At one point last week, Michael Karloutsos, the East Coast political handler brought in to help shape Paul Vallas’ transition from policy wonk to polished candidate, got watery-eyed.
“It’s like watching a little baby grow up,” he said during a crowded reception in former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Glenn Poshard’s living room. Vallas was working the crowd of party faithful with panache. “He’s come so far,” Karloutsos said.
For the political observer who enjoys a good come-from-behind candidate story, Vallas’ impoverished, issue-heavy campaign has been hard to beat even if it has been easy, so far, to ignore.
Reporters privately declared him dead on arrival when, after a series of rumors and denials, he announced–late–that he would run for governor last July. Most of the once crowded Democratic field had stepped forward earlier in the spring. Northwest Side congressman Rod Blagojevich already had a lock on labor endorsements in southern Illinois by the time Vallas stumbled into the race.
What Vallas lacked in political support, he tried to make up for in issues. Exhaustively detailed issues. Overhauling the budget. Reorganizing public-education funding. Bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals.
“What do you think?” he asked before a news conference on his education plan. Flipping frantically through the multipage policy paper, WBBM-AM political reporter Craig Dellimore responded: “Give us a few minutes; we’ll find something wrong with it.”
It was the first of several January press sessions in which Vallas presented multipage policy outlines. Afterward, he would answer questions until communications director Brendan Reilly nervously signaled him to wrap up–maybe 40 minutes later.
He still talks too long at campaign stops, explaining the intricacies of Medicaid reimbursement to bewildered senior citizens, or infrastructure repairs to appreciative superintendents in poor Downstate school districts.
But without money to run television commercials in those early days, dazzling reporters with details was one of the few ways Vallas could get voters at home to see his face.
Meanwhile, the Vallas of the Chicago Public Schools days–the source the press could reach for extensive comment anytime, anywhere–partially faded away. Vallas didn’t quite turn into a politician, but somehow Reilly got him to let his communications staff talk to the press first. Rumor is Reilly threw away the battery in Vallas’ pager.
Just as important a change was getting Vallas to behave like a candidate in front of voters, though that took much longer to achieve.
A political staffer his entire professional life, Vallas is used to standing in the background. Besides organizing details and answering angry questions about the city’s education and budget strategies in the 1990s, he had jobs as former schools chief executive, city budget director and city revenue director that required him to nod supportively behind Mayor Richard M. Daley at public appearances.
Before that, he fed lines and nodded behind state legislators as executive director of the state Economic and Fiscal Commission. As a policy staffer for former state Senate President Phil Rock, he offered the same support.
This year, for the first time, Vallas has found himself at the podium and, as handlers like Karloutsos, Reilly and Poshard keep reminding, voters who recognize you on the street don’t like it when you walk past them without making eye contact.
Though he hasn’t let up on the issues, Vallas has been getting commercials on the air and viewing his conversations with voters as an essential part of retail politics.
