Politics

By ROBERT KIECKHEFER

Will it be Ryan, Totten or Catania?

SUSAN Catania has never seemed a very imposing political figure, which goes to show that appearances can be deceiving.

Mrs. Catania is a Republican, elected and reelected to the Illinois House from heavily Democratic Chicago, thanks to cumulative voting. In other words, her clout is minimal even on her own turf.

And some people got the wrong idea when she brought her babies to the House floor so they would not be deprived of their mother's attention. The image may have been that of a vulnerable woman but, in fact, Mrs. Catania was demonstrating some unusual courage by invading the often zoo-like House chamber with an infant.

She showed her courage again during the past few years by openly breaking with House Speaker George Ryan over one of her dearest issues — the Equal Rights Amendment. Ryan opposes the ERA; Mrs. Catania is its chief sponsor.

When Ryan retaliated by refusing to reappoint Mrs. Catania to the Commission on the Status of Women, he may not have realized exactly what forces he was setting into motion.

Mrs. Catania was virtually unelected by the House Cutback Amendment. Her chances of winning as Republican in a single-member district were nil. So she was in a perfect position to do some retaliating of her own — by running against the speaker for lieutenant governor. Her candidacy also pitted Mrs. Catania against Sen. Don Totten (R., Hoffman Estates) — perhaps more of an ERA foe than Ryan himself.

Some rather ironic, and possibly far-reaching, ramifications resulted from Mrs. Catania's candidacy.

For one thing, it gave ERA supporters a springboard to use in a last-ditch attempt to win ratification of the amendment. Illinois is the only northern industrial state that has not ratified, and national ERA leaders hope a victory by Mrs. Catania over Ryan and Totten might be seen as a successful referendum on the amendment.

The head of the National Orgaization for Women, Eleanor Smeal, called the primary fight "very important and promised to try to raise money and support for Mrs. Catania. Although she would not go so far as to call the race a last chance for the amendment, Ms. Smeal clearly felt it provided a ray of hope in an otherwise dark light hour.

And Phyllis Schlafly, the arch-foe of the ERA, also clearly realized the potential importance of the race, although she was careful not to talk too much about it in public.

"Susan Catania can't win," Mrs. Schlafly said. "No one who supported John Anderson for president can win a statewide Republican primary."She also refused to call the race a referendum on the ERA, but she acknoledged that issue is likely to dominate the campaign.

Perhaps the best indication of Mrs. Schlafly's concern was a promise in mid-January to choose sides between Totten and Ryan and endorse one of them. Both have been staunch supporters of the stop-ERA movement, and Mrs. Schlafly owes both of them favors. Endorsing one would be poor compensation for the other.

The obvious solution would be for Mrs. Schlafly to straddle the fence, essentially endorsing both Ryan and Totten, and let the voters make up their minds between them. Her announcement that she planned to back a single candidate — although she had not done so by early February - could stem only from a conviction that a united front was needed to insure that a unified ERA vote did not boost Mrs. Catania to victory over a disorganized force of ERA opponents. Mrs. Schlafly, an adept politician, has seldom found herself in so uncomfortable position.

Another "man in the middle," is Gov. James R. Thompson. Thompson picked Ryan as his running mate and, in fact, owes the speaker a few big favors.

While the governor is publicly committed to supporting the ERA, the

4/March 1982/Illinois Issues

issue has been a troublesome one for him. Many feminists feel Thompson has paid lip service to the issue without delivering any concrete support or even trying very hard to pressure lawmakers to vote for ratification.

That impression was compounded when it was discovered that former Lt. Gov. Dave O'Neal was quietly arm-twisting lawmakers to vote against ratification shortly before a scheduled vote. Thompson told him to cut it out, but the lingering feeling in some quarters was that ERA is not a top priority anywhere in the administration.

The Ryan-Catania-Totten race, consequently, left the governor in another no-win situation. Committed to Ryan, he could only plead that his candidate is better qualified than Mrs. Catania, despite his undesirable position on an issue that many consider key.

In fact, Thompson played little public role of any kind in the early stages of the campaign — apparently hoping that party organization support would push Ryan over the top without requiring him to get involved.

However, a decision by the Evanston Republican organization to endorse Totten — despite support for Ryan by Cook County GOP Chairman J. Robert Barr, an Evanston resident — indicated Ryan might not have an exactly smooth course to the nomination.

Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that even if Mrs. Catania wins, her victory in the lieutenant governor's primary would have any impact on the chances of ERA either here or nationally. The legislature, after all, has consistently refused to ratify the amendment, even though polls show a majority in favor of it.

And it is hard to understand how anything that happens in Illinois could have much effect in the other unratified states — none of which have much in common with the Land of Lincoln.

Still, the ERA forces are looking for any slim reed of hope and this campaign may be the best they can find. And if by chance Mrs. Catania can pull off an upset, the state would be the proud possessor of yet another uneasy team of candidates for governor and ieutenant governor — for the third straight time since the adoption of new constitutional language designed specifically to prevent that from happening.

March 1982/Illinois Issues/5