Just because legislators are sitting idle these days doesn`t mean things aren`t spinning wildly around the Capitol Rotunda.
The spin doctors, spokesmen and spokeswomen hired by Republicans and Democrats to make them look like the good guys in the battle of the budget, have been infiltrating the crowd of reporters outside the glass walls of Gov. Jim Edgar`s second-floor office to try to prescribe what the public hears, sees and reads.
Whenever Edgar or one of the four legislative leaders-also known as ”the Four Tops”-finishes giving a statement after one of their many summit meetings, the spin doctors scurry across the marble floor to try to make sure the message is spun off in a favorable direction.
There is so much spinning going on these days that one wire service reporter said he was dizzy and about to get sick. One Chicago television reporter said he popped a couple of motion-sickness tablets before heading for the Capitol Thursday morning.
For the past two days, Republican spinners have been trying to put the focus on the Democrats` refusal to make necessary cuts in the budget. The Democratic spin is that the Republicans are holding up the process by holding out for suburban property-tax relief.
A foreign concept a decade ago, spinning the message of the Four Tops and the governor has become as familiar and useful to the politicos as a sharp, made-for-television, 30-second sound bite.
”We`re trying not to spin. We`re trying to be the truth squad,” said Dave Loveday, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Lee Daniels of Elmhurst, with a laugh.
Steve Brown, spokesman for Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, set up a ”Truth Tablet” on an easel outside his office door. It offers the speaker`s day-by-day world view and displays a child`s dunce cap every time it mentions a GOP-backed plan for property-tax caps.
The whole drama of reporters and spinners milling around then converging around an emerging politician is like theater-in-the-round for the bored legislators and lobbyists gathered around the Rotunda rail one flight up to watch.
While Madigan and the two Senate party leaders have one spin doctor apiece, Daniels has two, and Edgar has three.
The spinning takes on a variety of forms.
There are those spinners who prefer to corner reporters and whisper quietly in their ears, as if they have just discovered the cure for the common cold and are sharing it.
And then there are the Democratic spinners, who this week brought with them some ammunition: two senators for a highly public, impromptu spinfest on a staircase.
The official spokesmen aren`t the only spin masters, though.
With little happening outside the budgeteers` closed doors Thursday, a group of activists for the homeless chained themselves together outside the governor`s office to remind the media and public that Edgar has called for deep cuts in social services. Later, they accomplished the ultimate spin, getting themselves arrested in front of television cameras.
”I felt the Democrats were on the defensive yesterday and had to come out and put their own spin on it,” said Mike Lawrence, Edgar`s main spokesman and a former Statehouse correspondent. ”Everybody`s out here trying to spin. ”When I was a reporter, I don`t remember any of this,” harkening to the days when the planet of politics didn`t spin.
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