By POLLY ANDERSON The statewide candidates who don't campaign University of Illinois trustees THIS November, hundreds of thousands of Illinois voters will choose a governor, senator, secretary of state and other officeholders elected statewide. And, one hopes, they will have at least a moderate amount of knowledge about the people they are voting for and the issues for which they stand. But even the most knowledgeable voters will know almost nothing about the three members of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees that they will elect this fall. Traditionally, the board has worked in relative obscurity, rarely making headlines or major campaign news. But this year's election could be unusually significant since the new board members will share in the process of selecting a successor to UI President John E. Corbally, who has announced his resignation effective August 31, 1979. The UI board is unique among public university boards in Illinois, in that it is the only one not chosen by the governor with the consent of the Senate. Even the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), which outranks the UI board in the state higher education hierarchy, is appointed rather than elected. The UI board is chosen in the regular partisan elections. Three regular board members are chosen every two years for six-year terms that begin the following January. There are also nonvoting student members, and the governor is an ex officio and usually unseen member. The fact that the elections are little-known is indisputable. Even experienced political reporters are inclined to forget the trustees, as when they wrote in 1976 that Cecil Partee was the first black to run for statewide office on a major party slate. That honor, as a matter of fact, went to Richard Harewood, successful Democratic trustee candidate in 1958. The nomination process
How, exactly, does the system work, out of the glare of publicity? The first step in the process is taken early each election year by the UI Alumni Association, which names a Republican and a Democratic committee to compile slates of candidates to recommend to their respective party conventions, which are held during the summer. Up until about 1972, the alumni committee recommendations were generally followed by the parties. If this system effectively prevented anyone really independent of the university from getting on the board, it didn't seem to matter much since no one else was interested in being on it anyway. The few exceptions to this rule before 1972, and the increasing number of exceptions since then, have been a mixed bag of public figures or representatives of potential voting blocs who were nominated by politicians using the board for their own ends rather than for the good of the university or the state. For example, in 1950 the Republicans rejected an alumni association nominee and put Harold "Red" Grange on the ticket because of his popularity as a football player. In 1972, the first year that both parties rejected at least one of the alumni recommendations, the Democrats did so to place on the ballot a 21-year-old graduate of Northern Illinois University as an apparent bow to the youth vote. If the nomination process might be cynically described as something done by insiders who are occasionally governed by tokenism, the election process can be described in one word: "coat-tails." Without exception from 1930 to 1976, the party that won at the top of the ballot brought its trustees candidates into office. Thus, in 1968 Richard Nixon brought three GOP trustees into office; in 1970 it was Adlai Stevenson and three Democrats; in 1972, Nixon again and three Republicans (Daniel Walker notwithstanding), and in 1974, Stevenson again and three Democrats. The pattern was broken in 1976, when three Democratic incumbents won despite the fact that Gerald Ford carried the state. What happened, apparently, was that a crucial number of voters, jumping from party to party in a ticket-splitting spree, voted Democratic for comptroller, the office listed just before trustees on the ballot. The advantages Neither the nomination process nor the election process fits the textbook ideal of good government. And not surprisingly, there have been a few moves to change the board to an appointed one, the most recent in 1975-76 when the IBHE was working on its current master plan. But the UI trustees have always managed to beat back such
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efforts, and the arguments they have used seem reasonably persuasive. They argue that appointed board members might be beholden to the governor, noting that Walker once tried to force a member of the Board of Regents to vote his way. And they point out that the board is almost never split along party lines; in fact, the only time party affiliations make much difference is when the board elects a president each year. The results But most important, the trustees argue, is the fact that the system has produced good board members, at least as good as appointed boards elsewhere. And the addition of non-alumni candidates has probably strengthened the board by giving it fresh perspectives and broader representation. Arthur Velasquez, for example, a successful 1974 non-alumni candidate, has given voice to the interests of Chicago Latinos. The Alumni Association candidates have also been remarkably effective. If not always independent of the administration, they are usually attentive and hardworking. This year, both major parties accepted the recommendations of the UI Alumni Association in making their trustees slates. The GOP candidates are incumbents Jane Hayes Rader, 45, Cobden housewife; Park Livingston, 71, attorney and retired business executive from La Grange, and Ralph Hahn, 50, Springfield consulting engineer. The Democratic candidates are Paul Stone, 62. Sullivan attorney and former-state representative; Dr. Edmund Donoghue, 63. Wilmette, surgeon at Chicago's St. Joseph Hospital, and Robert Webb, 62, Simpson farmer and former assistant director of the UI agricultural experiment station at Dixon Springs. All are alumni of the UI. 26/November 1978/Illinois Issues
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