Not so long ago, to live in the suburbs was to vote Republican. The law was inviolable as gravity: Along with a wedding ring, a ranch house, two kids and a commute came a penchant for candidates in blue pinstripe suits.
Republicans, consequently, have found reason for optimism in recent years. In Chicago and across the country, suburbs have gained population as cities and rural areas have lost it. This election year the trend reached a landmark: For the first time, half of the voters in the United States live in the suburbs.
But a few things got in the way of the Republicans on the way to the polls this year, among them Ross Perot, Clarence Thomas and the economy. And when the dust settled Tuesday night, nothing about the suburban vote was clear.
Consider:
– Suburban voters-and in fact voters across the state, including in Chicago-supported Bill Clinton at exactly the same percentages they supported Michael Dukakis four years ago. But President Bush fell 20 percentage points in most suburban counties. The difference was Ross Perot. In Du Page County, Bush`s take fell from 70 percent in 1988 to 48 percent this year, with Perot picking up 21 percent.
– Carol Moseley Braun, a liberal black woman, had even stronger support in the collar counties than Clinton, a moderate white man. In conservative McHenry County, for instance, Braun did nearly as well as her predecessor, Sen. Alan Dixon, a conservative Democrat. He took 45 percent of the vote in 1986; she took 40 percent this time.
– Suburbanites who voted Democratic in the big contests returned to their Republican roots in local and state races further down the ticket. But Will County voters bucked the trend, voting in Democrats by nearly 60 to 40 percent margins in almost every county race.
– Last year`s remap of state political districts by the Republicans was designed to throw districts their way. But in some cases, including Will County`s hotly contested 80th House District, Democrats took remapped districts away from longtime Republican incumbents.
What does all this mean? Basically that in the land of the two-car garage nothing can be taken for granted anymore.
”There are clearly changes taking place in the suburbs,” said John Pelissero, a political scientist at Loyola University and one of many experts trying to sort out Tuesday`s election.
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Suburbs ”aren`t as Republican as we`ve been led to believe,” he said.
”They`re a little more heterogeneous than they were 12 years ago when Reagan came in. There`s a broader range of political values.”
In conservative Schaumburg Township, for instance, die-hard Republicans were swamped Tuesday by a flood of Reagan Democrats returning to the fold, independents and disenchanted former non-voters. Voter turnout rose 16 percent, and when all the returns were in, Bush had taken only 44 percent of a township he swept with 68 percent in 1988.
Clinton took 35 percent, only three percentage points more than Dukakis in 1988. The difference was Perot, who garnered 21 percent of the votes.
”The high turnout here was directly attributable to Perot,” said Don Totten, Schaumburg Township Republican committeeman. ”The vast majority of his support came from people who do not normally vote.”
Across the suburbs, Republican officials said they believe Perot took more votes away from Bush than from Clinton, who matched the Democratic percentages won by Dukakis in 1988 even though he faced two opponents.
Illinois exit polls suggest, however, that if Perot had not been in race, Clinton would have received more of Perot`s votes than Bush.
For Bush supporters that was good and bad news.
The good news, experts say, is that Perot won the votes instead of Clinton. With no wholesale swing to the Democrats, Republicans have better hopes for four years from now.
Perot ”changed the dynamic of the election. He completely reworked the rhythm of it,” said Paul Green, director of the Institute for Public Policy at Governors State University. ”There`s no doubt in my mind the voter was confused by the Perot factor.”
The bad news, also according to Green, is that Perot ran strongest in conservative collar counties where Republicans have traditionally held sway, while getting only 9 percent of the vote in Chicago. And Clinton, by holding his own against two rivals, showed he is ”a very strong candidate.”
Even more disturbing for the Republicans, though, is evidence that many suburban areas are becoming increasingly Democratic, as former city dwellers transplant their Democratic roots to their new homes.
In south suburban Rich Township, which includes fast-growing towns like Matteson, that slow but steady changeover helped Clinton best Bush by nearly 6,000 votes Tuesday, in a township with about 4,000 new voters registered since the last election.
”This area used to be a Republican stronghold but we had quite a heavy Democratic vote (this election),” said George Townsend, acting township committeeman. ”More Democrats are moving into the area. It`s just a fact of life.”
The ailing economy also was a major drag on Bush this election. Illinois exit polls show that 58 percent of the out-of-work voters went for Clinton, with only 26 percent for Bush and 16 percent for Perot. Part-time workers also went for the Democrat by similar margins.
But the trend wasn`t limited to the unemployed and underemployed. Suburban voters worried about their good jobs also turned to Clinton, accounting in part for his victories in white-collar north townships like Evanston and New Trier.
”Those concerns were much more salient in this election,” Pelissero said. ”Middle-class suburbanites were just as concerned about whether they would have a job as the working class.”
Jerry Marchese, a GOP precinct committeeman and one of Du Page County`s top GOP vote-getters, called the economy a big challenge there as well.
”My neighbor downstairs from me told me she has always voted Republican but said this time she was voting for Clinton . . . because she was fed up with the economy,” he said. ”I gave her my Republican pitch . . . but I couldn`t change her mind.”
In other areas, it was the character of the Republican campaign that turned off suburban voters.
Mary Eleanor Wall, an Elmhurst Democrat, said she wasn`t surprised at all that Bush`s support fell from 70 percent there in 1988 to 48 percent this year, with most of the drop going to Perot. The reason, she said, was the
”harsh” tone of the campaign.
”Since the Republican National Convention I`ve been getting people saying to me that even though they are Republicans that the convention was not a presentation of their party that they were proud of,” she said. ”There`s just too much bowing to the far right wing.”
Du Page Democrats, she said, got a boost from ”Bill Clinton`s wonderful personification of what we believe the Democratic Party should represent-a broad-minded, comprehensive, inclusive party and one that tries to promote cooperation and not division.”
Finally, there was one trend that held true in the suburbs this year: The Year of the Woman came to pass. Though Braun ran second to Republican Rich Williamson in every collar county, she won respectable totals-and enough votes to help carry her to a statewide victory.
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Down the ticket, things looked even better for women. In Lake County, for instance, both of the Democrats who won legislative seats were women who had been strongly endorsed by women`s groups for their abortion-rights positions. Grace Mary Stern of Highland Park, whose district extends into Cook County, won 77 percent of the Lake County vote to beat Republican incumbent Roger Keats of Glencoe. And Lauren Beth Gash of Highland Park bested her well-funded Republican challenger with 63 percent of the vote.