For only the second time in modern history, Illinois primary voters next month won't have any other statewide candidates to distract them from careful consideration of the major parties' presidential hopefuls.

Neither of the state's U.S. Senate seats nor any of the constitutional offices are up for election in 2000, so voters can focus their attention on the men vying for their parties' nominations, analyzing their stands on the issues, weighing their leadership qualities, assessing their abilities to lead the nation at the dawn of a new century. That's the good news. The bad news, though, is that the judgments the party faithful reach here may be irrelevant, for by the time Illinoisans head to the polls on March 21, party nominations could well be sewn up, some five months before the Republican National Convention opens in Philadelphia, to be followed two weeks later by the Democrats in Los Angeles.

That possibility is the result of a nominating process that in 2000 is front-loaded to an unprecedented degree. Before the first ballot is counted in Illinois, roughly two-thirds of the delegates to the GOP convention and more than half of their Democratic counterparts will have been selected. In fact, almost a third of each party's convention-goers will be chosen on a single day - March 7 - when 11 states hold primaries, including California, New York and Ohio. Two other delegate-rich states, Florida and Texas, are among a half dozen with March 14 primaries.

The wealth of delegates to be harvested before Illinois' primary means the Prairie State will see little of the presidential hopefuls before March 14, by which time any appearance here well might come as a victory lap, rather than another leg of the race. Texas Gov. George W. Bush almost certainly will have the GOP bid locked up long before Illinois, where his backers make up a Who's Who of the state party. Vice President Al Gore enjoys strong support from the Democratic establishment across the nation, which should help him have his party's nomination all but secured by mid-March, despite a game challenge from former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

For months, Illinois political leaders have lamented the likely loss of state clout in the nominating process. "It's over by the time they get to Illinois," Gov. George H. Ryan told reporters at State Fair time last summer. "Why do we even have a primary?"

"There's a possibility that our primary won't count in either political party," agreed House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, a Chicagoan and Demo-cratic state chairman.

But the foreshortened presidential nominating season is not merely a cause for parochial griping from party faithful in Illinois, or in the 16 other states with even later primary dates.

As states rush to the front of the delegate selection line, national leaders of both parties voice concern about the effects of a selection process that ends almost as soon as it begins. They worry that the present system gives too much advantage to well-funded candidates with strong national name identification, while denying lesser-known, but perhaps better qualified, hopefuls a fair shot to compete for the nomination. And they fear the compressed nomination calendar may leave too little time for voters to evaluate the candidates and their ideas. The concern prompted the Repub-lican National Committee to name a commission, headed by former RNC chairman Bill Brock, to study the presidential nominating process.

"It is fair to say that virtually every member of our commission, and virtually every political leader in either party with whom I have visited, has expressed concern with the present system," Brock noted after a panel meeting a couple of weeks ago in San Jose, Calif. "Not enough states, and not enough people, have an effective voice in its outcome. And, equally, the compression of time limits our ability to evaluate prospective candidates as carefully as we might."

Brock's group hopes to finish in time

38 / February 2000 Illinois Issues

39 / February 2000 Illinois Issues