The hits just keep on coming! The Illinois Republican Party, already staggering from a string of electoral defeats and intraparty dissension, took another body blow with last week’s indictment of former Gov. George Ryan. GOP fortunes in Illinois may be heading for an all-time low with the bottom still not clearly in sight. What happened?
Less than a decade ago Illinois Republicans were riding high. They owned the governor’s mansion. Starting with Jim Thompson’s 1976 annihilation of Democrat Mike Howlett, GOP candidates Thompson and Jim Edgar won six straight gubernatorial battles. James “Pate” Phillip ruled the state Senate and, ever so briefly, Lee Daniels was called speaker of the Illinois House. Adding to this “party of plenty” was the fact that every state constitutional officer was a Republican.
No doubt about it, Illinois Democrats were on the ropes with only Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Paul Simon and Carol Moseley Braun, holding up the party’s tattered banner.
In this GOP political blue sky, however, two clouds loomed.
First, the Illinois victory of Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush during the 1992 presidential race. For the first time since 1964, a GOP presidential nominee was unable to carry Illinois.
Second, hard-right GOP conservatives had challenged incumbent Jim Edgar like they did in 1990 for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Though Edgar won easily, his party foe, Jack Roeser, garnered one-fourth of the primary vote, a fact that showed philosophical dissatisfaction with the party’s direction and leadership.
From the glory days of 1994 to the disaster of 2002, the Illinois Republicans have steadily lost ground.
To be sure, in 1998, Republicans George Ryan was elected governor and Peter Fitzgerald became U.S. senator, but both of these major wins could be chalked up to their opponents’ terrible campaigns.
Incredibly, the only Republican left standing today is state treasurer Judy Baar Topinka–a woman often dismissed by her party’s hard-core conservatives and country-club moderates. No longer scorned, she is now looked upon as the party’s savior–irony where is thy sting!
In politics, events and party mistakes can shift fortunes quickly, but at this writing it will take some strong sunshine to break through the recent clouds that have darkened Illinois GOP fortunes.
A closer look should be directed toward the suburbs. For many years, Republican vote margins in suburban Cook County and the five collar counties were a political balance for the overwhelming Democratic margins in Chicago. Unfortunately, for many Republican statewide candidates, this is no longer the case. Demographic changes in the south and west suburbs, a growing new generation of suburbanites in the north and northwest suburbs and the party’s philosophical battles over abortion and guns have shaken Republican suburban power.
Incredibly, this Democratic suburban “political push” has moved into several of the collars, especially eastern Lake County, many parts of Will County and even some areas of Kane and DuPage counties.
Notwithstanding a Republican political resurrection in Chicago (a near impossibility as long as Daley is mayor), to regain their turf Illinois Republicans must walk the suburban lanes and roads and begin reconnecting with this region’s changing electorate. The 2002 Illinois Republican gubernatorial battle was brutal. Three major candidates, Lt. Gov. Corrine Wood, Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan and State Sen. Patrick O’Malley, competed not only for their party’s nomination but also for the future philosophical direction of their party. This high-cost-high-anger campaign proved once again the old political adage that “Republicans are in trouble when they fight over philosophy and Democrats are in trouble when their dominant issue is race.” Clearly, former Gov. George Ryan’s pending legal problems hovered over the 2002 campaign but it was the philosophical differences on key social issues that embittered candidates and their supporters against each other. These old philosophical wounds were reopened brutally, and the fallout led to a Democratic landslide (save Topinka’s re-election).
Ryan’s indictment and subsequent court appearances will most likely dominate news coverage throughout the upcoming hotly contested U.S. senate slugfest and even the presidential race.
However, it would be unfair to blame the next GOP disaster solely on Ryan. The former governor’s problems will be an excuse–and not the reason–for failing GOP fortunes in Illinois.
