"I thought I'd Seen Everything"

By Richard Stengel

After a long count, Jim Thompson claims victory in Illinois

When Big Jim Thompson voted on Tuesday morning, a winner's smile flashed across his broad face. Only two days before, a Gallup poll showed the bluff 6-ft. 6-in. Republican Governor leading his mild-mannered opponent, Adlai Stevenson III, by 16 points. But when Thompson went to bed at 2 Wednesday morning, the corners of his smile had turned downward: he was leading by just over 1%. By midday Thursday, as votes were still being tabulated, he was wearing a full-fledged frown of dismay: with more than 3.5 million votes cast, the once confident Thompson was leading by an infinitesimal 171 votes. He was forced to wait until Friday afternoon for all the ballots to be counted. Only then could he breathe easier: the final tally put him ahead by 9,401 votes. Yet he will be declared the winner only if the state board of elections certifies the results on Nov. 22. And that remains unsure.

From the moment the polls closed on a dreary, drizzly Chicago evening, a chain of events began that was so improbable, so coincidental, so questionable, that it could only have happened in Wonderland, or the Windy City. On election night, ballot boxes from 15 precincts inexplicably disappeared. Elsewhere, when voting machines malfunctioned, the official explanation was that rain and dampness had moistened the ballots, requiring them to be dried out in ovens in Evanston, just north of the city. ("There's no allegation of impropriety here," insisted Cook County Clerk Stanley Kusper Jr. "We've just got a lot of wet ballots.") The count began in earnest on Wednesday, the day, as wags point out, when the real politicking traditionally begins in Chicago. Before anyone could say Richard Daley, the city election board announced it was being hampered by repeated breakdowns of its new computer punch-card system.

On Thursday things got curiouser and curiouser. One ballot box was discovered in a shopping bag in a polling place, another turned up in the trunk of an election worker's car, and a third was found at the home of an election judge. By Thursday night, election officials said 15 of the traditionally Democratic Chicago precincts remained uncounted, as well as 106 in the Republican suburbs. Exclaimed an incredulous Thompson: "I've lived in Chicago a long time, and I thought I'd seen everything."

What he and others saw happening evoked uneasy memories of the 1960 presidential election, when the late Mayor Richard Daley was accused of tinkering with the Chicago vote to ensure John Kennedy's victory. The euphemism then, and now, was "waiting for the Riverside counties to come in"; in other words, waiting to determine how many phantom voters will have to be fished out of the Chicago River to secure a Democratic victory.

On paper, conditions seemed tailor-made for a resounding Democratic victory. Illinois is economically depressed. Plants have shuttered or hightailed it out of the state in record numbers. Stevenson, the thoughtful eldest son of the state's two-time Democratic presidential nominee, has the shiniest Democratic name around. How could he lose?

But Stevenson, who won a Senate seat in 1970 and gave it up in 1980, seemed absentmindedly to sabotage his own campaign. Diffuse and rambling, hiding behind mounds of complex position papers, he was stricken with an inability to explain his own programs. Deemed "professorial," he was giving livelier academics a bad name. Perhaps nervous about Thompson's slogan, "A Tough Man for Tough Times," the shy Stevenson incriminated himself most when he made the extraordinary and unprovoked statement "I am not a wimp."

Thompson offered a study in contrasts. Master of the politico's one-two combination, a back pat followed by a shoulder squeeze, the gregarious Republican kept himself in the spotlight. His television spots were slick; his campaign coffers were brimming (he outspent Stevenson $4.3 million to $2.1 million); and he had the unqualified endorsement of every big newspaper in the state.

But Stevenson revved himself up along with Chicago's Democratic machine. After months of ignoring Stevenson (who, like his father, had alls ways preferred to ignore the Windy City's rough-hewn pols), the rusty Chicago machine was greased and began cranking away. The machine pledged $300,000 to his skimpy war chest and persuaded Democratic precinct captains to pull out all the stops for the patrician challenger. It zealously helped register tens of thousands of new voters. Led by an aggressive and ambitious alderman named Edward Vrdolyak, the machine strenuously promoted an extensive anti-Reaganomics campaign dubbed "Punch 10," the slogan for voting the straight Democratic ticket. Noted Andrew Kulley, a senior statistician for the Gallup organization: "It's very clear the machine in Chicago cracked the whip."

As Thompson tried to edge away from President Reagan, Stevenson denigrated him as the President's No. 1 cheerleader. He adroitly portrayed the Governor as a man more interested in national office than in Illinois' problems. Thompson, he cracked, was the only man he knew who was actively campaigning for Vice President. In Chicago, Stevenson ran ahead of Thompson 73% to 27%. Blacks apparently voted 15 to 1 for Stevenson. For the first time, Thompson lost his own precinct in the 43rd ward on the North Side of Chicago. In other Democratic strongholds, including high-unemployment areas like Rockford, Peoria and Springfield, voters turned out in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for Stevenson. Turnout in Republican counties, meanwhile, was lighter than expected.

Old suspicions had been aroused that the mysteriously absent votes would turn up as Democratic ones. But when the final precincts were tabulated on Friday, they provided a winning edge to a greatly relieved Thompson. In an emotional speech, Thompson vowed that he would not let the victory be taken away. Said he: "We beat 'em and we beat 'em good." Stevenson declared that victory was his, but would not say whether he would ask for a recount if the vote is certified later this month. In the past, such recounts, which are paid for by the requesting candidate, resulted in shifts of 5,000 to 7,000 votes, a potentially significant amount this year. The stubbornly optimistic Stevenson then retreated to his farm with campaign aides to discuss a "transition" team. --By Richard Stengel. Reported by Christopher Ogden/Chicago

With reporting by Christopher Ogden

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