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Politics

Education amendment's
presidential coattails

By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

ii9210061.jpg

Could the proposed Education Amendment save Illinois and its 22 electoral votes for President George Bush on November 3? Though it might seem preposterous at first blush, the hypothesis should not be dismissed out of hand. The argument can be made that the president's best chance of carrying Illinois, a key battleground in the 1992 race for the White House, might rest in riding the coattails of a backlash against the proposed amendment.

As Campaign '92 heads into its final weeks, recall what happened four years ago, then consider the dynamics at work this fall. In 1988, Bush carried Illinois by about 95,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million votes cast, garnering 50.7 percent of the vote to 48.6 percent for his Democratic rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. The president's narrow escape here came while the Republican ticket posted a 54-46 percent margin nationally, en route to winning 40 of the 50 states and a 426-111 edge in electoral votes.

The Illinois race would have been even closer, had the voter turnout in Chicago's black neighborhoods not fallen almost 10 percentage points below the statewide mark. Thus, although Dukakis was winning those wards by margins of better than 9-to-l, the lower turnout helped hold his Chicago plurality below the numbers needed to offset Bush's overwhelming suburban strength and slender downstate lead.

The only other statewide races in 1988, meanwhile, were traditionally low-profile contests for University of Illinois trustees. A constitutional convention call and two proposed amendments also were voted on statewide, but none fired up the public.

Now flash forward to 1992, when the presidential race between Bush and the Democratic nominee, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, must share the top of the Illinois ticket with a U.S. Senate contest that has all the signs of a Democratic blowout for Cook County Recorder of Deeds Carol Moseley Braun over GOP hopeful Richard S. Williamson, a Kenilworth attorney.

The potential for Braun to become the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate can be counted on to galvanize minority voters in Chicago to a level unseen since the death of Mayor Harold Washington, producing a huge turnout in the city's black neighborhoods. The vast majority of those voters also will mark for Clinton, giving the Democratic presidential contender a boost Dukakis never saw.

To counter the surge of Democratic votes from Chicago, Bush needs a strong showing in the suburbs and GOP leaning areas downstate, but thus far the president has shown little knack at energizing the folks whose votes won him Illinois in 1988.

In part, Bush's appeal has been undone by history and economics. With the demise of the Soviet Union, anti-communist fervor is no longer the sustaining force it once was for Republicans; at the same time, the glacial pace of economic recovery has nurtured a growing sense among so-called Reagan Democrats that now might be the time to return to their roots.

Moreover, the moralist tone coming out of the Republican convention in Houston may not play particularly well in Illinois, where conservatives usually are more worried about keeping government's sticky fingers out of their pockets than in sticking its long nose into other people's private lives.

The president has himself to blame for much of his political plight. After almost four years in the White House, Bush is still bedeviled by a public perception that he lacks "the vision thing," roughly translated as the ability to articulate a notion of where the nation should be headed and how to get there. Even should he finally sort things out, he has yet to show the charisma needed to fire public enthusiasm for the trip.

Absent a positive message and a leader to sell it, the Bush camp's strategy instead seems aimed at convincing voters to opt for their candidate as the

6/October 1992/Illinois Issues


lesser of two evils. An opportunity to mark for George the Hollow Man over Slick Willy the Draft Dodger does not seem likely to capture the imagination of many disaffected voters, however. Thus, more compelling reasons must be found to lure them to the polls, especially in GOP-vote-rich suburbia.

Enter the Education Amendment. Intended to force the state to bear a larger share of the cost of public education and to ensure that school funding is apportioned more equitably, the proposal could be the catalyst for a strong turnout of suburban residents eager to vote against it.

Opposition from that quarter would not be surprising for two reasons. First, to meet the plan's goals almost certainly would require a tax increase; Gov. Jim Edgar, for example, has predicted income tax rates would have to go up 50 percent. And suburbanites, who tend to be among the state's most affluent citizens, would foot much of the bill. At the same time, suburban districts generally receive less state aid than Chicago or downstate schools because local property values tend to be higher. So suburban schools are forced to rely more heavily on real estate taxes, which in some districts pay more than 90 percent of school costs.

Thus, suburban residents could well fear the amendment's approval would mean they would pay higher income taxes to funnel more dollars to schools in Chicago and downstate, while funding for their own children's education continued to depend on ever-rising property taxes. Indeed, that's the scenario being drawn by the amendment's opponents, including a coalition of business groups working in tandem with Republican strategists, who hope most of those who turn out to vote against the amendment also will mark for Bush and other GOP candidates.

If the anti-amendment message inspires a strong suburban turnout, Election Day could produce an ironic twist: the self-proclaimed Education President carrying Illinois on the votes of those unwilling to pay more for its public schools.

Charles N. Wheeler III is a correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

October 1992/Illinois Issues/7


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