Dukakis Takes Aim at Simon in Illinois Contest : But Polls Show Voters Prefer 2 Favorite Sons

Fresh from his Super Tuesday successes in Florida and Texas, Democratic front-runner Michael S. Dukakis is lavishing time and money on Tuesday’s presidential primary in Illinois, even though his aides say he has no plausible chance of winning.

But as puzzling as the Massachusetts governor’s battle plan might seem on the surface, rival strategists and independent analysts have detected significant underlying objectives.

The most immediate Dukakis goal is believed to be the elimination of Illinois Sen. Paul Simon as a competitor for liberal votes in future contests. “Dukakis doesn’t want Simon to get a little life back into his campaign,” said Steve Cobble, chief delegate coordinator for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who is running close behind Simon in the polls.

Redefine Race

At least as important in the long run to Dukakis’ apparent design is that the forced withdrawal of Simon, coupled with the anticipated weak showing here of Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., would help to redefine the Democratic race as a contest mainly between Dukakis and Jackson.

Jackson, winner of five Southern states on Super Tuesday and a sixth, South Carolina, on Saturday, is expected to perform very well here in his home state, where he has a solid base of black support, and quite possibly move in front of Dukakis nationally in both the race for delegates and the popular vote.

But given the practical problems confronting Jackson’s candidacy--his lack of government experience, his ultra-liberal views, and racial prejudice in some segments of the electorate--Dukakis would enjoy great advantages if the Democratic campaign were seen as a choice between him and Jackson.

And even before the vote here, Dukakis strategists are already depicting the nominating campaign in those terms. “Dukakis and Jackson are the only two national candidates in the race,” said Charlie Baker, Dukakis’ Illinois coordinator.

If this scenario seems convoluted, it is a reflection of the odd characteristics of the Illinois primary campaign itself, the first in a major Midwestern industrial state. To begin with, the polls indicate that voter sentiment is heavily skewed toward the two favorite sons, Jackson and Simon. This occurs even though few party leaders give Jackson a serious chance to win the nomination, and while Simon, since his third-place finish in New Hampshire, has been talking about the possibility of getting out of the race.

Complicating matters further is that the popular vote for President--the “beauty contest”--has no bearing on the distribution of the state’s 173 pledged delegates. This will be decided by the outcome of separate contests Tuesday in the state’s 22 congressional districts.

Simon Has Edge

Simon, with the backing of party leaders, has the clear edge in the delegate contests. But he has said he must win both this competition and the beauty contest to stay in the race. In the latter, he could be in trouble, because polls show that Dukakis has been gaining ground since he launched his drive here last week, and that most of his gains are coming at Simon’s expense.

One of Dukakis’ campaign ads directly attacks the underlying premise of the Simon candidacy--that the race for the nomination will end in a deadlock and a brokered convention. Though it does not mention Simon’s name, the commercial warns, “Some people would like . . . to go back to the days when the voters didn’t really pick their presidential nominee. . . . They say you must turn over that power to them, to use at a brokered convention.”

The commercial urges voters to reject that course and instead vote for Dukakis.

Despite Dukakis’ big effort here, few believe that he can overtake Simon, considering that polls show Simon leading him by a substantial margin. It is more likely that Dukakis could drain enough strength away from Simon that the senator would drop into second place behind Jackson in the statewide popular vote, and, if he keeps his word, then drop out of the campaign.

That would greatly help Dukakis’ chances in the March 26 Michigan caucuses, where Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who is making only a token effort in Illinois after his severe losses on Super Tuesday, is attempting a comeback. There, and in Wisconsin’s April 5 primary, Simon’s Midwest background would make him a formidable rival among the liberal voters who are Dukakis’ main base of potential support.

In the first Simon-Dukakis confrontation in this region, in Iowa last month, Simon finished ahead of Dukakis, coming in second to Gephardt, while Dukakis finished third. Though his candidacy has been in decline since then, Simon seems to be waging a determined battle to preserve his candidacy and his prestige here in his home state. He has the strong support of most of the local political leadership, including Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan, the highest Democratic elected official in the state. At a party unity dinner in Chicago last week attended by all the candidates, Hartigan introduced Simon and dismissed the pre-Illinois delegate contests with a baseball simile: “Spring training is over,” he said. “Now we’re in the industrial states.”

The next 48 hours will tell how much difference that makes. Here is a glance at the prospects and strategies of the major Democratic contenders in this state.

--SIMON. In making his last-ditch bid to keep his candidacy alive, Simon seems to be relying on a threefold appeal--to liberal principles, personal loyalty and practical political instincts.

The principles he displayed in his remarks to the party unity dinner. “I want a government that is responding to the needs of people,” he told the party activists in attendance. “Give me a government that cares again, that dreams again. And when we have that kind of government, we’re going to build the kind of future for our children for generations to come that we need.”

The loyalty was evident at the annual meeting of the Illinois State Education Assn., where Simon spoke right after Gore, a contrast that worked to his disadvantage, since Gore was far more energetic and forceful in his remarks. But many teachers in the audience, recalling Simon’s years of efforts on Capitol Hill on behalf of teachers and education, were not yet prepared to abandon Simon’s cause. James Spranger, a Moline high school teacher, acknowledged that Simon’s presidential bid was in trouble. “But maybe we can help him by giving him a boost in Illinois,” he said.

The practical part of Simon’s case is being made for him by supporters who took out full-page ads in the Chicago papers today to declare that the Democratic Party convention would be “brokered” and to declare that “We want Paul Simon to be our voice. We want Paul Simon to be our candidate.”

--DUKAKIS. The Massachusetts governor’s difficulties in overtaking Simon probably tell as much about Dukakis as Simon. Despite his impressive performance on Super Tuesday, he has not yet aroused much excitement among local Democrats. Even some of those who support him speak with well-restrained enthusiasm.

“He is a little wooden,” conceded Robert Weinberger, a bank lobbyist and former congressional candidate, one among hundreds of party activists who attended the unity dinner. Nevertheless, Weinberger maintained that Dukakis would make the best nominee and the best President among the Democratic contenders, because “He is smart enough to take the advice of people who would manage his defects.”

Part of the tepid response is probably due to Dukakis’ tightly controlled demeanor. “He’s not a shot-and-a-beer guy,” one of his own commercials concedes.

Another reason he has so far not generated more intense support may be what his rivals claim is a lack of strength and specificity in his message.

Insulate the Candidate

From the beginning of the campaign here, Dukakis advisers sought to insulate their candidate against the appearance of failure in Illinois by pointing to the built-in support for Simon and Jackson, which they argued ruled out the possibility of Dukakis’ finishing higher than third.

But Dukakis has spent several hundred thousand dollars in this state on television--his staff members keep changing their estimate of the figure--along with seven precious campaign days. Unless he can finish second here, or at least force Simon out of the race, he will have lost an important opportunity to persuade uncommitted party leaders and voters that his nomination is a sure thing.

--JACKSON. Even before the campaign got under way here in earnest last week, Jackson’s strategists began complaining about the structure of the primary, which they argue works to their disadvantage.

They point out that because most of Jackson’s strength is concentrated in three inner-city congressional districts, he will probably only win delegates in those districts. And while the big majorities he piles up there may be enough to win the statewide beauty contest, his percentage of delegates will probably be considerably less than his percentage of the popular vote.

“Illinois is a state where we’re going to get ripped off,” complained Gerald Austin, Jackson’s campaign manager. Still, Jackson’s advisers believe that having Simon in weakened condition, but still in the race, is probably the best of all possible circumstances for Jackson in Illinois. A strong Simon might have been able to crush Jackson by sweeping nearly all the white vote. On the other hand, if Simon had withdrawn, Dukakis might have picked up nearly all the senator’s support. Meanwhile, the candidate himself is taking advantage of his high standing in the race to lecture his rivals on unity.

“I hear a lot of talk about how we lost four of the last five campaigns. If we say it enough we might believe we did it for the wrong reasons,” he declared at the party unity dinner.

Blames Divisiveness

Jackson contended that those defeats were a result not of “wrong messages,” but of party divisiveness, and he warned that the same fate could befall the Democrats in 1988 if the recent trend toward negative commercials continued.

Jackson himself has been relatively immune to attack from his rivals, in part because whoever gets the nomination will have to have the full backing of Jackson’s supporters, most of whom are black, to win a general election.

As for himself, Jackson said: “I’m not going to attack anybody on this stage mainly because my competitor, George Bush, is not on this stage.”

--GORE. The tip-off on the obscurity that underlies Gore’s difficulties in this state came at the party unity dinner, where he was the last of 23 speakers to get his turn at the podium and where the program listed him as “Albert Gore, U.S. Senator, State of Virginia.”

State party chairman Vince Demuzio did not even try to be tactful in assessing the Tennessean’s prospects here at a press conference preceding the dinner. “I don’t expect Gore to do very well here,” the chairman said. “He has not had a campaign organization. He hasn’t been here.”

Bearing out the chairman’s assessment, polls have so far shown Gore’s support well down in the single-digit level.

Did it make sense, under these circumstances, for Gore’s advisers to invest what campaign manager Fred Martin called a “decent” sum in television advertising and for Gore himself to campaign for parts of five days in the state? Evidently, they felt that they had little choice, having won outside the South so far only in two small Western-state caucuses (Nevada and Wyoming), not to make at least a serious attempt to demonstrate strength in the first big industrial state to be contested.

Gore’s state coordinator, Jim Wall, who ran Jimmy Carter’s successful primary campaign here in 1976 said: “If we can get our message across, we can beat out Dukakis for third place.” But the poll results make that possibility seem a very long shot indeed.,

One problem may be with Gore’s message--or messages. He seems to be trying to say several things at once: that he represents the future and Dukakis the past; that he is electable and Dukakis is not, and that he is on the side of the working people (and Dukakis by implication is not). The net result, rivals say, is that Gore is leaving a blurry and confused impression on the voters, who don’t know much about him to begin with. And the consequence of that is to dim Gore’s chances of filling the role Gephardt had hitherto held as Dukakis’ chief rival for the nomination.

Staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.

THE ILLINOIS PRIMARY

THE STATE

Population: 11,553,000 (1986 est.), of which 84% live in urban areas.

Racial/ethnic makeup: About 80% white, 14% black, 5% Latino, 1% Asian.

Economy: Diversified manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance, food processing, agriculture.

Major cities: Chicago, 3 million; Peoria, 200,000; Springfield (capital), 99,000.

THE PRIMARY

At stake Tuesday are 173 Democratic and 92 Republican delegates. The state’s 6 million registered voters can vote in either primary. The ballot has two parts: a “beauty contest” vote for candidates and a separate vote for congressional district delegates. Delegates receiving the most votes in each congressional district go to their party’s convention, regardless of how their preferred candidate fares in the beauty contest.

Polls close at 7 p.m. CST.

DELEGATES’ PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES

Current breakdown of presidential preference of delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, based on delegates’ public statements or binding state laws or party rules. Democrat totals reflect results of Saturday’s caucuses in South Carolina.

DEMOCRAT

Total Dukakis 460.5 Gephardt 145 Gore 352.8 Jackson 423.55 Simon 35.5 Others 0 Uncommitted 276.65

Needed to nominate: 2,082

Total delegate votes: 4,162

Chosen thus far: 1,694

Yet to be chosen: 2,468

REPUBLICAN

Total Bush 705 Dole 165 Robertson 17 Others 0 Uncommitted 72

Needed to nominate: 1,139

Total delegate votes: 2,277

Chosen thus far: 959

Yet to be chosen: 1,318

Source: Associated Press