The Democratic Primary for U.S. Senator: harmonious rivalry
By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

While Paul Simon, Phil Rock, Roland Burris and Alex Seith are all seeking the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race, they agree on many major issues and have carefully avoided divisive attacks on each other. If they can sustain the fragile harmony of their party, the primary winner may pose a potent threat to the GOP candidate.

Paul SimonPhilip J. RockRoland W. BurrisAlex Seith

HAND-LETTERED bedsheets draped from the balconies of Sangamon State University's Public Affairs Center proclaimed "Paul Simon — Illinois' Best" and "Pride of the Prairie, Paul Simon."

The colorful banners' white background contrasted nicely with the white-on-navy T-shirts urging "Phil Rock for Senate" that sprouted by the score out in the auditorium audience.

There were even one or two red, blue and yellow Roland Burris buttons in sight, and a couple of Alex Seith posters. With balloons and partisan cheerleaders augmenting the rainbow display, it looked for all the world like a mini-convention. And in a sense, it was.

The thousand or so Democratic activists who gathered at SSU on this pleasant Saturday last autumn came to consider their party's hopefuls for the U.S. Senate seat held since 1966 by Republican Charles H. Percy. The large turnout for the candidate forum sponsored by the 20th Congressional District Democratic Council, like the party's crowded field for the March 20 primary, attests to Democrats' belief that the three-term GOP senator is particularly vulnerable this year.

6/March 1984/Illinois Issues

The serious Democratic contenders for Percy's job include:

• U.S. Rep. Paul Simon, a former lieutenant governor now in his fifth term in Congress.

• Illinois Comptroller Roland W. Burris, the first black to be elected to statewide office and the Democrats' top votegetter in 1982.

• Illinois Senate President Philip J. Rock, now in his third term at the head of the Senate and until January state Democratic chairman.

• Hinsdale attorney Alex R. Seith, a foreign affairs expert who surprised pundits by almost upsetting Percy in 1978.

For the most part, the Democrats' contest has been conducted with the utmost civility and gentlemanly restraint. There've been few cases of backbiting or open criticism; instead, the hopefuls seem to have subscribed to Abraham Lincoln's warning about the fate befalling divided houses.

The Sangamon State performance was typical.

"I will not indulge here today, or any day, in criticism of a fellow Democrat," declared Rock, the state central committee's endorsed candidate.' 'That simply will not happen." Repairing the damage to Illinois caused by President Ronald Reagan's policies and Percy's support for them "is far more important to me than the personal political ambition of anybody," he said.

In the same vein, Simon praised Rock's record, adding, "He's been so outstanding I want to keep him as the Senate leader a few more years."

Such Democratic harmony contrasts vividly with the bloody scrap between the two wings of the state's Republican party. Conservative U.S. Rep. Tom Corcoran (R-14, Ottawa) has been slashing Percy from the right, questioning the moderate senator's Republicanism and his allegiance to the president's vision of America.

The Democrats, too, are critical of Percy, during whose federal tenure, they say, Illinois has suffered. They're in similar accord on most major issues.

They agree, for example, that projected federal budget deficits of $200 billion or more are intolerable and must be scaled down. Burris says the red ink is "devastating to the economics of this country and of the free world"; it keeps interest rates abnormally high, thus thwarting the housing industry so important to boom times, and keeps the dollar strong in foreign markets so that "we are getting killed at home with our exports." Seith notes that the deficit means the federal government must borrow some $200 billion — about half the available investment pool — that otherwise could go to industry, or print the money and fan inflation. "So, in the most basic terms," notes Seith, "if they borrow the $200 billion and choke off private investment, or if they print the money and create inflation, they are going to kill the chances of long-term economic recovery."

To deal with the deficit, the Democrats call for closing tax loopholes they say Reagan and Percy opened for big business, providing workable incentives for economic growth and job creation, cutting waste and mismanagement and curbing the Pentagon's appetite for exotic, megabuck hardware like the MX missile and the B-l bomber.

Simon likes to point out that the deficit this year would have been $135 billion less had his "nay" vote, not Percy's "aye," carried on the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, which, he says, "provided tremendous benefits for the wealthy ... on the theory that it would be a great spur to investment. It just didn't work out that way."

"The Economic Recovery Act was put together in too much of a hurry, and really kind of ill-conceived," agrees Rock, who urges "fundamental restructuring" of the tax code to encourage productive, job-creating investments, instead of deals like U.S. Steel's taxbreak-abetted $6 billion purchase of Marathon Oil, which, Rock wryly notes, created no new jobs but brought a profit in excess of $100,000 to Percy, a stockholder in the oil company.

For cost-cutting, the Democrats' favorite target is the defense budget.

"I think you start off with a basic premise that when you take your kids to the toy store, you don't buy every toy in the store," says Simon. "When you take admirals and generals to the weapons store, you don't want to buy every weapon in the store. That means some of the weapons systems that are not needed or may be counterproductive should be knocked out. The MX, for example, or the B-1."

"The MX is either a five-year, $50 billion waste that does nothing we're not already doing," declares Seith, "or after the point when the Russians can hit the silos [the below-ground sites where the MX is to be deployed], what you then have is a weapon that can only be used if it's fired on warning or if it's fired as a first strike."

In the area of nuclear weapons, each

March 1984/Illinois Issues/7

Democrat favors a mutually verifiable freeze; all question Reagan's commitment to arms limitation and the wisdom of deploying Pershing II and Cruise missiles in western Europe.

In a speech in Chicago last fall to freeze activists, for instance, Rock called for a delay in the missile deployment, coupled with an invitation to serious arms control negotiations. "There is no good reason for our lack of success except a lack of commitment," he said. "As one who has negotiated a wide variety of issues on the state level, I know firsthand what it means to make a commitment in policy to the ultimate success of negotiations."

Nor do the Pershing IIs provide real security for western Europe against a conventional assault by Warsaw Pact forces, argues Seith, in the face of Soviet missiles aimed at American cities. "We're not going to sacrifice Chicago over their occupying 50 miles of West Germany," he says. "I don't believe any president would do it, if he thought about it. And the West Germans don't believe it either." Instead, Seith urges beefing up conventional NATO forces.

All the Democrats question the United States involvement in Lebanon. "There is no peacekeeping going on," notes Burris, in calling for the replacement of U.S. forces by United Nations peacekeepers. And all the Democrats support closer ties with Israel.

The quartet opposes American efforts to topple Nicaragua's Sandinista government and decries Reagan's veto of legislation linking El Salvador aid to human rights progress; in general, they say, U.S. policy in Central America must take greater note of the economic and social conditions that nurture popular uprisings. "We have been much too insensitive," says Simon. "Uncle Sam to a great extent is viewed in Latin America as a bully and an exploiter." The four advocate negotiated solutions to the region's disputes, in concert with the Contadora nations. Enlisting western Europe's mainstream political parties to help develop democratic institutions in Latin America would lend credibility to U.S. involvement, Seith adds.

Amidst the broad consensus, there are some differences.

Seith alone, for example, supports the tax indexing plan scheduled to take effect in 1985, while the other three Democrats would scuttle it to help balance the budget; its concept — adjusting federal income tax provisions to offset inflation-caused "bracket creep" and higher taxes — is identical to Seith's "Take-Home Pay Protector."

In another instance, Rock believes the United States should continue to give Fidel Castro the cold shoulder, while the others favor efforts to thaw relations with Cuba. Simon in particular urges relaxing the longstanding trade embargo to permit food and medicine sales to Cuba. He argues, "If three people were sitting in the Soviet Union 25 years ago and said, 'How can we design American policy so that Cuba becomes a satellite of the Soviet Union?' they could hardly have designed a better policy."

And only Rock would vote for a constitutional right-to-life amendment to limit abortion and for tuition tax credits for private school children.

But such black-and-white disagreements are rare. More typically, the candidates' views are painted in shades of gray: Is a Lebanon partitioned among Israel, Syria and the Lebanese the best the United States can hope for, absent a huge commitment of American troops, as Seith suspects? Or is Simon correct in his optimism that aggressive U.S. diplomacy can help restore the spirit of amity between Christians and Moslems that made the beleaguered nation an oasis of stability for much of the last six decades?

Voters may have difficulty sifting through such nuances. In that case, it's likely the average citizen of Democratic persuasion will make his choice at the polls based on who the candidate is, his personality and background, rather than what he stands for, his ideas and programs.

Paul Simon

Each of the four serious contenders has solid credentials and can make a plausible case for his candidacy. Paul Simon, however, has the most at stake. While Burris and Rock are only 15 months into the four-year terms they won in November 1982 and Seith is a partner in the LaSalle Street law firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook, the 55-year-old Simon is taking a gamble. He is giving up the southern Illinois congressional seat he first won in 1974 and seemed destined to hold forever to make the run at the Democratic nomination to challenge Percy. Why?

There are a number of reasons, says the Makanda Democrat whose trademarks are a bow tie and a comma sense liberalism.

One factor was the urging last year from Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate who viewed Simon as their best hope to capture the Illinois seat.

Another was the greater opportunity Senate rules provide for individual senators to influence legislation than is afforded by the rules of the House, which tend to concentrate power along the lines of committee jurisdiction. "In the Senate, it's a much more wide open kind of situation, where any member can do something on any number of bills," Simon said. "Frankly, if you're a generalist, as I am, with a lot of interests, the Senate is a better forum."Too many senators, Simon believes, "are simply holding their finger to the wind, saying 'What's popular today?' rather than providing real, fundamental leadership .... I think I can go in there and do an effective job and really make a difference."

Too many senators 'are simply holding their finger to the wind, saying "What's popular today?" rather than providing real fundamental leadership' — Simon

Finally, there was a personal element, an example of how "little things change our lives."

His son, Martin, was dating a girl with cystic fibrosis, Simon recalls, prompting the congressman to call the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find out what research was being done on the disease. "They said, 'Well, we're cutting back,' and I couldn't believe it," Simon said. "Cystic fibrosis is the largest genetic killer of children in the United States. It's one of the host of little areas where Ronald Reagan is hurting people that nobody knows about.'' Simon entered the funding fray, and several floor speeches

8/March 1984/Illinois Issues

and a breakfast meeting with the NIH director later, won the fight. "Now, we're not only maintaining research, we're increasing research on cystic fibrosis," he said. "But I realized in the process of all of this that had I been a member of the Senate, it just would have been infinitely easier to win that battle. And I doggone near lost it in the House." The story illustrates the latest Almanac of American Politics' assessment of Simon as a lawmaker who "seems most interested in . . . things that can arguably make a great deal of difference in the quality of national life with minimal spending by federal standards." Simon, the Almanac notes, "has the ability to raise — and make a difference on — issues which might otherwise be neglected were he not working on them."

Early in his career, Simon showed his talent for looking closely in corners others wished to ignore, an attribute that has helped make him one of Illinois' best-liked and most well-respected political figures. As the youthful editor and publisher of the Troy Tribune in the late '40s and early '50s, Simon placed the local criminal element under the Madison County weekly's spotlight, and later, during a 14-year stint in the Illinois General Assembly, he was equally frank about official corruption. Simon's candor earned him a reformer's reputation that helped propel him to the lieutenant governorship in 1968 while Republican Richard B. Ogilvie was winning the Executive Mansion, the only time in state history the two parties divided the offices.

Four years later, in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, Simon suffered his only electoral defeat at the hands of a corporate lawyer from Deerfield named Dan Walker, who donned a blue workshirt, red bandana and hiking boots to walk the state as a populist. The campaign ploy succeeded, and Walker beat Simon by about 40,000 votes en route to four stormy years as governor.

Simon rebounded in 1974, capturing the congressional seat from the state's southernmost district, and since then, he's had only one close call. In 1980, he squeezed past a little-known Republican riding Reagan's coattails to win by less than 2,000 votes. The narrow margin prompted Democratic mapmakers to add favorable territory to his district in the 1981 redistricting, seemingly cementing Simon's spot in Congress.

But that was before the Senate beckoned, with the chance to wield more clout in dealing with the issues closest to Simon's heart: more jobs for people, better educational opportunities for their children and sensible restraint in the arms race for everyone's sake.

Roland Burris

For Roland Burris, the contest offers the chance again to make history as Illinois' first black U.S. senator. It's also a logical job progression: "In this business you seek to get promoted after you've done a good job," explained the 46-year-old lawyer-banker. "I feel that in the 1980s and beyond it takes a different kind of skill and approach and dedication to serve the people, and I think I have that."

One theme Burris has sounded is that Percy has not used his seniority to benefit his home state. A study done by Burris' office shows that Illinois ranks dead last among the 50 states in returns on its federal taxes, getting back only 66 cents for each dollar. "We've just sat back and let everybody else out-market us," Burris contends, "and thereby we find ourselves at the very bottom. I will be a main promoter, as I am now, of our state." On trade matters, for example, Burris believes the Republican incumbent should have used more forcefully his clout as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to help Illinois firms.

"We have to look out for our interests," Burris said. "Who is doing something for the coal miners of Illinois? Who's doing something for the Illinois farmers? That's what I really feel is lacking — an intensity in representing our constituency."

No one has ever faulted Burris for a lack of intensity or determination. As early as high school days, his official biography notes, "Burris said his life's ambition was to be an elected state official."

A Centralia native with deep southern Illinois roots (his great-grandfather was a farmer in Pulaski County, and his grandfather and father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad), Burris was graduated in political science from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After graduate work in international law at the University of Hamburg in West Germany, he earned a law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1963. Following a brief stint as a federal bank examiner, he joined Chicago's Continental Illinois Bank, eventually becoming a vice president and being named one of Chicago's 10 outstanding young men by the Jaycees. During this time, Burris started to pursue his high school dream.

In his first foray into elective politics in 1968, he finished last in a field of five candidates for two Democratic House nominations from a machine-controlled district on Chicago's south side.

But in 1973, newly elected Gov. Dan Walker named him to head the state General Services Department, then the state's housekeeping agency. Running on a Walker slate three years later, Burris was trounced for his party's nomination for state comptroller by the endorsed candidate, Michael J. Bakalis.

Following Walker's ouster, Burris

'We have to look out for our interests .... That's what I really feel is lacking — an intensity in representing our constituency' — Burris

signed on as national director of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, and when Bakalis became the Democratic gubernatorial candidate two years later, party chieftains tapped Burris for comptroller.

Some pundits discounted his chances, largely in the melancholy belief that racial attitudes were not wholesome enough to allow a black to win a statewide contest. But Burris, whose slight build belies his energy, surprised the cynics with a determined and diligent campaign. After an easy primary win, he bested his GOP opponent by about 154,000 votes to become the first black elected to statewide office in Illinois.

March 1984/Illinois Issues/9

He proved it was no fluke in 1982, outpolling every other candidate on the ballot to win reelection with the third highest vote total in Illinois history, almost 2.4 million.

In his quest for the Senate, Burris seems less at home on some of the issues, particularly foreign affairs, than his rivals. But a solid record as comptroller, including initiating a series of in-depth reports on state spending patterns and fiscal issues, ties in nicely with his call for someone in the Senate who understands government finances and the need to reduce federal deficits.

A senator "must be able to move in with the eagle eye of a comptroller to cut waste, fraud and mismanagement," Burris told one gathering. "What has Chuck Percy been doing for 16 years?" he asked. "This is where my major strength lies, in government financing and the fiscal health of government," Burris told one interviewer. "I've taken an obscure office which nobody ever knew anything about, in which I could've sat down and processed checks for five years and drawn my paycheck, and not been out there trying to tell the voters and educate the public about what's happening to their money. And I think at this point in my career, I have developed the experience and the wisdom to take my knowledge and dedication to a higher plane."

Phil Rock

For someone who mused just a little more than three years ago about getting out of politics, Phil Rock has come a long way — right to the doorstep of what has been called the world's most exclusive club, the U.S. Senate.

In January 1981, however, Rock was more concerned about retaining control of the Illinois Senate for the Democrats' one-vote majority in the wake of the Republican coup engineered by Gov. James R. Thompson. Thompson took advantage of a Democratic rift over Rock's leadership, which some mavericks deemed too autocratic. The Illinois Supreme Court soon undid the governor's mischief, but when judicial salvation was still in the future a weary Rock told reporters he was reconsidering his political future. "Frankly, I'm going to rethink the whole thing," he said then. "I've got some personal commitments in terms of my family and law business. I may just not do anything. Don't you get tired of all this? I do sometimes. I get tired."

Whatever fatigue Rock felt then, in what was arguably the low point of his public career, has long since disappeared, and in one of politics' delicious little ironies, the Democratic leader has become one of the Republican governor's most reliable allies when it's time for statesmanship to supplant partisan wrangling. Last year, for example, Rock was the first major political figure to call for increased state taxes, a

'One of the things we ought to be investing in is human capital. We simply have to devote some federal priority to the question of job training' — Rock

move that came as no surprise to those who've watched the 46-year-old attorney carve out a reputation as a lawmaker who's not afraid to stand up and be counted on the tough issues during a 13-year career.

In his 1971 debut, Rock earned freshman senator accolades; two years later, he was named an assistant leader, and in 1979, he was chosen Senate president for the first of a record three consecutive terms.

Rock also has been active in the National Conference of State Legislatures, lobbying at the federal level on issues of concern to the states and serving as chairman of the organization's state-federal relations committee.

Friends and foes alike regard him as one of the legislature's most capable performers, intelligent and articulate. He's a tough negotiator — when his square jaw is set and his cool blue eyes ice over, the answer is definitely NO — but fair and reasonable, his colleagues say. The toughness is tempered by compassion for society's less fortunate, they add, pointing to Rock's interest in the plight of abused and neglected children, senior citizens, the poor, the sick, the disabled.

That portrait of Rock is perhaps equally colored by his Chicago Democratic machine background (he moved to Oak Park from the Austin neighborhood on the city's west side just a half dozen years ago) and by his years studying for the Roman Caththolic priesthood.

After graduating from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, however, Rock chose Illinois law over canon law and earned his legal spurs from Loyola University in 1964. Before launching his Senate career, Rock served four years as an assistant attorney general, including a stint heading the consumer fraud division and two years as a county prosecutor.

Among the program highlights of Rock's legislative tenure are authorship of the state's child abuse reporting law and development of an ambitious economic recovery program keying on job retraining for displaced workers, an approach he urges at the federal level. "One of the things we ought to be investing in is human capital," Rock contends. "We simply have to devote some federal priority to the question of job training and retraining the work force."

His legislative record, Rock believes makes him the Democrats' best alternative to Percy, whom he dismisses as a "showhorse, not a workhorse" who has not been an effective legislator for the state.

"Illinois can no longer afford Republican policies that discriminate against the state . . . and our commitment to have an educated, productive and fair society for everyone," Rock told one campaign audience. "I have the toughness to govern and the compassion to care." On his role as Senate leader, Rock said, "I have dealt on a daily basis with the issues affecting every region of the state. ... I have a proven record of effectiveness in the legislative process, the ability to put together the pieces that make government work, by consensus and compromise, for the people of this state."

And there's another of those little ironies tucked into Rock's candidacy: One of the first races he worked on "as a young fledgling in this business," Rock recalls, was U.S. Sen. Paul Douglas' unsuccessful reelection effort in 1966. The man who beat him? Republican Charles H. Percy.

10/March 1984/Illinois Issues

Alex Seith

You can't blame Alex Seith if he finds something ironic about the crowd of Democrats jostling for a shot at Percy. After all, it was the 49-year-old Seith's intense effort six years ago, when better-known Democrats shied from challenging the supposedly invulnerable Republican senator, that demonstrated Percy's popularity had eroded, whetting Democratic appetites for the 1984 race.

In 1978, Seith relied heavily on hard-hitting — some said excessively so — radio and television spots criticizing Percy's performance. He also campaigned relentlessly for more than a year, while Percy's effort until the final days seemed nonchalant.

The first evidence the Seith strategy was working came from the Chicago Sun-Times Straw Poll, a public opinion survey with a reputation for accuracy despite its unscientific method. Its first report showed Seith with a tiny edge over Percy among voters in the areas canvassed, and as further straws were taken, Seith's margin in the poll moved to almost 6 percent just two weeks before the November election.

The unexpected results galvanized Percy's lackadaisical campaign and jolted the news media into looking more critically at the Democratic candidate.

In the stretch run, Seith was damaged by his controversial radio ads questioning Percy's civil rights record and by a barrage of newspaper columns detailing corruption by employees of the Cook County Zoning Board of Appeals, which Seith chaired.

Eventually, Percy won by about 250,000 votes, capturing slightly more than 53 percent of the vote, after abjectly apologizing to Illinois voters for whatever neglect they might have suffered at his hands in the preceding 12 years.

In 1980, Seith sought the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Adlai E. Stevenson III, but finished a distant second in a five-man field to Illinois Secy. of State Alan J. Dixon, the eventual November winner.

In that short-lived effort, voters saw a mellower Seith, urbane and polished, thoughtful and articulate on a wide range of matters. That's the Seith style in 1984, too. "I'm the issues candidate," the Aurora-born, Yale- and Harvard-educated lawyer says. "My constituency is people who are moved by new ideas, in the sense of wanting new directions. . . . That doesn't mean just abstract thinkers, that means all kinds of Democratic voters who say they don't like the way things are functioning now."

So Seith's commercials have talked about the economy, Lebanon, social security, the environment, nuclear power — the gamut of current events. "I'm absolutely convinced that people look at the U.S. Senate," he explains, "and say, 'We expect a senator to deal with these things, and if a candidate will talk to us about them sensibly, that's the one we're going to vote for,' and that's what I'm doing."

One innovative suggestion, for example, is Seith's revenue-keeping proposal, under which 10 percent of federal income taxes would remain with state and local governments; the resultant $4 billion for Illinois, he says, could be used to trim real estate taxes, boost school funding or promote economic development.

Another Seith idea would address the inequities in Pentagon spending by favoring Illinois and other states which have few defense industries when it's time to award other federal contracts. Such a law, he says, would have snared for the Chicago-area Argonne National Laboratory a $257 million atom smasher that instead went to a facility in Virginia, a state already flush with Pentagon dollars. "Everybody agrees that Argonne and the Virginia facility were essentially equally qualified; it was just a subjective judgment by somebody in the federal bureaucracy that it went to Virginia," he said. "Under my proposal, we would have gotten it automatically."

March 1984/Illinois Issues/11

Seith's strongest asset, however, is his command of foreign affairs. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, a regular reader of Pravda, he can discuss world issues with the easy familiarity of a Whitey Herzog talking baseball. In campaign appearances, Seith likes to pepper his comments with personal anecdotes and firsthand observations drawn from his experience in international law and his extensive work and travel abroad (60 countries on five continents). His credentials include deputy to his party's foreign affairs task force in the mid '70s, chairman of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and adviser to President Jimmy Carter on ambassadorial appointments.

"The foreign policy background is not just abstract," Seith notes. "I have addressed problems before they became a crisis and said, here is how you head off a crisis. . . . There's just a heck of a lot of things that I've written over time [that] show where I explained a problem and anticipated it, and if I'd been in the U.S. Senate at the time and had the power to make some changes, we could have headed off some things."

Imponderable factors

Among the more intriguing aspects of the contest are a pair of imponderable factors: party slating and the black vote.

In the Golden Days of Machine Politics, an imprimatur from Democratic warlords under the late Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley, was a virtual lock on the party nomination. Rock has the slatemakers' blessing this time around, but its value certainly has slipped in recent years, and some would argue — perhaps sour grapes? — that it's more harm than help.

"Our information is that slating is not going to carry the same weight as it has in the past, that there've been shifting alliances," observed Burris in masterful understatement.

Seith, who urged party leaders to forego a primary endorsement, was more explicit. "I think it's a negative, because there are a lot of people who react badly to it," he argued, "and on the other side, they're [committeemen] not going to work for him. So he gets the negative reaction from those who won't follow the endorsement and no real effort from the committeemen."

The chief debility of machine might, of course, is the ongoing power struggle between Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and City Council strongman and 10th Ward Ald. Edward R. Vrdolyak. The struggle has translated into a spate of challenges to sitting ward committeemen, whose natural inclination even in tranquil times is to ignore U.S. Senate candidates because they control few jobs.

One Chicago ward baron under seige, Seith relates, told him: "I got nothing against Phil Rock, I got nothing against you, I got nothing against any of you guys running for the Senate. I'm running for committeeman, and that's all I'm working for."

Rock, of course, does not agree. "I look at it as obviously extremely helpful, and as I indicated from Day One, had I not received the endorsement I would not be a candidate. . . . What it means is that the mechanical arm of the party will be supportive of my effort, so you will have in each of the 102 counties, I hope, the full effort on behalf of the endorsed candidate."

And in Chicago's turf wars?

"Obviously, I've been in this business long enough to know that there is more immediate concern with the local races," Rock acknowledges. "But I suggest as I have in the past and will in the future, those who are involved in local races are equally if not better served by support for the entire ticket, and that a strong showing, a strong campaign and a strong candidate at the top of the ticket is extremely helpful."

The Chicago turmoil, too, directs attention to the potential significance of the black electorate: Washington's overwhelming black support helped win him the 1983 Democratic mayoral nomination from Mayor Jane M. Byrne and Cook County State's Atty. Richard M. Daley, who shared the votes of the more numerous white populace.

Is that Chicago experience a valid weathervane for this statewide race, pointing toward a sure Burris victory along strictly racial lines? Maybe, but not likely, the candidates say, for several reasons. A key one is demographic: If voters across the state follow the same lines and percentages of racial popularity as Chicagoans did in nominating Washington, Burris would get no more than a quarter of the vote, making it mathematically impossible for him to win.

More significantly, any racial overtones will be muted by the fact that none of the white Senate hopefuls carries as much political baggage in the black community as Byrne did. In fact, all have positive ties: Rock has represented a large chunk of Chicago's westside throughout his Senate career; Simon has a long and favorable record on minority issues as well as support from black leaders across the state; and Seith, too, has won endorsements while courting blacks with the same persistence he's gone after other voters.

In addition, Burris has proven his campaign successes have nothing to do with skin color. Although he's widely expected to run very well in Chicago's black neighborhoods, it will be his showing in largely white suburbia and downstate that decides his fate. "If I were to choose to run as a black candidate, counting [only] on the black votes, then I would not be a very viable candidate," Burris notes. "I just don't think you're going to see this election or any future election coming down on that basis again," Rock adds. "I think that the mayoralty in Chicago was a unique experience and one that will not be repeated."

Whether the party's endorsement and the racial question are major influences on the choices made by Democratic faithful across the state or merely incidental footnotes to the March 20 balloting, party leaders pray the two factors won't prove divisive, thus harming the nominee's chances in November.

That was the message U.S. Rep. Richard J. Durbin had for the Democratic activists at Sangamon State last fall, before the politicking began in earnest. "We must maintain throughout a spirit of friendly disagreement," he counseled. "After the March primary we're all going to be together again. It's our party." If not, he warned, "We'll lose not only the election, but our cause for existence, and hurt the people we represent who've waited patiently for our party to lead them."

Charles N. Wheeler III is state government correspondent in the Springfield bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

12/March 1984/Illinois Issues