State Sen. Lisa Madigan won the nomination for Illinois attorney general on Tuesday as the formidable Democratic political organization of her father, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), easily dispensed of lawyer John Schmidt.
On the Republican side, DuPage County State’s Atty. Joe Birkett handily won his race against Chicago lawyer Bob Coleman.
The victories set up a general election battle that will focus on the experience and ideology of the Republican suburban prosecutor and the Democratic first-term state senator from Chicago.
With almost all the state’s precincts counted, Madigan had 58 percent of the vote and a comfortable lead over Schmidt, a former U.S. Justice Department official.
Birkett, the choice of his party’s leadership, declared victory early in the evening, winning 64 percent of the vote with almost all the ballots counted. Coleman’s humorous TV ads came up short in the face of Birkett’s considerable party support.
Madigan, accompanied by her father in the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago’s Loop, emphasized the word “earned” when she thanked supporters for helping her garner the nomination.
“Some people have been saying this race is all about family,” Madigan said as her parents looked on. “You know what? They are right. But this campaign is not about my family. It’s about your family.”
Failing to materialize was a rumored backlash against the speaker’s intense campaigning for his daughter. Under that scenario, party loyalists resentful of Madigan’s intervention would cast their ballots for Schmidt. But disenfranchised by the party hierarchy–including former boss and friend Mayor Richard Daley–Schmidt failed to draw enough of the rank-and-file even in the privacy of the voting booth.
“I don’t think it was the Madigan name so much as the Madigan muscle,” Schmidt said. “I think I was up against every ounce of power and money and muscle that the Democratic organization could bring to bear. And in the end they won.”
Surrounded by top Republican brass and dozens of his family members, Birkett credited voters with valuing his experience in public service over a clever marketing scheme, and he predicted the same message would help him win the general election in the fall.
“I’ve been to every corner of this state spreading the message that the office of attorney general is no place for on-the-job training,” Birkett said. “Experience should carry the day.”
Even though the popular line of political parodies served up as TV commercials caused his name recognition to soar, Coleman failed to turn that familiarity into significant support. Critics had wondered all along whether Coleman’s decision not to follow up his funny ads with some about his qualifications would leave people laughing, but not voting for him.
Lackluster turnout
A lackluster turnout of voters no doubt helped the two establishment candidates, who, with the aid of the party infrastructure, were able to get their supporters to the polls in greater numbers.
The outcome of the primaries pits the hard-line conservative prosecutor Birkett against the liberal Madigan, a young lawyer and community organizer with one of the best political patrons in the state. Different in experience and ideology, the two candidates will battle over resumes and visions for the office.
Sure to be an issue is Birkett’s unswerving support for the capital justice system. He opposes Gov. George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty and thinks problems with its administration that have resulted in wrongful conviction have already been remedied. Madigan disagrees with that position.
The two will certainly raise the issue of abortion rights, which Birkett opposes and Madigan supports.
As for their visions of the office. Birkett believes the attorney general should be the state’s top law enforcer. Madigan, a community organizer and legislator, believes the attorney general should also be an advocate.
In each case, the candidates will pick up attacking one another where their respective opponents eliminated on Tuesday left off. Each primary race grew unexpectedly competitive, as Coleman’s ads turned Birkett’s walk in the park into a footrace, and Madigan’s father set up a test of loyalty for family and friends.
The speaker drew fire for marshaling all the resources of his state Democratic Party in his daughter’s race, even soliciting friends’ wedding guest and Christmas card lists to direct campaign letters.
Schmidt kept up a steady barrage of accusations that Madigan was capitalizing on her father’s influence to make her way into office, but the efforts fell short.
Virtual unknown
While the family drama played out in the Democratic primary, Birkett took on a virtual unknown in Coleman, a business litigator unknown before entering the race late last year. Oddsmakers counted on Birkett to run away with it and dismissed the newcomer Coleman as a put-up by the Madigans to weaken Birkett before the general election.
Birkett was probably the most widely known prosecutor in the state and has been outspoken on criminal issues and a vocal critic of Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty. He recently prosecuted Marilyn Lemak in a high-profile trial that led to the conviction of the Naperville mother for killing her three children.
But with considerable personal wealth at his disposal, Coleman concocted a series of ads poking fun at his own political ineptitude–showing him failing comically at baby kissing and speechmaking–while labeling him “a great lawyer, not a great politician.”
Coleman’s failure to follow up the funny ads with more substantive ones left critics asking whether he was really serious about winning.
Tuesday night, the question was moot.
“I hope the other candidates in both parties … will stop attacking each other,” Coleman said as he conceded, while his 19-month-old grandson, Brendan Crotty, applauded wildly.
