For more than 20 years, Don Brewer of Murphysboro in far southern Illinois planned his career around an eventual run for the state legislature.

Twenty-five years on the local park board. Twenty-two years on the board of John A. Logan Community College. Three terms as regional superintendent for his local school district. "Being a state lawmaker had always been a career goal," the Democrat says. "The impetus behind my running for some of the regional offices was to get name recognition. It was well known I was going to be a candidate when the timing was right."

And this year, the timing seemed as good as it was going to get. Rep. Mike Bost, a Republican who also hails from Murphysboro, was elected during the 1994 GOP landslide to represent Brewer's district, which traditionally has been a Democratic stronghold. Bost's victory has been attributed in large part to the vulnerability of the previous incumbent, Democrat Gerald Hawkins, who was charged with driving into a picketer during an altercation at a coal mine.

Bost is seen by many as a sitting duck, waiting to be turned out of office by an able Democrat. Don Brewer thought he was that candidate. Over the years, his name has grown familiar throughout the district. He was up on all the issues important to voters in his region. He'd been introduced to the House Democratic leaders in the state Capitol, who knew he'd be interested in a run for the seat.

But as soon as Brewer was designated the leadership-backed Democratic candidate for House District 115, he began to get pressure from Springfield on the best way to run a campaign and when to start raising funds.

That pressure gave him second thoughts about the Statehouse. He says he decided to drop out of the race for a number of reasons, including commitments that precluded him from heavy campaigning and fund-raising early on, a desire to avoid negative campaigning and frustration with the way he was being treated by party leaders in Springfield.

"Although they told me I had their support, they felt they could tell me how to do everything," he says. "They wanted me to have money raised by December 1 [for next November's election], and wanted me out walking

18 * March 1996 Illinois Issues

precincts all the time right away. It really bordered on harassment."

Such are the stories these days in so-called "targeted" legislative districts, where an incumbent is seen as vulnerable. The party that controls each chamber holds the power to pass bills, or even get them debated in the General Assembly, so the pressure on legislative leaders to win every seat possible is intense.

This year, the parties have targeted five district races in the Senate and at least six in the House. (To take control, the Democrats would need four additional seats in the Senate and six in the House.) They range from veteran GOP Sens. Walter Dudycz and Robert Raica — perennially on the wish list for Democrats because their districts include parts of heavily Democratic Chicago — to newly appointed Republican Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, who represents residents in rural southern Illinois.

In fact, as campaigns have grown more expensive, candidates have come to rely on financial backing from the legislative leaders, who have access to large contributions from lobbying groups. In 1994, one targeted Senate race cost the candidates a record $1.35 million, while the most expensive House race topped $700,000. The hefty expenses included mass mailings, media ads, polling and political consultants.

Increasingly, it is the legislative leaders and their staffers, many from Chicago and the suburbs, who run the show in targeted districts all over the state — such as Brewer's largely rural District 115 — instead of local officials. That shift has affected campaign strategy and style, with state leaders usurping much of local officials' input by contributing dollars and bodies. And it has helped centralize the political parties' authority in the legislature by discouraging independence among individual lawmakers.

"Under the 'old system,'" says political scientist John Jackson, "you had more involvement and control from county-level and local-level leaders. They had control of the foot soldiers that were crucial to a candidate's success. "But as the focus has moved toward state leadership, it's a rare candidate that can ignore statewide leaders and the power they exert over campaign funding. It's not the old local foot soldiers anymore who are doing the work; it's staff people who are sent in to help your campaign, and in many cases they are imports to the area. The county-level involvement has atrophied as money becomes the single most important factor in races." Jackson is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Sam Gove, director emeritus of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agrees money is the main reason control has shifted to Springfield. "Leaders knew which the swing districts were and tried to pay attention in the past, but they were not as highly visible, I'm quite sure. In the 1950s, five swing districts were identified, for example, but there wasn't much campaign money to put into the races there. I think it's almost within the last 10 years that the leaders started putting legislative staff out in the districts and onto the campaign pay-rolls."

Most legislative staffers say they are careful to schedule campaign work during lunch hours and time off from their taxpayer-funded jobs. But the link between legislative leaders and elections is obvious. When campaigns heat up, leaders put many of their most valued staff members on unpaid leave. Staffers literally move to the districts where they are running campaigns, and are paid from candidates' campaign coffers.

"I suppose reformers would argue you should have neutral legislative staffs, but I think you're just kidding yourself in a politicized state like Illinois," says Gove, who played a role in nurturing a professional legislative staff by helping to create the Illinois Legislative Internship Program at the U of I. "The fact that both sides are doing it neutralizes it."

This system can change the whole tone of a campaign, say those running in districts where both parties feel they have a chance to win and therefore are willing to invest money and personnel. "There were some negative fliers mailed against Mike Bost that I wished they'd discontinued," says Brewer. "That's not how I would have wanted to do things."

Meanwhile, in the potentially vulnerable 34th Senate District that includes Rockford, a Democrat who alleges Republican Sen. Dave Syverson lives outside the district's boundaries hired a private investigator to peek in windows and question neighbors about the incumbent's living arrangements.

"I anticipate an interesting race," says Syverson. "I never thought they'd come on so strong. There's been a lot of negative Chicago-style campaign tactics brought in. It's too bad races get away from issues today, but the campaign 'experts' say the negative stuff works. Part of the problem is the public hasn't gotten mad enough. Maybe the public will respond and things will turn around."

Jack Van Der Slik, director of the Legislative Studies Center at the University of Illinois at Springfield, says negative campaign tactics have become a staple of many tight races. "It started on the national level and has become a part of tough campaigns everywhere," he says. "These valuable target seats require tough campaigning."

Besides an increase in negative campaigning, party leaders' involvement in targeted races has earned them more loyalty from those they help elect.

"The effect on the legislator who benefits from the extra help and money is great loyalty to the leader,"

Illinois Issues March 1996 * 19

says Gove. "Their independence is diminished."

According to Jackson, there is an effect on voting patterns in the legislature, as leaders call in chits to secure support on certain issues. "It will show up — not on every single vote, but probably on some highly important votes."

One example was the successful Republican push in the spring of 1995 to approve changes in civil law, so-called tort reform. Although several GOP members of the House make their living as trial lawyers (who oppose the caps on plaintiff awards that tort reform imposed) only one member of the party took a pass by voting present on the issue.

Rep. Tim Johnson, an Urbana trial attorney, was one who voted for it. In 1992, party leaders helped him win his targeted race against Democrat Helen Satterthwaite.

There may be complaints about rising costs of campaigns and the power shift to state party leaders, but change is not imminent.

"There's a huge trend of the value of legislative seats being bid up over the question of which party will control the chambers," Van Der Slik says.

"A generation ago, one party dominated a chamber pretty clearly. But redistricting almost everywhere helped minority parties compete for control. Because overall control now is up to control of a handful of seats, leaders can't put up with a part-time candidate."

Steve Brown, spokesman for House Minority Leader Michael Madigan, says a candidate who is 100 percent committed to a strong campaign early on has a better chance of winning.

"I wouldn't call it pressure that we exert... but in the case of talking to Democratic activists around the state, we're going to be looking for the people who are articulate and hard-working and willing to get out. Some didn't want to make that commitment." Obviously, this philosophy did not work for Don Brewer, the would-be lawmaker from Murphysboro.

"The people in Springfield treated me like I was an amateur in elections. I never could understand that. I'd won highly competitive elections for positions that covered five counties ... areas bigger than the legislative district itself."

But faith in the power of easygoing campaigning in a target district, even in a region very familiar to a candidate, is naive, says Van Der Slik.

"The candidate that thinks you can talk to some Kiwanis clubs in the evenings and win ... that's amateurism. That's handing out rain hats and fingernail files, and it can't compare to polling and targeted mail.

"It may work in an area that's strongly partisan, where a candidate is trying to succeed a retiree. But not in a district that's likely to be targeted by the opposing party. He's got to be ready to deal with $250,000 coming at him from the other side." *