All three major Democratic Senate candidates hail from the Chicago region, potentially ending the upstate-downstate balance maintained by re
Dan Petrella at Chicago Tribune:
An endorsement by a former one-term lieutenant governor who has been out of office for a decade ordinarily wouldn’t hold much significance in a primary campaign for U.S. Senate. But an endorsement from Sheila Simon might be a slight exception. Not because of the ex-lieutenant governor‘s individual political influence, but because, even as the Democratic voter base in downstate Illinois is ever-shrinking, her support highlights that statewide candidates must still spend considerable time and energy wooing party members far from deep-blue Cook County. That’s become particularly true in the Democratic Party’s Senate primary campaign. All three major candidates in the race are from the Chicago region and are running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Springfield, who for the last 28 years has balanced an upstate-downstate split in Illinois’ Senate representation.
Although ballots cast outside the six-county Chicago region accounted for less than a quarter of the overall vote in the past two contested Democratic Senate primaries, in 2010 and 2016, the announcement last week that Simon was backing U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi‘s candidacy serves as a reminder that all three top-tier candidates in the March 17 primary know building credibility beyond Chicago and its increasingly Democratic suburbs is essential. Simon’s backing does, of course, carry some modest political weight. Now a law professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, she’s the daughter of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, the man Durbin replaced in the Senate in 1997. She also remains a recognizable and well-connected figure in a region where her family name is tied to the identity and history of local Democratic politics. Coming out on top of a primary field that currently stands at 14 candidates will require building a coalition of support that extends beyond Chicago and Cook County, said John Jackson, a visiting professor at SIU’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. That’s a big part of the reason the top three candidates have played up their downstate bona fides, Jackson said. For both Krishnamoorthi, of northwest suburban Schaumburg, and Rep. Robin Kelly, of south suburban Lynwood, that means emphasizing their Peoria roots: his upbringing in an immigrant family there and her time at Bradley University and two decades, on and off, spent living in the central Illinois river city. Kelly also points to the makeup of her current congressional district, which stretches from Chicago’s South Side to Danville in east-central Illinois.
A South Side native, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton leans on her two terms in statewide office alongside Gov. JB Pritzker, particularly her role leading the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council, and her education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. One thing that can help distinguish a candidate, particularly in parts of the state that often feel overlooked or forgotten, is face time with voters, Jackson said. “People want to be — especially (party) activists — want to be talked to,” Jackson said. “They want people (running for office) to show up.” Even in the age of social media algorithms, TV advertising also remains an important tool for candidates to become familiar to voters.
With several visits to Carbondale and other communities in the region this year and TV ads airing on multiple networks since summer, including on affiliates based out of nearby Kentucky and Missouri, Krishnamoorthi has built an advantage, at least in that corner of southern Illinois, “that’s going to be hard for the other two to match,” Jackson said. Building a strong base of support downstate in the early stages of the campaign allows candidates to focus more attention and resources on Chicago and its voter-rich suburbs as primary day gets closer. It has possibly become even more important with the rise of early voting, both in person and by mail. Voters actually will start casting ballots during the first week of February. In the state’s closest Democratic Senate primary in recent memory, then-Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in 2010 topped a field of five candidates. Giannoulias, who lost the general election that November to Republican Mark Kirk of Highland Park, won his party’s primary by 5 percentage points over his nearest competitor, former federal prosecutor and Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman. Giannoulias’ margin of victory was padded by a strong showing outside Cook County and the five collar counties. While he won the Chicago area vote by 2 percentage points, he took the downstate vote by nearly 16 points.
This year, “if it’s close enough, especially in a three-candidate race, downstate could be a factor,” said Dan Shomon, a lobbyist and political consultant who was campaign manager and political director for Barack Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate run. The host of lesser-known candidates on the ballot could further split the vote.
The IL-Sen primary on the Democratic side shows it’s important for candidates to court downstate Democratic voters, as it could prove decisive.
