Politics
By ROBERT KIECKHEFER

Roses to the electorate

THE ''BLIND PRIMARY" apparently didn't confuse voters as badly as some people thought it would — at least in some districts. On the other hand, if Gov. James R. Thompson hoped the new system was going to send him to the Detroit convention with a tame delegation, he didn't get everything he was looking for, either.

One is left wondering, why did we go to such lengths to confuse the voters if little came of it? One also is left with a renewed admiration for those persistent voters who took the trouble to find out who they were voting for, despite their party's best efforts to stop them.

Here's a preliminary look at what happened in the GOP presidential primary, based on unofficial — in some cases, incomplete — vote totals.

In some districts, it looked like the voters were fooled by the blind primary — which forbade delegate candidates from listing on the ballot the name of the presidential candidate they preferred. A good example is the 22nd District — a huge district extending from Danville down through East Central Illinois. In the "beauty contest" primary, the district voted overwhelmingly for former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. One would assume, all else being equal, that 22nd District voters also would cast their ballots for Reagan-committed delegates — if they knew who those delegates were. They didn't vote that way, though. Instead, they elected only one Reagan delegate, plus one who says he backs Congressman Philip Crane, and two who unofficially list themselves as uncommitted. The Crane delegate was far and away the top vote-getter, snaring about 38,000 votes, compared with just over 20,000 for the runner-up.

What happened? Well, the three non-Reagan delegates elected in the 22nd District just happen to be the incumbent congressman, Rep. Dan Crane; an incumbent state senator, Max Coffey; and a highly visible former representative, Roscoe Cunningham.

A critic of the blind primary is sorely tempted to say the 22nd District voters just didn't know which delegate candidates favored Reagan and simply voted for the names they recognized. The only real alternate explanation is that the voters wanted Reagan but also wanted to send to Detroit an Illinois delegation that could wheel and deal, making the best of whatever situation it found at the convention. But, if that's the case, why are we going to all this trouble? The whole point of the blind primary was supposed to be that it would force voters to make that kind of "blind" choice. If they're doing so voluntarily, why are we bothering?

Political awareness

Then there's the 10th District. The north suburban Chicago area is independent and prime territory for John B. Anderson. If the pattern of the 22nd were followed, one would expect to find Anderson the winner in the beauty contest, but that lustrous, uncommitted names would be chosen as delegates. It didn't work that way, though. It was just the opposite, indicating that in some areas, voters were able to find out who the candidates were and who they represented.

The 10th, in fact, elected five Anderson delegates. And the measure of that accomplishment is in the names the voters rejected. Among those running uncommitted, or pledged to candidates other than Anderson, were W. Clement Stone, Cook County Republican Chairman J. Robert Barr, two well-known state senators, former cabinet official Don Rumsfeld and Illinois Constitutional Convention Chairman Sam Witwer. All lost, some badly.

The conclusion has to be that voters in the politically aware 10th District took the time and trouble to find out which delegate candidates represented Anderson.

Beauty v. delegates

Another possible indication of an impact of the new system would be a dropoff from the beauty contest vote to the delegate vote. A cursory look at the figures, however, indicates there was very little dropoff. Just about as many people voted for delegates as voted for the presidential candidates. While that indicates the blind primary didn't scare voters away, it doesn't necessarily mean they knew what they were doing when they voted in the delegate races.

So what's the upshot?

Thompson, who pushed the new system through the Legislature and half-heartedly defended it afterwards, has to be a little embarrassed. He looks bad with the voters, many of whom were upset to find the politicians trying to confuse them at the polls. And he must look bad to the politicians, too, because the system didn't work. It didn't produce the uncommitted -thus deliverable delegation Thompson had sought.

Roses to the electorate — especially the GOP voters in the 10th District and elsewhere who took the time and the trouble to find out which delegate candidate was for which presidential candidate. Even if that involved only cutting out the list printed in the Tuesday morning newspaper — that's more than the pols expected them to do.

34/May 1980/Illinois Issues