Legislative Action                                                   

At the Capitol it's never too
soon to plan the next campaign

By JENNIFER HALPERIN

It's never too early to start planning your next campaign. Especially if you're a freshman member of the House. And especially if the opposite party is expected to target you for defeat in 1996.

First-term Rep. Rick Winkel of Champaign got that message during the first real working day of this year's session. Winkel beat a freshman Democrat, Laurel Lunt Prussing, to become state representative. But his seat was barely warm when his colleague, fellow Republican Tim Johnson of Urbana, asked him pointedly, "What have you done today to ensure your re-election?"

This attitude should come as little surprise to most lawmakers. House Democrats will be itching to re-take the chamber; they can even the parties' standings if they hold on to all their seats and re-capture five others.

Steve Brown, a spokesman for Democratic leader Michael Madigan, says the party will be watching Republican freshmen. "We don't operate with targets in mind, because as soon as we identify someone as a target they automatically become a poster child for Victims Anonymous. There are some obvious areas, especially downstate, where we think their elections were more an outcome of the national Republican tidal wave than anything else. There were some Republican freshmen elected in districts traditionally held by Democrats, and they'll be the first ones we look at."

But now that Republicans finally have control of the House they will want to maintain their advantage. And that means keeping freshmen members in line when possible, voting in ways most beneficial to the GOP as a whole.

Freshman Republican Tom Lachner's vote back in January to abolish the Structural Work Act was a clear example of party influence on a newcomer to the legislature. As a trial attorney, the Lake Bluff lawmaker was expected to oppose dismantling the law that allows injured construction workers to sue those who control work sites.

But when it came time for the vote, and Republicans had not one vote to spare, Lachner was on board to get rid of the act. Republicans simply had too much at stake to allow the measure to fail — namely the need to get a message out to voters that their takeover would mean change.

"It's put up or shut up time," says freshman Eileen Lyons, a Republican from Western Springs. "Our goal is to let voters know we're moving forward on things because we have no excuses anymore." Nonetheless, she acknowledges there's a lot of pressure from above to keep the next election in mind. "It's pretty disconcerting to me," she says.

Freshman Dave Winters, a farmer from Shirland, outside Rockford, says he thinks the only way for him to win re-election will be to reflect his district's varied concerns as accurately as possible.

"I'm probably going to be one of the targets," says Winters, a Republican, who beat two-term Democrat Mike Rotello. "But I feel the stronger I am for reforms, the safer I'll be. I haven't heard anything like, 'Oh, you're a freshman so don't worry ... we won't put you on anything controversial.' If anything, I feel I must make a visible difference in my constituents' eyes."

Stephen Spangler, a freshman Republican from Newark, says November's election showed nobody can take voters for granted next time around.

"The ball's really in our court no matter what party you're in because the voters really spoke," he says. "But they also sent a message to forget your own personal agenda. Overconfidence hasn't set in.

"Believe me, I know every election is a new set of circumstances. I've run for a whole lot of races; some I've won, some not. I know I'm not going to agree with everything they [leadership] tell me, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of each bill and always keep in mind how the people back home want you to vote."

If freshmen Republicans have to worry about balancing their votes so their party stays on top, their Democratic counterparts have a much greater challenge. For one thing, they won't be handed sponsorship of successful legislation to brag about during their next campaigns. Their ideas may not even see the light of day in a Republican-controlled chamber. So some have been resorting to creative measures to spread the word that they stand for change.

A few have joined the "Illinois New Democratic Caucus," a group that bills itself as the state's version of the moderate national Democratic Leadership Council. Some write off the group as "setting new standards of irrelevancy," but its members may have little other recourse for making their wants known in a Republican-dominated Capitol.

Among other reforms, the caucus supports competitive bidding on office leases, major purchases and new riverboat licenses. Members also want to revoke state professional licenses for "deadbeat" parents, and replace insanity pleas with "guilty but insane."

Freshman Rep. Doug Scott of Rockford says that by setting its own agenda, the group "is getting a lot of people talking about a lot of ideas." More likely, it'll get a few people talking about strategies Democrats must resort to if they want to distance themselves from the perception that their party is a loser.

Now that would make an interesting message on a campaign brochure. *

26/March 1995/Illinois Issues