Talk of the color green Saturday wasn’t confined to the Chicago River or the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. In the campaign for the U.S. Senate, it was the green stuff in the candidates’ coffers.
State Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Inverness has pumped $7 million in cash and loans into his GOP primary campaign against state Comptroller Loleta Didrickson and has increased a line of credit that he could tap for millions more.
But he again cast himself as the scrappy outsider running a grass-roots campaign, despite nearly single-handedly creating the state’s most expensive Senate primary in history.
“Hers is the candidacy of the VIPs,” he told supporters in Oak Lawn before heading to the parade, where rival Didrickson was joined by Gov. Jim Edgar.
But Fitzgerald, who has been campaigning for months through a heavy dose of paid television advertising, has set a record for personal spending in an Illinois election and could approach a record in a U.S. Senate primary contest.
More Top Picks Ratings
Petroleum magnate Michael Huffington won his 1994 Republican Senate primary in California, spending almost $9 million to win the nomination and running up a total of $28.3 million through his general election loss to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Didrickson has raised $270,000 in the last two weeks, including a $45,000 loan that she guaranteed and $2,000 in cash from herself and her husband.
Marching with Didrickson, Edgar praised her record and said she “has a much better chance” of beating Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) in the November general election.
“I think she’s just more electable,” Edgar said. Referring to Fitzgerald, he added, “It’s tough to sell someone who’s for concealed weapons and opposed to abortion even in the case of rape or incest.”
Didrickson plans a campaign fly-around Sunday alongside longtime ally and former presidential candidate Bob Dole as well as Secretary of State George Ryan, the presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee.
“I feel very confident about Tuesday,” she said. “Our own internal polling shows we have 6 to 8 (percentage-point lead) in the Chicago metropolitan area, and that’s where we’re going to win this race. I’m running very strongly with women.”
March surprise: In a last-minute attempt to throw a wrench in rival John Schmidt’s gubernatorial campaign, the camp of U.S. Rep. Glenn Poshard (D-Ill.) released records showing that Schmidt did not vote in the primary elections of 1995 and 1996.
Poshard called it “unbelievable,” but the former Justice Department official said he had a good reason for not casting ballots those years: He found himself unexpectedly stuck with work in Washington.
“Desperate men act in desperate ways,” said Schmidt campaign manager Ken Snyder.
Records of Poshard, a Downstate congressman, and Jim Burns, former U.S. attorney for Northern Illinois, show they voted in every primary and general election since at least 1980. The record of the fourth major Democratic candidate, former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris, indicates that he did not vote in the 1992 primary but has voted in every election since.
Final push: While the rest of the political world tried to maximize face time among voters at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, Burris chose instead to shore up his African-American base across Chicago.
Burris spent most of the morning at Operation PUSH headquarters on the South Side, where Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. led a spirited personal endorsement session of Burris, along with what he called a “rainbow ticket” of other preferred Democratic candidates.
Simon says? Not: A piece of campaign literature for state Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston), one of three candidates to replace Sidney Yates in the 9th Congressional District, wraps itself in the venerable reputation of former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon by including a photo of Simon and a flattering quote.
But when asked by a reporter if Simon was getting involved in the race, a Simon spokesman said he “is not endorsing anyone.”
A Schakowsky spokesman maintained that the flier is not misleading. “If you read it, we don’t claim his endorsement at all,” said Schakowsky consultant Peter Giangreco.