Despite long-standing ties to the state’s GOP establishment, Republican candidate for governor Ron Gidwitz and his new running mate, state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, introduced themselves Wednesday as the ticket of reform that would bring integrity and ethics to their party and to state government.
But the newest political team in the race for the March 21 Republican primary also carries some insider baggage. Gidwitz, a former chairman of the state Republican Finance Committee, has doled out tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to discredited former Gov. George Ryan, and Rauschenberger’s district benefited from Ryan’s massive pork-infused public works program.
The Gidwitz-Rauschenberger ticket presents Republicans with an odd coupling of ideology, finances and style. Gidwitz, a wealthy social moderate businessman from Chicago, is now paired with Rauschenberger, a social conservative from Elgin who gave up his 4-month-long quest for governor to run as Gidwitz’s choice for lieutenant governor.
Both men have been struggling in the single digits in early public opinion polls despite Gidwitz’s use of television commercials and Rauschenberger’s use of harsh rhetoric, most notably in recent days as he tried to cloud the week-old candidacy of the early front-runner, state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. Rauschenberger, an unsuccessful U.S. Senate contender last year, also had failed to raise a significant amount of money this year for his run for governor.
While acknowledging they differed on some things, Rauschenberger insisted the two agreed on about “90 percent” of the issues. And he said he felt Gidwitz was the only candidate who could bring change to the state’s most pressing issue–reforming a state government that has been plagued by scandals under Ryan and current Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
“The knee-jerk labels that we’ve kind of sort of earned so far–that Ron’s liberal and I’m conservative–don’t describe our vision of the future,” Rauschenberger said in Springfield. “This is about the future of the state of Illinois and our commitment to engage in system change and reform.”
But campaign finance records show Gidwitz, who once ran the family’s Helene Curtis Industries, donated at least $32,000 to Ryan in the last decade and also contributed thousands of dollars to prominent Democrats, including Mayor Richard Daley.
“… I raised money and quite frankly didn’t get involved in the intricacies of Republican Party politics,” Gidwitz said. “And it’s only been since I started to run for this office that I focused on what was truly going on in the Republican Party, and I don’t happen to like what I see, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re here today.”
Rauschenberger, who served as the Senate Republican point man on state budgets when Ryan pushed through his Illinois FIRST public works program, said he constantly battled with Ryan and former Gov. Jim Edgar over spending issues and was kicked out of the executive mansion by Ryan. Yet in Ryan’s final full year in office, as the state faced financial pressures, Rauschenberger secured a $40,000 grant to for a documentary on the long-defunct Elgin Watch Co.
In the Republican primary for governor, Gidwitz faces Topinka, another social moderate, as well as social conservatives state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington and businessman Jim Oberweis of Aurora.
A Topinka aide questioned the ability of Gidwitz and Rauschenberger to carry the reform mantle. And Brady and Oberweis said they didn’t think the addition of Rauschenberger would help Gidwitz’s campaign but would instead help Brady and Oberweis gain additional conservative voters.
Though Gidwitz and Rauschenberger are running as a team, primary voters cast separate ballots to nominate candidates for governor and lieutenant governor.
During a Chicago news conference, Rauschenberger said if he wins his nomination but Gidwitz loses, he would “offer my resignation” to the winner of the primary race for governor. But later in Springfield, he stopped short of unequivocally refusing to run with somebody else, saying he wouldn’t “force myself into a lieutenant governor’s race on an unwilling gubernatorial candidate.”
Rauschenberger has long called for the ouster of the state GOP’s national committeeman and Republican National Committee treasurer, Robert Kjellander. Rauschenberger has described Kjellander as a consummate insider who works both sides of the political aisle and who collected $809,000 in fees from a brokerage firm in the Blagojevich administration’s 2003 sale of pension bonds.
But Gidwitz in the past has supported Kjellander, even voting for him when Rauschenberger unsuccessfully ran for the GOP national committeeman’s post last year.
“That was in the midst of a presidential campaign,” Gidwitz said. “We needed to have some harmony in our party.”
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jchase@tribune.com
rlong@tribune.com
