He did well in the southeast, took Sangamon and McLean counties and won a solid tier across the roof of the state.

I'd guess we were flying somewhere over Effingham when toddler Joseph Salvi procured a corkscrew and proceeded to drill it into his father's cheek. 

Oblivious to the risk of blindness lurking one air pocket away, Al Salvi continued explaining to me how the press wouldn't amplify his message on less taxes, smaller government and an America returned to its people. 

One seat over in the cramped cabin of the borrowed Piper Cheyenne, Charlie Johnston intently scanned the ground with binoculars. "I'm looking for 'Salvi for Senate' signs," Johnston said, apparently serious in his examination of the southern Illinois landscape for signs of life in his buddy's campaign. 

They had done all they could do in Chicago. The conservative Republican surely knew of the more than 4-to-l drubbing that awaited in the city. He knew the true-believing Republicans in the suburbs would vote for him, and that his tough stand against abortion rights would force some of the collar's GOP faithful across the line to support Democrat Dick Durbin. 

So like birds seeking a warmer habitat, Salvi gathered up wife Kathy, young Joseph and baby David for an 11th hour trek southward. The goal was to weave together enough votes in the sparcely populated area of the state. 

How many votes? Take your best guess. Copley News Service said the race was a statistical dead heat near the end. The Chicago Tribune had identified a 20-point Salvi deficit only days earlier. The candidate truly did not seem to know. 

"I think every one of the polls has been accurate," he told me in Marion. Or maybe later in Cahokia. Somewhere. Things run together for the traveling press. "I think the voters are having that much trouble making up their minds, and each poll is a kind of snapshot in time of how they feel." 

Did the polls matter? Not much. Al Salvi is a personal injury lawyer whose job is to get a unanimous verdict. Just like in court, the answer here is that he needed every vote he could get. 

Had the southern Illinois excursion occurred with less planning, I would have assumed it was a desperate flight from Chicago. There, merciless TV reporters dogged him about an erroneous claim that Brady Bill namesake James Brady was a machine gun salesman before a bullet aimed at his boss, President Ronald Reagan, made Brady a leading force for gun control. 

Oops. Wrong Brady, Salvi explained. So sorry. "Everybody makes mistakes," Salvi shrugged before heading to rural places where the local TV would be more fascinated with his presence than with the foot sticking in his mouth. (I wondered what would happen if we hit Centralia, Brady's hometown. We didn't.) 

One TV crew in Champaign couldn't wait out his airport speech for a one- on-one interview. It had to hustle off to a shooting in town. At least Al — opponent of the assault gun ban and proponent of concealed-carry by ordinary folks — had an alibi, the press chuckled. 

Rally turnouts were generally good, although an informal poll of hundreds of participants at the most enthusiastic — in Marion — showed an awful lot of the cheering folks held or were connected to state jobs. 

In the end, Salvi did well in southeastern Illinois, including Effingham County, where I figure Johnston saw a lot of signs with those binoculars. Salvi took the populous Sangamon and McLean counties in a patchwork moving north to a solid tier across the roof of the state that included Winnebago County, home to Rockford, the second- largest city. 

It was not enough, of course, as Durbin won 56 percent to 41. 

Not since Judy Koehler in the 1986 race with Democratic Sen. Alan Dixon had a conservative been nominated to such high office hereabouts. And she sure didn't scare Dixon the way Salvi, for a while at least, scared Durbin. 

So what about Salvi's final-weekend flying strategy to flush out the big conservative vote in the downstate reaches, where a man with a gun is called a hunter and a doctor with a suction hose is called a killer? 

Well, consider this: Salvi's airplane touched down in eight carefully chosen target counties: Williamson, St. Clair, Sangamon, Adams, Champaign, Peoria. Rock Island and Winnebago. On election day, he lost six of the eight. 

Patrick E. Gauen covers Illinois politics for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Illinois Issues December 1996 / 41