EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Ex-Illinoisan lends depth
to our Washington coverage

by Peggy Boyer Long

Free-lance journalist Gayle Worland recently spent the better part of a day keeping pace with Richard Durbin as he sprinted headlong into his new job in the U.S. Senate. Her observations on the politician she calls "Illinois' Mr. Fixit" appear in this month's cover story (see page 14). Though she now lives in Washington, D.C., the Rockford native's perspective on the high-energy Democrat stretches back a number of years.

D. C.-based journalist Gayle Worland has won awards for her profiles of this state's politicians. Now the Illinois native lends her perspective to our national reporting.

In the early '90s, armed with a master's in journalism from the University of Illinois, she put in a stint editing Illinois Times, a weekly newspaper published in Durbin's hometown. After she moved east, Worland continued to cover the 20th District congressman. In fact, a 1994 Durbin profile for Illinois Times earned her an award from the Illinois Press Association — as did another profile she wrote that same year on Paul Simon, Durbin's predecessor in the Senate.

In the first piece on Durbin, Worland says, she was struck by his down-home style while heading a House appropriations subcommittee. What intrigued her this time is the difference between the responsibilities of a representative and a senator — and the ways in which Durbin might need to adapt his style in order to be effective on the larger stage.

While Durbin wasted no time setting up a staff and relocating to his temporary new office in the Dirksen Building, Worland questions whether he has yet to face up to the biggest adjustment in the move from the House to the Senate.

"I wonder," she says, "whether he is truly prepared for how different his new job will be as he shifts from representing a single congressional district to representing a statewide constituency."

She notes that Durbin is "still very much an open-door, service-oriented officeholder. Will that change when his constituency is broader and more diverse, when his schedule gets more hectic?"

Some changes are under way already. Durbin the congressman tried to meet anybody who stopped by his Washington office from the home district, Worland says. Durbin the senator has a guest book out front. "He couldn't possibly make time to meet every Illinoisan who walks in the door."

Worland says there is a difference between Durbin's style — which still strikes her as "amazingly candid"— and Simon's.

"When I covered Simon, there was always an entourage — a press secretary, an aide or two. When I followed Durbin around [for this piece], it was just him and me."

She wonders whether it will be as easy to get access to Durbin a year down the road.

Still, we hope to see Worland's byline regularly in the magazine. She lends a national dimension to our reporting on state policy and politics. There will certainly be people to keep an eye on over the next year or so as Illinoisans gain increasing clout in the executive branch. And, Worland says, despite the push to devolve power to the states, Congress faces a number of important issues — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, health care — that will continue to affect the lives of every Illinoisan.

4 / March 1997 Illinois Issues