights involving Chicago, the suburbs and Downstate. They consider themselves the inhabitants of an Illinois more akin in custom and closer in mileage to Memphis than Chicago.
The outlet for that passion is the ballot box. In the four-way March 17 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Poshard racked up totals comparable to those in Chicago’s legendary “river wards.” In Poshard’s home county of Williamson, he got 11,886 votes, while his nearest challenger got 202. In Hardin County, Poshard got 1,139 votes. The runner-up received 14.
Of the 96 counties outside the Chicago metropolitan area, Poshard lost two: Champaign and DeKalb.
Democrats across the state have bemoaned the fact that Republicans have held control of the governor’s office–and the clout and jobs that go with it–ever since renegade Dan Walker walked out of the Executive Mansion and Jim Thompson took over in 1977.
Those feelings become more acute the closer one gets to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. There, the old-fashioned allure of state jobs, pork-barrel projects and potential for lucrative contracts is viewed as a primary source of economic development.
Rather than being enriched from the government pork of new roads, bridges, schools and sewers, Democrats believe they have gotten the rinds: prisons.
“For 22 years, we haven’t gotten nothing out of this state. We’re sure going to get something this time,” Mac Warfield, the Madison County Democratic chairman, told his troops at the county courthouse in Edwardsville. “Go out and work hard from now until Election Day, and when you come out looking for jobs, we’ll get something for once.”
Yet, even with all of the hype over Poshard’s showing in the primary, Democrats and Republicans acknowledge that Downstate is not a monolithic voting bloc.
Despite the intensely fought Democratic gubernatorial primary, more Republican than Democratic primary ballots were cast in the 96 counties outside the Chicago metropolitan area.
Democrats grabbed almost 75,000 more ballots than Republicans in the southern Illinois region Poshard has served in Congress. But Republicans took 100,000 more ballots than Democrats in central and northwestern Illinois.
“How do you classify Downstate?” said Ryan, who already has set up GOP county coordinators throughout the region and plans to devote significant time south of Interstate Highway 70. “I’ll concede to (Poshard’s) congressional district that he probably will run very well there and have that pretty well locked up. But I think outside of that . . . I don’t think he’s got any of those areas locked up.”
Downstate also represents a paradox for Poshard’s campaign rhetoric. Even as he tries to take advantage of his local popularity, he decries the politics of regionalism in the state.
“When I was campaigning in the primary and I went out all over the state, we really see ourselves as almost three different states: We’re the city, we’re the suburbs, we’re Downstate. We’re not. We’re one state. We’re one people,” Poshard said.
Yet Poshard acknowledged, “There’s almost a standoff between the city and the suburbs” in gubernatorial general elections. That only heightens the importance of Downstate to Democrats, “where traditionally we just get plastered.”
That is why in Taylorville he promised support for a long-sought widening of a major highway to and from Springfield. And in Newton, he vowed to name running mate Mary Lou Kearns, a registered nurse and the Kane County coroner, to head efforts to improve rural health care.
And throughout Downstate, Poshard continues to push for a revamping of the way taxpayers finance public schools to increase the state’s income tax and offset property taxes to provide what he calls economic fairness to primarily rural areas.
Though his positions in Congress opposing gun control and abortion rights have raised concerns about his appeal to Democrats in the Chicago metropolitan area in the general election, regional parochialism and his social conservatism may win him some converts Downstate.
“I’m a Republican normally, but I’m going to have to support (Poshard) because he’s got some issues,” said James Gregory of rural Murphysboro. “I like his stand on abortion. I’m certainly against abortion and I understand he is too. And gun control. I was thinking he was against gun control. Those two topics I am concerned about most.”
And there is a feeling in deep southern Illinois, especially among the have-not Democrats, that it is time for a Downstater to be elected governor–never mind that in 1990 and 1994 voters elected Republican Jim Edgar, a native of Charleston.
Edgar is “not a Downstater,” Conant said as he warmed to his coffee outside the Cairo library. “He married a girl from Anna. But that doesn’t make him a Downstater. He’s a Chicagoite.”
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: To view Poshard’s results in the primary election by region, by county or by township, go to chicago.tribune.com/go/poshard
