Gov. James Thompson launched a broad personal and political attack against third-party challenger Adlai Stevenson Friday, culminating with a charge that Stevenson ”doesn`t like people.”
The strident assault against Stevenson marked Thompson`s most intense broadside yet in a campaign that has been colored by harsh characterizations. Stevenson labeled the comments a ”personal attack.”
The governor`s comments came in reaction to a report in The Tribune that Illinois AFL-CIO president Robert Gibson will urge the labor federation`s executive committee to make an unprecedented break with tradition and endorse the Republican Thompson for re-election.
”I like people. I don`t think he does. Look at his conduct. I don`t think he`s very comfortable with people,” Thompson said when asked the difference between his and Stevenson`s approach to labor.
Later, Thompson told reporters, ”It just strikes me that the way he acts and the way he talks, that he doesn`t like folks very much.”
More Top Picks Best Garden Sheds
Thompson charged that Stevenson ignored state issues for four years after losing his 1982 race for governor and has not outlined a platform in his current campaign.
The governor also said Stevenson ”has never been a friend of organized labor in Illinois and Jim Thompson has. Adlai Stevenson has never been involved in any of the battles that have been important to them.”
Thompson made the comments about Stevenson while recording the WCLR-FM show ”Dateline Chicago,” which will air at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.
On other matters, Thompson vowed to get a horseracing bill passed in the fall session of the legislature that will allow Arlington Park to be rebuilt in Lake County, and he said he supports a non-partisan mayoral election in Chicago but only if the change from partisan elections is delayed until 1991. Thompson and Stevenson, a Democrat who is mounting a third-party challenge to the governor, are known to have a visceral dislike for each other stemming from their first encounter in 1982, a dislike that has resurfaced in their public comments during the current campaign.
Stevenson said in a telephone interview Friday that the governor`s latest comment is ”a personal attack to which I`m not interested in responding. If he`ll come out of hiding and debate me and engage in the real issues of the campaign, we`ll give people a chance to judge it, and hopefully not on the basis of personal attacks.”
Thompson said he believes he has a strong chance of getting the two-thirds vote necessary to win the AFL-CIO committee`s endorsement.
”He`s some friend of labor,” Stevenson retorted. ”Last year Illinois lost more jobs than all the other states of the Midwest. We`ve had virtually no growth for the last 10 years. Factories are boarded up.”
Thompson and Stevenson also squabbled Friday over a letter sent by the governor`s office to local officials across the state criticizing Stevenson for saying in a recent interview that Bloomington-Normal was the only logical site for Japanese companies to consider for business expansion in the state. Diamond-Star Corp., a joint venture between Chrysler Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., has launched a $1.4 billion development at Bloomington-Normal.
Stevenson, in an interview published in a Springfield weekly newspaper, said:
”Bloomington-Normal is the only logical, appealing site for the Japanese in Illinois. . . . They won`t go to the Chicago area, that`s for sure. They`re hard pressed now to find places downstate, and the overall political environment is not attractive to them.”
Thompson said in his letter that Stevenson`s comment is a ”gratuitous insult” to potential Japanese investors and ”a senseless and demeaning characterization of proud, strong, hard-working communities like yours all across our state.”
Responding to the letter, Stevenson said, ”Illinois has only about 2.8 percent of foreign direct investment in the United States with 5 percent of the population. No one, including the Japanese, is coming to Illinois.”