Book Reviews                                               

Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey (eds.). Illinois Elections, 1818-1990: Candidates and County Returns for President, Governor, Senate, and House of Representatives. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. 1992. Pp. 545. $65. (cloth).
Alan Rosenthal. The Third House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1992. Pp. 242 with notes, bibliography and index. $27.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

These two recent works — one a summary of Illinois county voting data and the other a comparative study of lobbying trends — are likely to interest somewhat different audiences, but each is fascinating in its own right.

For serious students of Illinois elections, the Allen and Lacey compendium makes available in one volume data on county-level general election returns from 1818 (the year Illinois attained statehood) to 1990. The returns, collected by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research at the University of Michigan, reflect results of elections for president, governor, U.S. senator and member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Illinois Elections is divided into two sections. Part One provides votes for the candidates, identified by name and party (where party is known) and percentages in the various elections. Part Two shows the vote in each county by

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party. A disadvantage of this format is that the reader must shift back and forth between the two sections to match candidate names and party. However, the rewards of putting up with this slight inconvenience are substantial.

Picking up the Allen and Lacey book is a little like browsing through old newspapers. You get distracted on almost every page. Even a casual perusal of the contents yields some fascinating nuggets from Illinois electoral history. For example, the useful introduction informs the reader that in 1892 and from 1912 to 1940, Illinois elected two of its congressmen statewide. Voters were given two votes to cast for statewide candidates in these elections.

Roaming through the presidential vote by county, one finds that Abraham Lincoln lost his home county of Sangamon by 42 votes in 1860 and by 380 votes in 1864. Some of the historic close elections in Illinois are also recalled on these pages. In 1960, John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon in the presidential race in Illinois by a total of 8,858 votes, two-tenths of 1 percent of all votes cast. More recently, Gov. James R. Thompson was reelected in 1982 over Adiai E. Stevenson III by a margin of 5,074 votes.

For the serious electoral analyst rather that the casual browser, however, it is the county-level data in Part Two which will prove most useful. One could trace the regional pattern of presidential and gubernatorial voting by party in Illinois from the Civil War to the present, for example, by aggregating the county vote by areas of the state. Or one could examine ticket-splitting in presidential and gubernatorial elections by county up to 1978, when gubernatorial elections went off the four-year presidential cycle.

Another bonus is Allen and Lacey's inclusion of minor party votes for parties receiving at least 1 percent of the vote. This allows an analysis of the waxing and waning of third party voting in Illinois over time. The introduction lists 65 parties which have contested the elections covered in the book, sometimes with memorable results. Who can forget the circumstances behind the formation of the infamous Illinois Solidarity Party in 1986, to take a recent example? When Lyndon LaRouche's candidates shocked the state by winning the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor (Mark Fairchild) and secretary of state (Janice Hart), Adiai Stevenson III — Democratic nominee for governor — was forced to resign from the Democratic party and establish the Illinois Solidarity Party in order to run with compatible candidates of his choice.

The Third House by Alan Rosenthal discusses the changes taking place in lobbying at the state level. It will appeal most to those who follow the Illinois General Assembly closely. Rosenthal makes it clear that lobbying is no longer just the traditional one-on-one persuasion that occurs around the brass rail under the Capitol dome or at Springfield watering holes. Professional lobbying is becoming more multifaceted, and the changes associated with this trend are visible in Illinois as well as around the nation.

Rosenthal documents these changes in a comparative study of California, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, Minnesota and Texas. Florida and Texas more nearly resemble Illinois in the freewheeling nature and lax regulatory climate of their lobbying, while Minnesota and Colorado are most different from Illinois in that they have a more heavily regulated political environment. California and Illinois are similar in their degree of legislative modernization.

Rosenthal interviewed 105 lobbyists in these states as the basis for his study. One clear trend that emerges is the sheer growth in the numbers of lobbyists and interests they represent. By 1990, there were almost 43,000 registered lobbyists in the 50 states, an average of more that 800 per state (Illinois stands at the norm in this regard). Another trend Rosenthal identifies is the increasing use of so-called "hired guns" — professional lobbyists and law firms. He also cites a greater concern for ethics in lobbying, reflected in Illinois in 1993 by a spate of legislative proposals on the subject, and a growing sophistication among grass-roots lobbying efforts. Students of Illinois politics will find it instructive to compare Rosenthal's account of the lobbying experience in other states with their own observations of what goes on in Springfield.

The Third House is informative and entertaining. It is laced with telling quotations and anecdotes from lobbyists which help make Rosenthal's points vivid and memorable. One of my favorites concerns the experience of a lobbyist who nearly choked to death while taking several legislators to dinner in a fancy restaurant. As he was whisked away to the emergency room by ambulance, his legislative guests were more concerned about being stuck with the check than about the fate of their host. Not to worry, however. The waiter assured them that even with his life hanging in the balance, the lobbyist had arranged from the hospital to pick up the tab. *

David H. Everson is professor of political studies and public affairs at Sangamon State University, Springfield, where he is jointly appointed in the Illinois legislative Studies Center. With Samuel K. Gove he is coauthor of a chapter on Illinois interest groups in Interest Group Politics in the Midwest (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1993).

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