Democrats Challenge Green Candidate in Illinois

Article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Adam Jadhav on July 5, 2005.

Democrats Challenge Green Candidate in Illinois
by Adam Jadhav
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
July 5, 2006

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. — Democrats wasted no time counterattacking after the Illinois Green Party - seen as potential spoilers - filed petitions to put candidates for Illinois' top offices on the November ballot.

When Rich Whitney, the Green gubernatorial candidate, turned in his petition signatures last week, Michael Kasper, an attorney for the state Democratic Party, immediately ordered a copy so volunteers and staff could go to work. They spent much of last week hunched over state Board of Election computers comparing Whitney's 19-inch-thick petition to voter registration records in hopes of finding invalid signatures.

On Monday, after slogging through hundreds of pages, Democratic operatives formally filed an objection to Whitney's candidacy. The 51-year-old Carbondale attorney is a target because conventional political wisdom says he would siphon votes from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who already faces a tough re-election challenge from state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, a moderate Republican.

It's a typical play in any political handbook, but this election year the stakes are particularly high.

"This race is so close right now with a huge number of undecideds in the polls," said Chris Mooney, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "Maybe that means there's room for a third party, that people are just not satisfied with either established party candidate. Given that (Whitney) would probably take votes away from Blagojevich, they're going to work very hard to get him off of there."

Third party candidates for governor need the signatures of 25,000 registered voters, and political strategists typically recommend turning in a cushion of several thousand extra. Expecting to face scrutiny, the Green Party went well over the top and collected more than 39,000, Whitney said.

"I'm not overly surprised that (Democrats) are looking to try to knock me off," Whitney said. "I represent a great threat to them."

The Democrats say they just want "to make sure everyone plays by the rules."

"We want to be sure that everyone who offers themselves as a candidate meets the legal requirements," said party spokesman Steve Brown.

Meanwhile, state Republican Party officials attacked candidates for the fringe Constitution and Independence parties, who would be expected to earn conservative votes. "Citizens concerned that the election be fair" filed challenges Monday, said GOP spokesman Mike Zolnierowicz.

Those objections will likely succeed as the Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Randy Stufflebeam, a retired Marine from Belleville, turned in only about 4,400 signatures, and Independence Party candidate Nita Shinn, a former Army Reservist, gathered less than 200.

Though the Independence and Constitution campaigns would likely have drawn negligible votes, Whitney's candidacy could pose a danger for Democrat Blagojevich, some observers said. And Republican Topinka, for that matter, as she courts moderates on both sides of the political fence.

"At least some Democrats are obviously disenchanted with the governor," Mooney said. "If Topinka is the only game in town, then people may see her as the only alternative. But a Green option could look just as appealing to Democrats as a moderate Republican would."

In Whitney's case, the business of sorting out an objection will likely be daunting, said Steve Sturm, an attorney for the Election Board. State Election Board staff along with representatives from each side must review the thousands of signatures in question, which could take weeks, before the board reaches a final decision.

The process is spelled out by Illinois election laws, which third party political activists and political scientists alike have deemed some of the most stringent in the country. Whitney decried the high signature requirements and the challenges as little more than self-preservation by the two mainstream parties.

"I think the Democrat and the Republican party machines have a tendency to try to keep the two-party monopoly going," Whitney said. "But I think in this political climate in this state today, we do have a chance at winning."

Whitney was referring to sagging poll numbers for Blagojevich and a Topinka campaign that has drawn criticism from those in her own party. The Greens are also running a full slate of candidates for state executive offices as well as seven legislative seats.

Still, a Green upset seems like a long shot because the party remains in relative obscurity, said Alan Gitelson, a political science professor at Loyola University Chicago.

"If you were to poll right now, my guess is that you'd get a significant number that heard of what the Green Party is, but I doubt that they'd be very much able to associate it with anything other than a general concern for environmental issues," Gitelson said.

adam.jadhav@post-dispatch.com 618-659-3637