Former Gov. Jim Edgar headed a growing list of Republicans Tuesday whose names were being floated as a possible U.S. Senate candidate following Sen. Peter Fitzgerald’s surprise announcement that he would not seek a second term.
Edgar, who passed up an opportunity to run for the U.S. Senate in 1998 in an election that ultimately went to Fitzgerald, spoke to White House senior political adviser Karl Rove about a possible candidacy, GOP sources in Washington and Chicago said.
At an event in Springfield late Tuesday, Edgar cautioned that he didn’t “want anybody to think that I’m doing this at this point.” But the former two-term Republican chief executive said he felt a sense of duty to at least consider running because of the White House overture toward him.
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“The president, because of the office and who he is, I mean, that does have some bearing on this,” Edgar said.
Edgar’s comments came only hours after Fitzgerald formally informed supporters and staff of his decision not to run. Fitzgerald said Illinois had become a “staunchly Democratic state” and that the time and resources he would have had to devote to fundraising and campaigning would have taken him away from his family and his official Senate duties for most of the next two years.
Fitzgerald said he recently watched his 10-year-old son, Jake, hit a home run over the center field fence in a Little League game. That, said the senator, made him realize how many such special moments in his family life he was missing.
“I could not be a senator and a father during this campaign.” Fitzgerald said. “I could only be a candidate.”
Fitzgerald said that from the day he was elected he never really made up his mind to run again, but the decision not to run crystallized over the last few weeks. He said he informed the National Republican Senatorial Committee of his decision on Friday and followed that up with a discussion with Rove on Sunday.
Fitzgerald said Rove told him he could win, an assessment based on a poll conducted for Fitzgerald by the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. At the same time, Rove said he understood Fitzgerald’s decision not to seek re-election, the senator said.
“The cost of this race would come at too high a price–and I don’t mean money,” Fitzgerald said, denying that concerns over pumping more of his personal wealth into a campaign had been a factor. Fitzgerald, a wealthy banking heir, spent more than $13 million of his own money to win the seat over Democratic incumbent Carol Moseley Braun in 1998.
Fitzgerald, a self-styled maverick who often disagreed with party leaders, had long been considered the most endangered of all incumbent Republican senators up for election in 2004.
Candidates lining up
Even before his announcement, at least six Democrats had been considering primary bids for the right to face him. The list includes former Chicago Board of Education President Gery Chico; wealthy investor Blair Hull; state Comptroller Daniel Hynes, state Sen. Barack Obama of Chicago, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas and health-care administrator Joyce Washington.
But with Fitzgerald now out of the picture, a crowded Republican field of possible contenders to replace him was also forming.
“With Fitzgerald not running for re-election, that has changed the political landscape,” said former Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, last year’s unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor.
Ryan said he had not been “planning on being a candidate for anything,” but said he now wanted to keep his “options open” about running for the Senate.
In addition to Ryan and Edgar, DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom said he planned to discuss a possible candidacy with his family. Meanwhile, Thomas McCracken, a former west-suburban lawmaker and current chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority, said he was “looking at it seriously” and had already begun soliciting support.
Former state Sen. Patrick O’Malley of Palos Park said he did “not want to commit one way or the other” without hearing Fitzgerald’s reasoning for not running. O’Malley and another potential Senate contender, former Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood, both lost to Ryan in last year’s GOP primary for governor.
Others names being mentioned included former investment banker Jack Ryan, conservative attorney John Cox, businessman Andrew McKenna, stock broker and dairy entrepreneur James Oberweis and state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who also is state Republican chairwoman.
Edgar early favorite
Edgar appeared to be an early favorite among Republican leaders in Illinois and at the White House, which wants a strong U.S. Senate contender in Illinois to help the party hold its narrow majority in the Senate and to help President Bush’s 2004 re-election efforts in a state he lost badly four years ago.
“Jim Edgar is a great friend of the president, and the president has a great deal of respect for Jim Edgar,” said one White House official, underscoring the administration’s preference for the former governor as its first choice.
A senior Republican strategist in Washington said that in a recent poll commissioned for the Republican National Committee, Edgar’s name surfaced as a strong Senate contender.
And a campaign consultant familiar with the Illinois race said that if Edgar agreed to run, the White House had pledged to try to keep other Republicans out of the contest to avoid a GOP primary. In the 2002 midterm elections, Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney persuaded several Republican candidates not to enter races in several states in which the administration had a preferred candidate.
Edgar, who enjoyed high approval ratings when he retired after two terms as governor, would enjoy instant name recognition and enter the race with great popularity among voters, supporters say. Edgar also would have a larger pool of potential donors than most of the others considering a run.
Since leaving office and joining the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Edgar has frequently been called upon by Republicans to lend his political cachet to fill critical party positions at times of crisis. But he has always rejected those overtures.
Two years ago, a group of influential moderate Republicans proposed drafting Edgar to run again for governor following a corruption scandal that drove former Gov. George Ryan into retirement. Edgar declined.
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Again last summer, Edgar turned down pleas to assume the helm of the state GOP after Chairman Lee Daniels, then also the minority leader of the Illinois House, abruptly resigned amid allegations of ethical lapses.
But on Tuesday evening, Edgar said anyone entering the Senate contest would have to have a “sense of duty.”
“One of the reasons that I told [GOP officials and the White House] that I would not [automatically] say `no’ is that a lot of people were talking about it … as a duty thing. It was just a question of duty,” Edgar said. “And if I would end up doing this, that would have a lot to do with it because it is not something I am eager to go do–to be very truthful.”
Still, Edgar said, “If I got into a race, I’d get into a race to win.”