October 13, 2010
"CAREER POLITICIAN" IS 2010'S ULTIMATE EPITHET

ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART

A "career politician" was once innocently defined as a person who spends all or most of his or her adult life occupying some elective or appointive office.

Now the term has become pejorative, synonymous with leech, slurper at the public trough, self-server, scumbag, screw-up and pension padder.

Scott Lee Cohen, whose personal life is replete with screw-ups, is running for Illinois governor as the antithesis of the "career politician," castigating his opponents, Democrat Pat Quinn and Republican Bill Brady, with that epithet. His television ads and mailers proclaim that he is "not a career politician" and that only he can "eliminate corruption" in state government. Nary is a word said about his pawnbroker background.

As a public service, to assist those voters who want to oust those odious incumbents, this column unveils its very own Career Politician Index (CPI), which is calculated as follows: Take the politician's age and subtract 30 years (since few are elected under the age of 30), then ascertain the number of years in public office and divide by age minus 30. If the politician has a CPI in excess of 50, that means he or she has spent more than half of his or her adult life on some public payroll.

Here are some examples:

Governor: Quinn, age 61, has been a Cook County Board of Appeals commissioner (1982 to 1986), state treasurer (1990 to 1994), lieutenant governor (2002 to 2009) and governor -- for a total of 16 years, which gives him a CPI of 51.6 percent. He also had stints on the state payroll under Governor Dan Walker and briefly on the Chicago payroll under Mayor Harold Washington. And that is illusory, since Quinn lost races for treasurer (1986), secretary of state (1994) and lieutenant governor (1998). Quinn uses every office as a steppingstone to another office. Quinn's whole life has had one goal: Get elected to something. If we dubbed it the Aspiring Career Politician Index  (ACPI), Quinn would be near 100 percent.

     "He's spent 40 years running for office, but he has no clue what to do when he gets into office," Brady said.

Brady, age 49, is a builder and real estate broker in the Bloomington area, enterprises which made him quite wealthy until that market's collapse. Nevertheless, Brady has a CPI of 84.2. He's been a state legislator for 16 years, 8 years in the Illinois House (1992 to 2000) and 8 years in the Illinois Senate (2002 to 2010). The job, which pays $68,800, is deemed part-time, requiring an average of three days a week in Springfield from January to June and none after adjournment until the fall veto session. "I've always had a career in the private sector," Brady said.

For historical purposes, Rod Blagojevich's CPI as of the date of his impeachment was 77.2, and George Ryan's as of 2002 was 94.7. Jim Edgar, who left the governorship in 1998, had a CPI of 90.9. So Cohen has a valid point: Other than Jim Thompson, who was the appointed U.S. attorney when he was elected in 1976, every Illinois governor since the 1940s has been a "career politician."

Secretary of State: The reigning CPI champion is indisputably Jesse White. White, age 76, has been on the public payroll for 34 of 36 years since 1974, when he was 40. White was a state representative for 16 years and the Cook County recorder of deeds for 6, and he has occupied his current office for 12 years. His CPI is 73.9, and he surely will extend that by 4 more years when he is reelected, raising it to 38 of 40 years. While he was a legislator, he also held other appointive public jobs. His Republican opponent, Bob Enriquez, an Aurora businessman, has a CPI of zero.

Attorney General: Few occupants of this powerful office have not been career politicians. Looking back a half-century, Republican Bill Scott (1968 to 1981) had been the state treasurer, Democrat Neil Hartigan (1982 to 1990) had been the lieutenant governor, Democrat Roland Burris (1990 to 1994) had been the state comptroller, Republican Jim Ryan (1994 to 2002) had been the DuPage County state's attorney, and incumbent Democrat Lisa Madigan had been a state senator.

This year Madigan, age 44, who has a CPI of 85.7, faces Republican Steve Kim, who has a zero CPI. Since age 30, Madigan has been on the public payroll for 12 years. Of course, being the daughter of the speaker of the Illinois House, Mike Madigan, is a great upward facilitator. Lisa Madigan is positioning herself to run for governor in 2014, although she has pointedly refused to promise to serve out her term if she is reelected. Is she planning to run for Chicago mayor in 2011?

Burris, age 73, Illinois' appointed U.S. senator, certainly deserves an honorable mention, since he has spent his whole life running for every and any available office. His CPI is only a meager 41.8, but he has been on the ballot for statewide office (and once for Chicago mayor) 10 times since 1974.

Treasurer: With incumbent Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, whose CPI is 100 percent, since he was elected when he was age 30, running for U.S. senator, the 2010 candidates are Republican Dan Rutherford, a state senator from Pontiac, and Democrat Robin Kelly, the deputy state treasurer and a former state representative from Matteson. Rutherford, age 55, has been a state legislator since 1992, serving 10 years in the House and 8 in the Senate. His CPI is 72. Kelly, age 54, served 4 years in the House, and she became Giannoulias's top aide in 2006. Her CPI, counting her current job, is 33.3.

Comptroller: Judy Barr Topinka is a sympathetic figure to Illinois' voters. Blagojevich's corrupt pay-to-play practices enabled him to raise $25 million for his 2006 reelection campaign, and he used those funds to besmirch Topinka's credibility and character. Topinka, then the state treasurer, lost to Blagojevich by 367,416 votes out of 3,487,987 cast, getting 39.3 percent of the vote.

Topinka also would win any "Ms. Career Politician" pageant. Topinka, age 66, has a CPI of 72.2. She was on the public payroll continuously from 1980 to 2006 (14 years as a state legislator and 12 as treasurer).

The Democratic candidate, David Miller, age 48, a state representative from south suburban Dolton for 10 years, is no political newcomer. His CPI is 35.7.

Here's an analysis of each contest:

Governor: Few certifiable independents have been elected governor. Maine elected one in 1974, and again in 1994 and 1998. Wrestler and movie actor Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota as the Reform Party candidate in 1998, getting 37 percent of the vote (773,713 votes) in a turnout of 2,091,766. Minnesota law allows registration on voting day. After a nasty campaign between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Skip Humphrey, disgusted voters gravitated to Ventura. As a one-term governor, Ventura was competent and popular, and he didn't raise taxes.

Can that happen in Illinois?

In 1992 Ross Perot got 840,515 votes (16.6 percent of the total cast), to 1,734,096 (34.3 percent) for President George Bush and 2,453,350 (48.6 percent) for Bill Clinton. Turnout was 5,050,135. Bush won Illinois over Mike Dukakis in 1998 by 2,310,939-2,215,940, in a turnout of 4,559,210, so turnout in 1992 was up by nearly 500,000, Bush's vote was down by 575,000, and Clinton had 145,000 more votes than Dukakis. It appears that at least half of the Perot vote came from 1988 Bush voters, and the balance from new voters, with the added Clinton vote coming from black voters.

     In 2006, despite his heavy spending, Blagojevich won less than a majority, getting 49.8 percent of the vote and beating Topinka by 1,736,731-1,359,315, with 361,336 (10.4 percent) votes to Green Party candidate Rich Whitney. Turnout was 3,487,989. Clearly, both major party candidates had become sufficiently repugnant to cause a tenth of the electorate to back the unknown Whitney.

     Unlike the turnout in 1992 and 2008 (5,577,509), turnout this year will be around 3.5 million. An average of five recent polls had Brady leading by 40.6 percent-38.6 percent, with 4 percent to Cohen and the rest undecided. For Quinn, those are horrific numbers, as undecideds break heavily against the incumbent. Quinn is running 10 percent behind Blagojevich -- the hard-core Democratic base.

For Brady, the numbers are encouraging, since he's getting the base Republican vote (Topinka's 39.3 percent) and should garner more of the undecideds than Quinn. Plus, as a Downstater, he's obliterating Quinn by 2-1 in the region. The 86 Downstate counties cast 37.7 percent of the statewide vote.

     But Cohen and Whitney, running again, complicate the picture. Cohen won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor but withdrew under pressure. Posturing as a "victim," he says he will spend $6 million for governor. Cohen undercuts Whitney, and Quinn's relentless anti-Brady television ads are driving the undecideds to Cohen.

     The core Democratic constituencies, black and Jewish voters, will give Cohen a quarter of their vote.

     My prediction: Brady has made no mistakes or stupid statements, and he can count on the Republican base. Quinn has given voters no reason to elect him, and he has promised to raise the income tax. Cohen is the pox-on-everybody choice, and he will get 16 percent of the vote. Brady will win with 44 percent, to Quinn's 37 percent.