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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 110 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 29

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

Onward to the Rust Belt


By Michael Kramer


    They are, quite obviously, well scrubbed and well off;
young white men and women in suits and dresses and polished
loafers and fashionable pumps. They stand silently at scattered
street corners in cities like Dallas and Orlando and now
Chicago. With their small, multicolored signs -- TSONGAS -- they
seem a diffident rebuke to the well-oiled effort supporting Bill
Clinton. "How can they compete?" asked a Clinton worker as he
drove around Chicago last week. "We've got the money and
endorsements. Damn, there's another one. You don't think they're
having any real effect, do you?"

    Yep, they are. Before this week's round of Super Tuesday
contests, Paul Tsongas had spent only half a day in Illinois.
But the latest polls show him within striking distance of
Clinton, and his strength is not entirely inexplicable. As
elsewhere, Tsongas benefits from the perception that he is a
truth teller willing to inflict pain on a nation ready for
castor oil. While the disadvantaged reject his message, it
resonates among better-educated, higher-income whites -- the
very Democrats most likely to vote on March 17. Around Chicago,
Tsongas is also doing well among the white ethnics who voted for
Reagan and Bush, not because he is seen as a strong leader but
because Clinton is viewed as too slick. In another year, against
a stronger field, Tsongas may already be history. This time, he
is increasingly hailed as the only credible alternative to
Clinton, and that may be enough.

    For Clinton, Illinois has always been the crucial contest.
He watched another Southerner do well on Super Tuesday four
years ago, only to fail when the race turned north to the Rust
Belt. "Al Gore didn't realize that he had to show immediate foot
in the North to avoid being tagged a regional candidate,"
Clinton said several months ago. "I'll do well on Super Tuesday
too, but Illinois is basically the ball game. If I score there,
I've got the momentum to roll in the other big Northern states.
Lose there and, well, let's just say it won't be pretty.
Illinois is the real test."

    To win Illinois, Clinton is counting on doing well in
Chicago. And to do well in Chicago, Clinton is counting on the
machine, or rather what's left of the Democratic organization
that once ruled the city. Today there are many Democratic
organizations in Chicago, and Clinton is favored by most. He won
their backing because he was willing to play understudy. The
pols who count in Chicago wanted Mario Cuomo. All Clinton asked
was that they come his way if Cuomo chose not to run. "He
gambled a bit, and it worked," says William Daley, a son of the
late mayor and brother of the current one.

    Clinton's new enemy is apathy. "With someone like Mondale,
you had a member of the congregation," says David Axelrod, a
well-regarded Chicago-based media magician advising Clinton.
"Fritz knew every significant Democrat personally and helped
most of them at one time or another. Then, when he needed them,
they were there. Clinton's just come to town, and the
organizations have a lot of local contests they consider more
important than the presidency. They're for Clinton on paper, but
the question is whether they'll work hard enough to offset a
surge by someone else."

    Clinton's greatest strength in Chicago is among blacks.
"He talks to our concerns," says Alderman Bobby Rush. "Tsongas
is too detached, too ivory tower." What ethnic whites see as
weakness is viewed as almost charming by some blacks. "Life is
life," says Charliemae Towbridge, who heads the Chicago police
department's civilian workers' union. "There isn't any one of
us who can't relate to Clinton's eye for the ladies if he's
being honest with himself. That's a fact."

    In theory, the Jackson Factor could be a problem for
Clinton in Chicago. "It's good to have Jesse out of it this
time," says Rush. "It gives us some relief, some liberation."
Rush admits that Jackson "might" be tempted to endorse a
candidate before the primary, but predicts he'll remain aloof
rather than risk a referendum on his ability to deliver for
someone other than himself.

    As all politics is local, so it also reflects personal
loyalties. "It's often who recruits you that determines where
you go," says Sandy Thomas, the president of the Chicago Social
Club, a business that organizes sporting and social events for
6,500 dues-paying members. Thomas lives in the 43rd Ward, a
haven for upwardly mobile whites, whose popular alderman, Edwin
Eisendrath, is a Clinton man. "Edwin asked me to sign a
fund-raising letter for Clinton," says Thomas, "so of course I
did." But Thomas will vote for Tsongas. As a former
schoolteacher, Thomas should be attracted by Clinton's education
reforms in Arkansas. But she isn't, and her inability to
articulate her discomfort is typical. "There's just something
about Clinton," says Thomas, 30, "and as someone disaffected
with politics, I'm attracted to an anti-candidate candidate.
Maybe it's a rebellion thing. Tsongas seems genuine -- and just
because he's a dweeb doesn't mean he can't govern." So Thomas
is raising money for Clinton and voting for Tsongas. "That's
Chicago," she says. "It's kinda neat, isn't it?" And nutty too.