Nearly two dozen high school students, sitting around surplus desks, dialing borrowed phones, are huddled in the Evanston campaign headquarters of Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat making her first run for Congress, calling voter after voter.
Their plea is simple: Could you, would you, please remember to go vote on Tuesday? It’s vitally important–for Carol Moseley-Braun.
In Wauconda, Wilmette, Chicago and Peoria, it is much the same. Congressmen and congressional hopefuls like Schakowsky, with little or no opposition of their own in the general election, are still out raising money, organizing rallies and trying to energize voters.
They are not doing it for themselves, though eventually they will benefit. Instead, they are pumping up the troops in hopes of boosting their parties’ top-of-the-ticket candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate, including Democratic incumbent Moseley-Braun.
Their efforts could well prove pivotal in these bitterly fought contests.
“If we can elect Republicans to these jobs, it builds our party,” said U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican who, with no opposition of his own, is campaigning hard for others, particularly Moseley-Braun’s opponent, Peter Fitzgerald.
“If you can elect someone to county clerk or sheriff, that helps build the party in those counties. It keeps the party significant and strong,” LaHood said.
LaHood had two fundraisers for Fitzgerald, urging his own cadre of campaign contributors to crack open their wallets for the Senate candidate. When LaHood was unable to make it back from Washington for a third Fitzgerald event, he called home and had his organizers pave the way for Fitzgerald.
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Out in the Chicago suburbs, Republican U.S. Reps. Phil Crane, a conservative from Wauconda, and John Porter, a moderate from Wilmette, will both sail through Election Day. Crane has only token opposition; Porter, for the first time in 19 years, has none.
Still, they are both active. Crane, for instance, has spent just $100,000 on his own fall campaign, but has given other candidates $156,000. His volunteers are busy handing out pamphlets for Fitzgerald and gubernatorial nominee George Ryan.
“He’s doing a lot of the same things he normally would do this time of year for an election, but a little less focused on himself,” said Crane’s spokesman, Kirt Johnson. “He wants to do what he can to help the rest of the ticket.”
Porter has helped raise money for Fitzgerald and continues to talk up Fitzgerald to his constituents.
Porter and Crane, though giving to Illinois candidates, have taken heat from national Republican leaders for not giving enough to the party’s House campaign fund.
In Evanston, where Schakowsky has converted her campaign office into a Democratic Party command post, campaign workers hope to get 10,000 people to the polls–ballots that would surely favor Democrats. Schakowsky’s volunteers called 2,000 voters in just two days earlier last week.
A big turnout in the liberal 9th District could push fellow Democratic candidates, including Moseley-Braun, over the top, said Schakowsky, who faces Republican Herb Sohn and Libertarian Michael Ray, both considered long shots.
But while other get-out-the-vote efforts, particularly those by the state parties, are geared to raise all of the candidates’ chances, some of the congressional operations are not.
Schakowsky, for instance, endorsed Glenn Poshard, the Democratic nominee for governor, but she does not support the conservative congressman’s opposition to abortion and gay rights. And her troops are not rallying her voters for him. Poshard’s message, she said, will not play in the liberal lakefront wards.
“We’re definitely not emphasizing Poshard in this district because there are real ambivalent feelings about him,” Schakowsky said. “So if we’re interested in really pulling out the (Democratic) vote, it’s really smarter for us to emphasize Carol Moseley-Braun.”
These efforts are the last, best chance that underdogs such as Moseley-Braun and Poshard have to overcome the money, TV ads and organizations of their Republican opponents.
And for Republicans Fitzgerald and Ryan, they provide added insurance that their voters will not grow overconfident and complacent in the face of the GOP’s double-digit leads in the polls.
With voter turnout expected to be low Tuesday and voters no longer having the option to vote straight-party with a single punch, these get-out-the-vote efforts in key congressional districts touting specific candidates are all the more critical.
Yet these are not acts of charity on the part of congressmen and congressional candidates. Illinois politics has not suddenly been contaminated by altruism.
These efforts are being fueled by the same hard, cold self-interest that has long driven the political process.
In the governor’s race, in particular, every sitting congressman has an interest in who wins. The next governor will preside over the redrawing of Illinois’ political districts following the 2000 U.S. census, and it’s possible that, with the loss of population in the state, two of the congressmen could have their districts eliminated.
But these politicians also shoulder responsibilities within their state and city political organizations. They are ward chairmen and central committeemen, whose political duties extend well beyond their own districts. Campaigning for other candidates is among the most fundamental of those duties.
For these officeholders, politics is not just something that pops up every two or four years at election time. It is their day-to-day work.
These elections also provide an opportunity for congressmen who harbor hopes of building and maintaining political machines, organizations that help them renew their jobs. And using those organizations to benefit others can only boost the organizations, and their leaders, in the end.
“Turnout is going to be critical to determining who’s going to win a lot of the races,” said Johnson of Crane’s office. “The organization and party that is most successful in motivating and turning out voters is the one that will do the best.”