A VIEW FROM THE SUBURBS

Will this Republican dog hunt? He thinks so

by Madeleine Doubek

That Peter Fitzgerald intends to go to Washington, D.C., has been clear from the start of his young public career.

No one should underestimate the depth of Peter Fitzgerald's ambition. While other Republicans have hemmed and hawed over their political opportunities, state Sen. Fitzgerald is going after the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun like a hunt dog on the trail of a scent.

That Peter Fitzgerald intends to go to Washington, D.C., has been clear from the start of his young public career.

When a new state Senate seat became available in 1992, the then-31-year-old jumped into the suburban political arena, leap-frogging several veteran legislators who could not compete with his financial resources.

Two years later, Fitzgerald challenged his one-time mentor when he waged what became a bitter congressional primary battle against conservative iconoclast Philip M. Crane. With two other more liberal challengers in the race, incumbent Crane won and Fitzgerald lost, but it wasn't for lack of ambition or funds.

The state senator from affluent Inverness spent a record $870,811 on the contest, including a hefty chunk of change for a homestretch TV ad that ran all over Chicago, well outside the district's boundaries.

This year, liberal Republicans suggest Senate candidate Fitzgerald might be Al Salvi all over again. Like 1996 U.S. Senate candidate Salvi, he's a too conservative, wealthy suburban Republican trying to buy his way into federal office, they complain. But when it comes to finances, Fitzgerald makes Salvi look like a pauper.

Nearly all the congressional funds came from Fitzgerald's own pockets. He is a member of a prominent suburban family that sold its prosperous chain of banks to Harris Bank and its parent, Bank of Montreal. A U.S. Senate disclosure statement filed this spring put the value of Fitzgerald's Bank of Montreal assets at between $25 million and $50 million.

And he's banking on his belief that neither Gov. Jim Edgar nor Secretary of State George Ryan will run for Senate. Like Salvi, Fitzgerald plans to win as the most conservative primary candidate.

Sure, Fitzgerald is conservative. He opposes abortion and tax hikes in most instances. He first championed the idea of dumping teacher tenure. He is the proud sponsor of the law that bans gay marriage. And he figures most voters are with him on those last two items.

But Fitzgerald's wealth also has bought him some measure of independence from his party's powers that will work nicely in a coming campaign.

For instance, he long has opposed gambling expansion and suggested the state's riverboat casino licenses were handed out as political plums when they should be competitively bid. He opposed Edgar's school funding tax swap and questioned the deal done on deregulation.

And, like Edgar on the school funding question, Fitzgerald has been on both sides of the gun debate. He shifted position from the rigid gun rights stance that cost Salvi.

Early in 1992, Fitzgerald filled out a National Rifle Association questionnaire saying he opposed both a ban on some semiautomatic weapons and a waiting period before gun purchases. It directly contradicted a League of Women Voters questionnaire he had completed a few months later. Confronted with the contradiction during the 1994 race, Fitzgerald said his son's birth and reports of children harmed in drive-by shootings sparked his change.

His opponents then publicly doubted his sincerity, but he now tells audiences he has supported those two efforts at gun control since 1992.

More recently, Fitzgerald voted for a bill that would have allowed citizens to carry concealed weapons after completing 50 hours of training, saying he believes law-abiding citizens should be allowed to defend themselves. But he voted in May to keep the penalty for illegally carrying a concealed weapon a felony.

"I'm one who refuses to believe you have to adopt the entire agenda of either the NRA on one extreme," Fitzgerald said, "or the gun control groups on the other extreme."

It is just that sort of statement that has Fitzgerald convinced he is a dog that will hunt. He is on the trail. He has the scent. Fitzgerald's drive will take him to his prize in Washington, D.C. When and how he gets there are the only remaining questions. �

Madeleine Doubek is political editor of the Daily Herald, a suburban metro newspaper. She has covered politics since 1988.

Illinois Issues July/August 1997 / 37