I settled back in my swivel chair, put my feet up on my desk and stared out my dirty office window at the dull silver gray Capitol dome. I was contemplating my little corner of the world — the Springfield "zoo'' — when someone knocked on my office door.

I scrambled up. "Yo," I said. "Enter."

She did. Her dirty blond hair looked like a haystack hit by a cyclone and then set with crazy glue. She wore blue mirrored sunglasses with a red elastic cord, gold chains around her pretty neck, a designer camouflage jacket with padded shoulders and a tight black skirt slit to the thigh. She was about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a wedding cake.

"Mr. Sparlowe?"

I nodded. "Phil Sparlowe's the name, political intelligence is my game.''

She gave a quick smile and took off the glasses. Her eyes were p-u-r-r feline yellow. "Mr. Sparlowe, don't you remember me?"

I did a double take. It couldn't be. Then I saw the Handbook of Illinois Government clutched in her hand and I knew. "Ah, yes. Little Women Voters. The Case of the Missing Voter," I said, "The report's in the mail."

She smiled brightly. "No. This is another case."

"Have a seat.''

She did. She crossed her arms. I waited for the legs to follow the example. '' What's the problem?''

She smiled again. "Can a detective solve a crime that didn't happen?" She crossed her legs.

I exhaled. "No doubt about it. What didn't happen?"

"You remember the election? In November? Well, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing."

"Huh?"

In the 21st Congressional District, the venerable Democrat Melvin Price barely retained the seat he has held since 1944. Price, 81, had been deposed as chair of the House Armed Services Committee in the wake of the 1984 election. He pledged that he only wanted "one final term," but the voters nearly denied him that last chance as he squeaked through by a little more than a thousand votes in a district normally thought to be a cinch for the Democrats. Price's reelection shows the difficulty of defeating even enfeebled incumbents, but the fact of such a close election is the even more dramatic part of the story.

At the state level, Democrat Ray A. Christensen of Morris lost his race for reelection in the Illinois 85th House District by four votes. (At this writing, the Illinois House is hearing Christensen's challenge to the outcome.) Like Price, Christensen was an incumbent legislative candidate who had an extremely close race. Unlike Price, he lost. Maybe.

Betting on an incumbent in an Illinois election is getting to be as sure a thing as a U.S. budget deficit. Consider just one set of facts. In November's congressional and state legislative elections in Illinois, a total of 162 incumbents were on the ballot. Four lost; 98 percent won.

This is not just an Illinois phenomenon. Ninety-five percent of all congressional incumbents nationwide were reelected in 1986. The safety of incumbents in Illinois, however, is increasing over previously high levels. The reelection rate of Illinois House incumbents increased from 80 percent in 1982 to 96 percent in 1984 and now stands at 98 percent. (1982 was an unusual year for incumbents because of reapportionment and especially for 177 House incumbents since 59 seats were eliminated.)

The 1986 Illinois congressional elections powerfully illustrate the current unequal duel between incumbent and challenger. Elections should provide a means for citizens to insure reasonable continuity in government while at the same time providing a mechanism for needed change. With respect to congressional elections, there is some reason to fear that the forces for stability have overwhelmed change. In 1986 in Illinois 20 incumbents ran in the general election, and 20 were reelected.

In 1986 just five of the 22 Illinois races for the U.S. House were competitive — that is, ones in which the winner got less than 60 percent of the vote. One case was Rep. Price. In the 22nd District, another veteran southern Illinois congressman, Kenny Gray (D-West Frankfort), was reelected with 53 percent of the vote. Gray defeated the same Republican challenger he had faced in 1984 when he won with just 50.2 percent. Only one other incumbent received less than 60 percent of the vote: Democrat Lane Evans (17-Rock Island). Evans virtually duplicated his 1984 win by getting 56 percent of the vote. Although he is one of the most liberal Illinois Democrats in Congress, Evans has managed since 1982 to hold the district previously represented by Republican moderate Thomas Railsback. He has paid careful attention to constituency needs. The Evans case makes the point that the style of relating to the constituency is more important than specific policy stands.

The other 17 incumbents won with margins ranging from 63 percent for House Minority Leader Robert Michel (R-18, Peoria) to Edward Madigan's (R-15, Lincoln) unopposed victory. Of those with opponents, Charles Hayes (D-l, Chicago) had the easiest time: He received 96 percent of the vote.

15/March 1987/Illinois Issues

The average congressional incumbent in Illinois in 1986 won by a 68 to 32 percent margin. In the three elections since the 1981 reapportionment, 57 of 59 congressional incumbents reaching the general election (97 percent) have been reelected. (See Illinois Elections, 3rd ed., pp. 98-108.)

Yet as Charles J. Abbott noted (Illinois Issues, December 1986, p. 38), "Illinois now has a relatively young delegation in terms of tenure.'' More than half of the delegation was first elected in this decade. Change does occur, but how? The obvious is the open seat situation brought about by resignation or death. In 1986, the two new Illinois congressmen came into office by those routes. In the 4th District Republican Jack Davis of Joliet succeeded the late George O'Brien, also a Joliet Republican. In the 14th District, Republican John Grotberg of St. Charles resigned for reasons of health and was replaced by Republican Dennis Hasten of Yorkville. Davis and Hastert both served in the Illinois House, and each won their congressional seats by the same tight 52 to 48 margin, far closer than the average race for an incumbent.

An open seat may provide that rare opportunity for the party out of office in the district to pick up the seat. The opportunity may be even brighter if the seat is open because of a primary defeat of an incumbent resulting from a split in the majority party. That is what happened in the 17th District in 1982 when Lane Evans was first elected.

The other major source of change occurs when the incumbent becomes the issue in the campaign. Recent Illinois examples: incumbent Republican Paul Findley's loss to Democrat Dick Durbin in the 20th District in 1982 when Findley's support of the Palestine Liberation Organization became an issue; incumbent Republican Dan Crane's loss to Democrat Terry Bruce in 1984 in the 19th District after Crane admitted to having sex with a House page; and Price's near miss in 1986.

In sum, change in Illinois' congressional delegation generally occurs when an incumbent dies, has health problems or shoots himself in the foot by forgetting that, as Tip O'Neill has said, "all politics is local." In other words, attention to the constituency is the first law of political survival.

In the absence of any of the above conditions, the electoral fortunes of incumbents are likely to follow the pattern illustrated by Durbin of Springfield. He got his seat by besting Findley of Pittsfield in 1982 by just under 1,500 votes. Durbin was certainly heavily aided by outside money from pro-Israeli groups and by a reapportionment map drawn by Democrats which added Democratic Decatur to the district. He immediately went to work developing a reputation for constituency service (as had Findley two decades before). In 1984 sophomore Durbin turned back a relatively strong challenge from Republican Dick Austin of Springfield, chairman of the Sangamon County Board. In 1986, opposition was more nominal than real, and Durbin captured 68 percent of the vote, winning by over 60,000. The seat is Durbin's to hold until he stumbles and makes himself the issue unless the 1990 congressional reapportionment map is drawn by Republicans, an increasingly unlikely event in Illinois.

Why are congressional incumbents so hard to dislodge? The answer is motive, means and opportunity.

• Motive: Most congressmen desire to be reelected. They begin working on reelection the moment the current race is over.

• Means: Congress is a modern legislative institution working full time, staffed professionally and technologicaly up to date. The resources of office can be turned into a relection machine.

• Opportunity: Incumbents have advantages over challengers in advertising their virtues and claiming credit for good things that happen in the district. Their chief advantage is name recognition, but the edge extends to fundraising, use of the franking privilege to keep their names before the voters in the district, ability to associate themselves with public works projects in the district (often rightly so) and capacity to serve as an intermediary between their constituents and the federal bureaucracy.

These advantages lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy that the incumbent will win, discouraging opposition and encouraging interest groups to invest in the current officeholder. In 1986, 83 percent of all political action committee contributions went to incumbents. The appearance of invulnerability produces invulnerability. The appearance of weakness, however, invites challengers to come forward. But candidates must be recruited who have a fighting chance of winning. They need such assets as personal attractiveness, energy, name recognition and financial backing. It is hard to recruit such candidates in the face of overwhelming incumbent success.

Moreover, using the incumbent advantages, congressmen have been increasingly able to insulate themselves from the tides of national politics. Presidential coattails don't mean much anymore. Solons develop a personal "home style" which fits their needs and that of their districts. They seek office as "your voice in that foreign outpost, Washington." They run for Congress by running against Congress. As the bonds of party dissolve, incumbents increasingly run as individuals, not partisans. In fact, it is probably accurate to say that we have a three-party system: Republicans out of office; Democrats out of office; and Incumbents. And there is no question which party has then monopoly.

It now appears that state legislative elections in Illinois are becoming "congressionalized." The data from 1986 are striking: If we lump the House and Senate races together, 137 of 141 incumbents were reelected. A point more important than incumbent success is the extent to which legislative races in Illinois are simply not very competitive. It is one thing to reelect incumbents when the hot breath of competition is on their backs and quite another when incumbents are safe from the test of a credible opponent.

Many of the races are not contests. In 24 House races (21 percent) and 11 Senate races (27 percent) the winner was unopposed. Eighteen of these House "no contests" and all 11 of the Senate cakewalks involved incumbents. But more than that, of all 107 House races involving incumbents, just 17 (16 percent) were marginally close, using the generous standard of the winners receiving less than 60 percent of the vote. In the Senate, just four of 34 races involving incumbents (11 percent) were close by that measure. In short, Illinois had 21 real legislative races in 1986.

16/March 1987/Illinois Issues

Despite the fact that the Republican party made regaining control of the state Senate their prime objective, and despite the fact that the party expended substantial resources toward that end, they were able to retire only one Democratic incumbent, LeRoy W. Lemke of Chicago. Rated one of the General Assembly's 10 worst legislators in a Chicago Sun-Times poll, he had made himself the issue.

In turn, Senate Democrats were able to oust just one Republican: veteran James Rupp of Decatur. The Democrats organized a strong and positive campaign and took the seat. They proved, at least in this race, that change was possible.

Generally the Illinois legislative elections are becoming less competitive. One hypothesis for explaining this trend is that state legislators are following the lead of congressional incumbents — using the advantages of office.

Illinois has a modern, professional legislature. The job of an Illinois legislator is increasingly full time with a substantial salary instead of a part-time job undertaken out of a sense of citizen duty. Nearly half of the legislators regard the job as full time, and reelection becomes a prime motivation for them. They have discovered that the office can be exploited for its advances in reelection campaigns.

Most legislators maintain offices in their districts for constituent services. No one objects to this, but it is a prime means of obtaining favorable name recognition at low risk. In 1983, 48 legislators took advantage of the opportunity to publish a newsletter for their districts, thereby putting their names before tbeir constituents in a positive publication. Whether through their newsletters or other means, the modern state legislator is very senstive to the art of claiming credit for good things that happen in the district: a Build Illinois project, keeping a mental health facility open, construction of a new prison. Incumbents also have advantages in fundraising, including the practice of scheduling fundraisers during the legislative session. In 1984 the average legislative incumbent raised more than $30,000 from special interest groups. The perception that incumbent state legislators are difficult to dislodge is the same as for congressmen. If an incumbent is in trouble, campaign committees directed by party leaders can funnel resources into that campaign to try to rescue the endangered party member. If such resources are primarily directed by both parties toward marginal races and open seat situations, as seems to be the case, the effects cancel each other out. Reapportionment also contributes to the safety of many incumbents. The parties' purpose in reapportionment, no matter which party draws the map, is to protect a substantial body of incumbents. Of course, parties wish to insulate their own incumbents as much as possible, but it is also in their interest to draw districts that concentrate the votes of their opponents, thereby creating more safe districts, and leaving a minimal number of swing districts. Once someone is elected, even in a swing district, the reelection incumbent machine kicks in. The coattail effect has also diminished at the state legislator level, especially with the decline of straight party voting. One of the consequences of state legislative races becoming noncompetitive is an extremely low turnover in the General Assembly. In 1986, the Illinois House had a 10 percent turnover compared to the norm in the recent past of 25 percent.

The current security of legislative incumbents practically guarantees a high degree of stability in government, but it also raises the question of whether state government can be responsive. For example, Illinois has had the same Republican governor and the same legislative leaders since 1983, with Democrats in control of both chambers. They have worked out pragmatic ways of dealing with major policy issues, such as the 1983 tax increase.

The essence of that pragmatic solution was to establish a temporary, 18-month increase in income taxes and to permanently raise taxes on gasoline and sales. Four years later, the same issue may be revisited. What chance is there for innovation or any decision other than a similar, pragmatic one since there has been no essential change in the political leaders and makeup of the state legislature?

There is no quick fix to the problem of incumbent invulnerability. Legislative remedies would have to be voted on by incumbents. Illinois has a two-party system, and however strong or weak those parties are, their leaders in the General Assembly will act much like Congress to protect incumbents — whether by drawing up districts or protecting members from votes on issues not palatable in those districts.

I closed the file and leaned back in my chair. "I don't know what you need me for. You've fingered the guilty parties — 'in' and 'cumbent.' But you didn't need me to tell you that, doll.

"Mr. Sparlowe, what can we do?"

"Doll, as in most things, there's damn little we can do. You don't change human nature. Especially the subspecies of pols. "

"What about public financing?"

I shook my head. "Incumbents' perpetuity in office device. Why would incumbents give the challengers the money they really need to beat them?"

"I see. What about limiting the terms a legislator can serve?''

"What if you get a good one? It could happen."

"What about limiting campaign expenditures?"

"Who does that help? Look kid, anything you do to limit spending hurts, not helps, challengers."

"What about going back to a citizen legislature?"

"Hey, lady, weren 't you all in The Little Women Voters in favor of a modern legislature just a few years ago? Forget it, we ain't going back.''

"Mr. Sparlowe, isn't there anything we can do?"

"Yeah, stop trashing political parties. They're the only organization that can take on incumbents and win. Ask Jim Rupp and LeRoy Lemke.''

"I guess I'm going to have to stop thinking that parties are just, well, machines run by hacks.''

I looked at her costume. "Just think of it as another midlife crisis. "

"Oh, Mr. Sparlowe. You just gave me the big chill."

"I can remedy that, doll.''

David H. Everson is professor of political studies and public affairs, Sangamon State University. He is editor of Comparative State Politics and the author of a forthcoming private eye novel set in Springfield.

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