Politics

By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

Courting the vote of resentment

HOW DEEP run the currents of popular disenchantment across the Illinois political landscape? An initial sounding for what is likely to be a major element in the November gubernatorial election could emerge from the March primary, in which candidates of both parties hope to win nomination by tapping the reservoir of voter resentment.

On the Republican side, state Rep. Judy Koehler of Henry is trying to parlay her anti-pay raise credentials and conservative ideology over George Ranney, a Chicago steel company executive and civic leader, for the right to face U.S. Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Belleville) in the fall. In a Democratic main event laced with populist rhetoric, Patrick Quinn, the founder of the self-styled Coalition for Political Honesty, and former state Treasurer Jerry Cosentino hope to unseat current Treasurer James H. Donnewald.

Koehler and Quinn are case studies of shrewd politicians trying to turn the average citizen's frustrations with government into election day pluralities. Despite obvious partisan differences, they appear kindred spirits. Both are essentially political outsiders, skillful campaigners who've scored past successes by courting voter dissatisfaction and running against the established order. Both were catapulted into the public limelight by the same issue, the lame duck pay raise of 1978, and since then both have regularly raised the hackles of establishment politicians.

For Koehler, the pay raise, which came on the heels of voter approval for the Thompson Proposition, was a rude awakening to the contrast between rhetoric and results. Koehler, who helped circulate petitions to get the governor's advisory referendum on the ballot, expected legislators to honor its budget-reining spirit. Instead, the legislature, with Thompson's complicity, voted itself 40 percent pay raises.

Seizing upon voter outrage, Koehler ran for the House, pledging if elected to return the tainted pay hike to the state treasury. After ousting an incumbent in the GOP primary, the smalltown housewife and businesswoman was elected in November 1980 and promptly returned, as she has every year since, the $8,000 pay hike.

The lame duck pay raise also figures prominently in the Quinn story. The same public outrage that propelled Koehler into the House made it possible for Quinn, a one-time political operative and ghost-payroller for former Gov. Dan Walker, to succeed with his petition drive to reduce by one-third the size of the Illinois House. Not surprisingly, Koehler played a lead role in the Cutback Amendment effort in central Illinois.

From similar beginnings, the pair also arrived on the March 18 primary ballot without encouragement from party chieftains, although Koehler belatedly won endorsements from some of those who early last fall were desperately seeking anyone else to carry the GOP banner.

And woven deeply into their campaign messages are similar anti-political establishment themes and appeals to disgruntled voters, like Koehler's snipes at Ranney as a liberal millionaire and Quinn's broadsides at Donnewald's long-time public service. But it is here the parallels diverge, for Koehler argues for less government while Quinn urges an expanded role for the state treasurer.

Throughout the campaign, Koehler has depicted herself as the conservative candidate with the best chance of knocking off the entrenched Dixon, whose presumed prowess at the polls scared off all the bigger names courted by GOP elders.

In challenging Ranney to debate, for example, Koehler sniped at him for supporting programs that have raised taxes, in contrast to her history of voting against taxes. Under press questioning, she explained Ranney had been a proponent of both the state income tax and of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). Indeed, as a top aide to former Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie, Ranney had supported his boss's call for a state income tax in 1969; later, as a businessman keenly aware of the indispensability of mass transit to the economic vitality of the Chicago area, he helped lead the campaign to win voter approval for creation of the RTA.

Koehler is hoping that grass-roots Republican voters will agree that such transgressions tarnish Ranney's conservative credentials and hence his fitness as a GOP standard-bearer. Ranney, on the other hand, should benefit if voters look beyond ideology to business acumen and professional achievement. The question could become who'd better represent Illinois interests in dealing with the complex issues of today's global economy: an executive responsible for a $1 billion-a-year operation, or a downstate legislator who authored a caustic condemnation of Japan's trade policies at the same time state officials were trying to land a $500 million Mitsubishi auto plant for downstate Illinois.

Quinn, too, is banking heavily on grass-roots support in his quest for the Democratic nomination for treasurer, particularly from the network that forms his statewide base: Coalition for Political Honesty petition-passers and Citizens Utility Board activists.

His platform is a deftly stitched crazy quilt of proposals lashing out at all the popular economic bogeymen of the day, including the banks, the utilities and insurance companies, none of which fall under the treasurer's purview. And in shaping his call for the treasurer to use state deposits to leverage desirable financial changes and to underwrite worthy investments, Quinn would give the mistaken impression that such considerations are not now a part of state investment policies, when in fact Donnewald and his predecessors for years have used linked deposits and other investment programs to encourage loans for agricultural production, home mortgages, and commercial and industrial development.

2/March 1986/Illinois Issues