POLITICS ’88 : Caught Between Jackson and Simon in Primary Today : Dukakis Struggling in Illinois Race

As Michael S. Dukakis spoke to about 50 supporters and onlookers at the airport here Monday, a blaring loudspeaker kept interrupting his campaign speech with announcements, including one requesting: “Julie, please go to the ticket counter.”

Finally in mild exasperation, Dukakis said: “Julie, please go to the ticket counter.”

If his line drew scattered laughs, the incident was another reminder of how the Massachusetts governor and his vaunted presidential campaign apparatus have been caught off-guard and off-stride all week in a state that could be crucial to his campaign.

Although Dukakis won more states and more delegates on Super Tuesday than any other Democrat, he faces voters in the Illinois primary today with his front-running campaign in an unexpected struggle.

The problem, several aides said, was that Dukakis found himself in a steady squeeze between Illinois’ two favorite sons, the popular Sen. Paul Simon and the Chicago-based rights leader Jesse Jackson.

Simon’s campaign has attempted to argue this week that a vote for Dukakis was really a vote for Jackson, a man who stirs strong emotions in Chicago’s racially polarized atmosphere. The reasoning was that, if Simon and Dukakis split the vote that doesn’t go to Jackson, Jackson will end up the winner.

Dukakis, despite urgings by his frustrated staff members, refused to hit back. Instead, he argued obliquely that a vote for Simon was a vote for a “brokered convention” when the Democrats meet in Atlanta next July, because Simon appears unable to win the nomination outright in the remaining contests. Such a convention, he said, would be “anathema” and “an absolute disaster.” A TV commercial made the same point.

“The last thing in the world we need is a brokered convention,” in which the nominee is selected in deals made by party power brokers, Dukakis told his supporters here. “The last thing we need is six people in a back room in Atlanta deciding who the Democratic nominee is going to be.”

Even Dukakis’ Illinois campaign manager, Mike Bakalis, thinks the argument may have missed the mark.

“I’m not sure people understand what a brokered convention is,” he said. “I think the message is correct. But the ad, well, I’m not sure, if you ask five people on the street what a brokered convention is, they can tell you.”

Aides say Dukakis’ careful step-by-step presidential campaign strategy, laid out months ago, didn’t expect a strong Simon campaign in Illinois after he had lost 27 primaries and caucuses. Now they see him as a spoiler.

“Frankly, we don’t get it,” one top aide said. “People didn’t write Simon off. This is supposed to be about running for President.”

Dukakis has run here by pushing his economic message in grimy steel mills and gritty blue-collar wards and by stressing his parents’ Greek immigrant past in Greek restaurants, an Irish parade, a Serbian night club, an Italian bakery and a Latino housing development.

But Dukakis has walked a fine line in trying to persuade voters that, as his TV ad says, he is “a winner,” while not succumbing to the arrogance of arguing that he is the inevitable Democratic nominee.

“There’s nothing inevitable about anybody’s candidacy,” Dukakis told reporters Monday. “A month ago, Bob Dole was inevitable, remember?”

Polls published Monday showed Dukakis gaining on Simon and Jackson. In airport stops in Springfield and Rockford and at his campaign headquarters in Chicago, Dukakis said the race was still up for grabs.