Simon Leading; Bush Sweeps On : Jackson Trails in Illinois Duel of Favorite Sons

Sen. Paul Simon, one of this state’s two favorite-son White House contenders, appeared headed toward victory in the Democratic presidential primary here Tuesday, a result that would prolong his own shaky candidacy and throw the turbulent campaign for his party’s nomination into further confusion.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the other Illinois presidential aspirant, and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis were running well behind in early returns, but Jackson was expected to move into a strong second place as returns mounted, exit polls indicated.

Dukakis had begun the day as the Democratic front-runner, having won about 40 more delegates than Jackson and having raised and spent millions of dollars more than any of his four rivals.

Gore Far Behind

Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., making his first major effort in a big state outside his native South, was far behind in fourth place, edging only Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who made only a minimal commitment to this contest.

With 12% of the precincts reporting, these were the results: Simon 49%, Dukakis 23%, Jackson 19%, Gore 6%, Gephardt 1%.

Simon, who had not won a single primary or caucus before Illinois, appeared to be gaining a double-barreled triumph in this contest, the first of the 1988 campaign in a major industrial state.

In addition to winning the popular vote, in the so-called beauty contest, Simon also seemed assured of winning the separate contest for delegates by an even larger margin.

These apparent results threatened a clear setback to Dukakis, who spent several hundred thousand dollars and nearly a week here in an effort to build on the momentum he had gained from his victory in the New Hampshire primary last month and his successes in the Super Tuesday contests March 8. They represented a bigger blow for Gore, who had spent about $250,000 in the state hoping to demonstrate that his appeal extended beyond Dixie.

The damage to both these contenders, who had appeared to be the strongest white candidates after Super Tuesday, was bound to increase concern among party leaders that the delegate race, which reaches a climax with primaries in California and New Jersey on June 7, would produce a deadlock portenting controversy and divisiveness rather than any clear choice for the nomination. Such a deadlock--which could result in a brokered party convention in July--is exactly what Simon predicted during the campaign here in asking for support against Dukakis.

Even supporters of Jackson, who until now seemed the one Democratic candidate capable of generating enthusiasm, had to be somewhat frustrated with the outcome in the candidate’s own state. They had hoped for a first-place finish here, but he apparently fell short of that goal because he was unable to expand his white support beyond the roughly 10% he has gained elsewhere.

Bright Day for Simon

On the other hand, this was a bright day for Simon and the traditional Democratic liberals who have supported him. His success not only kept him in the race--Simon had said before the vote that he would drop out unless he finished first in both the popular vote and delegate contests--but it also gave him impetus to go on to the next delegate contests in Michigan on March 26 and Wisconsin on April 5.

Given the fact that both would be fought out on the friendly terrain of the Midwest offered hope to his supporters that Simon could become a significant factor in the race.

The most frequently mentioned reason given by voters interviewed in a Los Angeles Times exit poll for backing the candidates they supported Tuesday was: “He cares about people like me.”

About one-third gave that reason and they split roughly even between Jackson and Simon, an indication of their personal familiarity with the two home-state candidates.

Stress on Leadership

Only a tiny percentage of voters gave electability as the reason for their choice and they mostly supported Dukakis. Also, Dukakis did relatively well among those who placed great stress on leadership and wanted a candidate with experience.

But the supporters of Simon and Jackson seemed to have warmer and deeper feelings about their candidates. They gave reasons such as “has strong convictions,” “has a vision for the future” and “I trust him more than the others” for their votes.

Dukakis did best among two voting groups--independents and Jews, both of whom gave him about one-third of their vote. But Simon outpolled him with both groups.

Two-thirds of the Illinois Democrat voters were white. They gave Simon a majority and Dukakis about a quarter of the vote, according to the exit poll. Jackson, who won an overwhelming majority of the black vote, appeared to be taking something like 10% of the white vote.

Deficit a Big Issue

Issues appeared to have little bearing on the outcome. Simon, Jackson, Dukakis and Gore voters also said the deficit was the issue most important to them. Those who cited the deficit were slightly more likely to vote for Dukakis, slightly less likely to vote for Jackson.

The stage was set for the Democratic clash in Illinois by the far-flung battle a week earlier in 20 states, most of them in the South, in what was termed Super Tuesday.

Dukakis, Gore and Jackson each scored significant victories on Super Tuesday--Dukakis winning Florida and Texas, Gore carrying four Southern states including his own and Jackson capturing five states in Dixie--and each hoped to exploit these successes in Illinois. But Dukakis and Gore had much tougher going here than Jackson.

Campaigning on his home turf, with a solid base of black voters in three Chicago congressional districts, Jackson could afford to take their support just about for granted and try to extend his reach elsewhere in the state and into the white community.

Washington’s Death

Some local politicians thought that Jackson might be handicapped here by the death of Mayor Harold Washington, who had been expected to help rally black support for him, and by Jackson’s unsuccessful attempt to intervene in the effort to pick Washington’s successor.

Another potential obstacle cited was that Jackson sometimes had been considered high-handed in his efforts to promote black involvement in the local business community, something that had antagonized many whites and some blacks too.

But these possible negatives seemed to have been largely offset by the momentum Jackson had generated on Super Tuesday and by the emotional force of his message--a combination of down-home pulpit morality with anti-corporate, anti-militarist rhetoric reminiscent of the New Left in its heyday in the 1960s.

And perhaps most practical and fundamental of the assets Jackson enjoyed was that here, as in every 1988 campaign battleground, blacks supported him almost universally while white support was fractured among several opponents.

Thus Dukakis, who came here as the front-runner in the national campaign, faced a serious problem in the person of Paul Simon, whom he had to compete against for roughly the same pool of white liberal voters.

Simon began the Illinois campaign with his candidacy in serious trouble. After finishing second in the Iowa caucuses last month, he wound up third in the New Hampshire primary and was unable to win a single primary or caucus, including some tests in his own Midwest. Seemingly on the verge of dropping out of the race, Simon was pressured to hang in by state party officials whose names were on the ballot as his convention delegate candidates.

In response, he decided to make another major effort in his native state. And with support from local party activists, Simon made a formidable foe and his candidacy forced a shift in tactics by Dukakis.

On Super Tuesday, Dukakis had depended heavily on negative ads to all but destroy Gephardt’s candidacy. Reluctant to attack Simon on personal grounds here, lest such tactics backfire, Dukakis instead launched an attack on Simon’s strategy that was based on the argument that since no Democratic candidate could win a majority of delegates in the primaries and caucuses, Illinois voters should make Simon their spokesman at what he claimed would almost certainly be a deadlocked convention.

Dukakis attacked this position with a widely shown commercial that warned voters that “some people” wanted them to turn over the power to party leaders to pick the next nominee at “a brokered convention” and urged them to vote for Dukakis instead.

And Dukakis made the same argument himself in almost every stump appearance, declaring: “This nomination is not going to be decided by six guys sitting in a back room.”

Simon counterattacked by claiming that, “The Dukakis game is to try and take votes away from me”--not so Dukakis could finish first, Simon claimed, but so Jackson would finish first, thus eliminating Simon from the race.

While these two slugged it out, they ignored Gore, who was having plenty of trouble on his own. His threshold problem was that most people in the state were ignorant of his existence. Unlike Dukakis, who had campaigned intensively around the country, including neighboring Iowa, Gore had concentrated his time and energy on his native Dixie.