This being that crucial time of year when candidates across the state hire staff, raise money, and otherwise gear up for the primaries in March–the Democrats are busy committing political hara-kiri. There’s no rational explanation. That’s just the way it is in Illinois. Republicans almost never have a contested primary; when they do, the candidates quickly reconcile once the voting’s done.
“There’s a lot of people in the party who want a strong prochoice woman like me on the ticket,” counters Netsch. “I don’t want to say anything bad about Woody, but let’s face it. He’s another white male from Evanston. I’m not exactly a household name around the state, but I’m a heck of a lot more known than Woody.”
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As this article is being written, Netsch is not an official candidate for comptroller. Instead, she is a candidate for attorney general, the office that will be vacated by gubernatorial candidate Nell Hartigan. Netsch, a professor at Northwestern University’s law school, has been running for that office since early summer and would seem a logical choice to replace Hartigan.
Apparently they were persuasive. Netsch has all but agreed to run for comptroller (a formal announcement should come soon). Everything seems perfect, except that Bowman was already in that race. “I announced on March 23rd, but I had been rounding up support and telling friends and colleagues of my plans to run since last Thanksgiving,” says Bowman. “The first people I talked to were Dawn Clark Netsch and Roland Burris. I wanted to make sure that Roland wasn’t going to run for reelection. He told me he wasn’t. I know that Dawn had previously expressed interest in the job, and I wanted to know her plans. She told me that she was definitely going to go for attorney general.”
One solution–naive though it sounds–is for the candidates to forget about party bosses and run for the offices of their choice. If Burris wants to be governor, he should run for it, and not waste his time running for an office he doesn’t really want. The same goes for Netsch.
“I think the best solution would be for Dawn to run for state treasurer,” says Bowman. “Other than that I can only say that I’m definitely in the race to stay.”
