Disciples of the ultra-right, anti-communist Lyndon LaRouche gloated Wednesday after unofficial returns showed the group apparently winning stunning victories in the races for nomination to two major state offices in Tuesday`s Democratic primary.
At a news conference Wednesday at the Chicago headquarters of the LaRouche organization, the National Democratic Policy Committee, at 4507 N. Kedzie Ave., Sheila Jones, a leader of the group, told reporters, ”We have done everything to bring you to these hallowed walls, and you come now because you fear that we just might win the general election.”
Unofficial returns showed LaRouche candidate Janice Hart winning her race for the Democratic nomination for Illinois secretary of state by nearly 16,000 votes over the candidate slated by party leaders, Metropolitan Sanitary District Commissioner Aurelia Pucinski.
Those returns also showed Mark Fairchild, who joined the LaRouche group less than five months ago, leading another slated candidate, State Sen. George Sangmeister (D., Mokena), by about 21,000 votes in the race for the party`s nomination for lieutenant governor.
The apparent defeats of Pucinski and Sangmeister were especially embarrassing to Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who worked hard to have the two slated by party leaders.
Fairchild rubbed it in Wednesday, saying he had extended an invitation to Stevenson for a meeting. ”I`d like to talk to him,” Fairchild said. ”I`d like to discuss the platform we`re running on.”
The apparent victories for the LaRouche group astounded observers in both major political parties throughout the state. They came on the same day that a suspect in the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was identified as a member of another right-wing extremist group linked to LaRouche.
The suspect, Victor Gunnarsson, a 32-year-old teacher, is listed as a member of the European Labor Party, headquartered in West Germany and directed by LaRouche`s wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. On Wednesday, Swedish police released Gunnarsson because a key element in the evidence against him had collapsed.
LaRouche, 64, of Leesburg, Va., has run for U.S. President three times since 1976. Originally associated with left-wing groups, he swung to the far right in the 1970s, warning of an international conspiracy involving the Rockefeller family, the Ford Foundation, major labor unions, Israeli intelligence and Queen Elizabeth II.
In interviews and at the news conference, Hart and Fairchild presented themselves as young staunch conservatives with little political experience.
Hart, 31, said she spent only about $50 on her campaign for the Democratic nomination for secretary of state. Her husband, Robert, was an unsuccessful candidate in the four-way race for the nomination as Illinois treasurer, although he received 14 percent of the vote in that contest.
She was born in New York City and now lives on Chicago`s Northwest Side. She joined the LaRouche group in 1973, the year she graduated from high school. She did not attend college, explaining, ”I wasn`t getting into a lot of baloney in college.” She came to Chicago in 1976.
Hart said her campaign consisted of speeches before groups around the state. In explaining her apparent victory, she said, ”People are sick of the lies and corruption in the regular Democratic Party.”
Questioned about her political philosophy, she said, ”You can`t separate economics from morality. We`re going to restore morality to our economy.”
She described the Gramm-Rudman law, the congressional attempt to cut the huge federal deficit, as ”an evil economic policy. We will work to revoke the Gramm-Rudman bill.”
In addition, she said the federal government desperately needs to build its defense. She favors quick implementation of the controversial Star Wars defense system and said $100 billion needs to be added to the federal defense budget. She also said that Illinois needs to seek government defense contracts.
Both she and Fairchild said that, if elected, they would use their offices to try to prevent banks from laundering drug money.
”We`ve got to go after these banks that are laundering drug money,”
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Fairchild said. ”These guys are the financiers of the drug trade.”
Fairchild, 28, is a native of Rockford who lives on Chicago`s North Side. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1979 with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked as a field engineer for the Hewlett-Packard computer firm from 1979 through Nov. 1, 1985, when he joined the LaRouche group. He now works for Caucus Distributors, the publishing arm of the LaRouche group.
”I began to get upset with what is happening to the United States,” he said, explaining that he opposes the dismantling of means of production in the United States, such as shutting steel mills.
”I don`t care how much you cut government spending. As long as you are consuming more than you produce, you`re going to go broke,” he said.
If elected, Fairchild said, he would use the state`s power of eminent domain to stop steel mills from being closed and farms from being foreclosed. Diane Miller, office manager for the Pucinski campaign headquarters at 6204 N. Milwaukee Ave., said Hart and another woman came into the headquarters about three weeks ago and asked for Pucinski.
”They came barreling in,” Miller said. ”The candidate spoke almost no words.”
When told that Pucinski was not in the office, the other woman approached Miller and, according to Miller, asked her, ”We challenge you to take the AIDS test.”
”I thought she was kidding,” Miller said. ”But she was being very serious.”
After leaving a LaRouche newspaper and a 10-page pamphlet on AIDS at the office, the two women left, Miller said.
Referring to Pucinski`s apparent loss to Hart, Miller said, ”It`s absolutely–I can`t comprehend it. It makes me nuts. It blows me away. I keep wondering, what did I do wrong?”
Terry Jones, husband of Sheila Jones, who lost to Sen. Alan Dixon in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 85 percent to 15 percent, said Hart and Fairchild were successful because ”we were getting out and organizing people at the grass roots, setting up tables and getting out literature. This is no thanks to the media who ignored us. We`ve got potentially thousands of people behind us.”
While other LaRouche candidates didn`t win, some, such as Marshall Hoffman of Downers Grove, did much better than anyone could have expected.
Hoffman, a resident of the 13th Congressional District, was running for the Democratic nomination in the west suburban 6th Congressional District and garnered more than a third of the vote against Robert Renshaw of Lombard, even though he did no campaigning because of a bad back.
”I wasn`t even a resident,” he said. ”I didn`t do too bad for not shaking a hand, not doing anything.”
Hoffman, who had been planning a run for President in 1988, said he set aside that plan when LaRouche officials suggested that he run the 6th District race.
”It was a two-year term, and, if I lost, I could still run for president,” said Hoffman, a self-employed marketing expert.
The apparent LaRouche victories Tuesday weren`t unprecedented in Illinois.
In 1984, LaRouche supporters stunned the historically weak Democratic organizations in the suburban, Chicago-area collar counties by electing 54 party precinct committeemen in the March primary.