Peter Fitzgerald is supposed to be the candidate of Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun’s dreams, just the kind of right-wing opponent she needs to have a prayer of getting re-elected after her six-year string of gaffes and goofs.
She waited all of a nanosecond after Fitzgerald declared victory Tuesday night to start calling him an extremist, recalling how well that word worked for Sen. Dick Durbin in his 1996 race against Al Salvi.
But this is a different year, with different candidates. If Moseley-Braun decides to lob that grenade at Fitzgerald, she will take the risk of inflicting some collateral damage on her own party.
She can say Peter Fitzgerald is too extreme on abortion, because he has supported a constitutional amendment to ban it. But Fitzgerald’s views on abortion are exactly the same as Moseley-Braun’s ticket-mate, the Democratic candidate for governor, Glenn Poshard.
She can say Peter Fitzgerald is too extreme on guns. But Fitzgerald’s views are largely in line with Glenn Poshard’s. They both pledge allegiance to the 2nd Amendment, but they both allow that there can be exceptions. Fitzgerald came around to supporting the Brady Law and an assault-weapons ban before Poshard did.
So, when Carol Moseley-Braun brands Peter Fitzgerald as too extreme for Illinois, it will be fair to ask her to define what is an extremist, and whether it includes her party’s candidate for governor.
Now, Poshard is hardly an extremist. He has been labeled as a conservative largely because of his views on a few hot-button issues, but he is, in essence, a populist, protectionist, pro-labor Democrat.
And the Senate campaign will hardly be confined to abortion and guns. No, unfortunately it will be class warfare, men versus women, rich versus poor. It will be a dispiriting affair between two candidates who will need to mask their considerable political vulnerabilities by destroying each other.
But the overarching theme will be extremism, and that’s when Glenn Poshard could turn out to be Peter Fitzgerald’s best defense. How can Moseley-Braun label her opponent as an extremist when he shares some fundamental views with the Democratic candidate for governor?
Moseley-Braun is usually quite artful at dodging such questions. The candidate who was inspired to run because of the Senate’s mistreatment of Anita Hill has turned a cold shoulder to President Clinton’s sexual-harassment accusers, but has framed herself as a paragon of fairness, asking that everyone wait for all the evidence to emerge.
But she will not have the luxury of being artful in her re-election campaign. She has little money, a millionaire opponent and an electorate that is skeptical about her. She will have to demonize Fitzgerald, if for no other reason than that he is already demonizing her.
And if she ruffles the feathers of some of Poshard’s supporters along the way, well, she is smart enough to realize that they don’t care if she gets re-elected anyway.
More Top Picks Kingston Hyperx Cloud Revolver S
Their first priority is Poshard, who has a very good chance of becoming the first Democrat to get elected governor since 1972.
Their second priority–better call it 1A–is the re-election of Michael Madigan as speaker of the Illinois House.
After that, oh, maybe Jesse White, because the thousands of jobs in the secretary of state’s office have been in Republican hands for 18 years.
Moseley-Braun won’t make the priority list of many supporters in the Poshard camp. She might reason that she doesn’t need them anyway, because they didn’t do anything for her six years ago when she was elected. Moseley-Braun lost Michael Madigan’s 13th Ward, William Lipinski’s 23rd Ward, and four other traditionally Democratic wards to Republican Richard Williamson, and she still beat Williamson. She’s a Chicagoan, but she got more votes out of Evanston than she got out of all but two Chicago wards.
This could be an all-or-nothing game. If everybody plays nice and Moseley-Braun cruises to re-election, then it is likely that the Democratic ticket will sweep the state offices as well, just as the Republicans swept four years ago. She will deliver a large African-American vote for Poshard, he will deliver a large downstate vote for her, and everybody will be heroes.
But if she’s in trouble, and in the fall campaign she lobs that grenade at Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald wraps himself in Poshard for protection, then it is possible that the Democratic Party will split. In one camp will be Moseley-Braun and Mayor Richard Daley, who scared off any primary challengers to her and whose 1999 re-election prospects benefit from her re-election. In the other camp will be Poshard and his cohorts, with their own priorities.
Ah, maybe that won’t happen. It would be a little extreme.