The problem is….Simpson only pulled in 14 percent of the vote to about 30 percent for Cullerton and 50 percent for Rostenkowski. Stalking horses don’t pull in more than the ‘legit’ challenger not to mention, even Cullerton and Simpson’s votes together didn’t reach 50 percent.
There’s plenty to criticize Cullerton for, but he fought a tough race in 1994 and that isn’t one of them. The larger problem isn’t Cullerton, but that one of the better indepedendent candidates didn’t have a shot like Don Harmon.
I found the reporting at the time (I linked to a New York Times story) persuasive. You can’t control the outcome. How does the fact that Cullerton won 30 percent of the vote invalidate the notion that his candidacy was not legitimate? A certain portion of that vote would certainly have gone to Simpson. Just because it doesn’t add up to more than Rostenkowski’s vote – just because Simpson would have likely still lost in a head-to-head match-up – doesn’t mean Cullerton wasn’t in the race for a specific purpose. Cullerton himself said he would only run if Rostenkowski didn’t. Then, when faced with a challenger, Cullerton ran to ensure that a reformer wouldn’t take a Machine seat. That’s what the Times reported, and that’s what I saw in the other reporting I looked at from the time, and I haven’t seen anything yet that disproves it. And stalking horses actually do quite often pull in more votes that legitimate challengers. Happens all the time.
Name a case where a stalking horse gets more than the targeted candidate.
Simpson’s claims are bullshit and predicated on the belief that he had some right to be the only challenger and to any non-Rosty votes. He got 27,000 votes in 1992 compared to about 12,500 in 1994. Cullerton got about 27,500 votes in 1994—iow, Simpson never had that many votes in the first place, he simply had protest votes in 1992. He couldn’t build on that even after a second run.
Simpson got fewer than half of the votes from 1992 even though there was a 44 percent increase in turnout. He never was a serious threat to Rostenkowski. The problem with your analysis and Simpson’s whining at the time is you cannot count votes, Cullerton could.
Simpson didn’t get any better of a percentage in the final tally than in the January poll the Trib ran.
The bit about the change in Cullerton’s mind also misses that it wasn’t until October that Rostenkowski said he’d run for sure so many people were being deferential hoping to not have to face him, but also not wanting to anger potential supporters. Trying to make that into some conspiracy only means the tin-foil hat is a bit tight.
It’s so easy to accuse people of conspiracy theory rather than to read what they’ve written and respond to the facts they’ve cited. Thank you so much for your tone! If you think this is conspiracy theory, your problem isn’t with me but with the MSM reporters who covered the race. I’m citing a NYT news article that was representative of what was written at the time. Take your argument to those reporters. The vote totals you cite are irrelevant. How do the vote totals mean anything? As reported, Cullerton spent most of his campaign attacking Simpson, not Rostenkowski. It worked! The Times wrote: “Then he announced that he was running because if he did not, Mr. Simpson would win – something the Chicago machine did not want to happen.” And after Rosty’s win, Cullerton called it “a great victory.” I suppose the Times reporter was wearing a tinfoil hat. As far as stalking horses, it has happened in any number of city council and legislative races, as I learned while reporting once on “ghost candidates” for the Chicago Tribune. Sometimes the objective is accomplished by scaring competitors from entering the race in the first place.
So you cannot name any stalking horse candidates who beat the targeted legit candidate? Let’s be clear here.
===Take your argument to those reporters. The vote totals you cite are irrelevant. How do the vote totals mean anything? As reported, Cullerton spent most of his campaign attacking Simpson, not Rostenkowski. It worke
You are alleging a conspiracy with no evidence. It’s not that I’m claiming you have a conspiracy theory–you do. The problem you have is that the entire thing isn’t based on actual evidence, but on the rantings of Dick Simpson who claims to have been THE alternative. He wasn’t. He was a crappy underfunded candidate who was full of himself. The vote totals matter because a stalking horse by definition, has to split the vote away from a serious challenger. Simpson wasn’t a serious challenger. He couldn’t even keep his votes from 1992.
—-“Then he announced that he was running because if he did not, Mr. Simpson would win – something the Chicago machine did not want to happen.” And after Rosty’s win, Cullerton called it “a great victory.”
Which was a very bitter statement saying that people chose pork over honesty.
The problem is you don’t have a quote for Cullerton claiming Simpson would win if he didn’t run. When Cullerton made his final decision here is what he said to the Tribune as the Hotline reported:
After taking a poll, state Sen. John Cullerton has decided to stay in the March primary contest against House Ways and Means Chairman Rostenkowski. Thursday is the official deadline for candidates to withdraw their names from this year’s primary ballot. Cullerton, who said last week he “probably” would not run if Rostenkowski’s support stood at 50 percent, told the Chicago Tribune that his poll of 500 voters showed that only 21 percent thought that Rostenkowski should be re-elected. “I don’t think he’s in a position to serve the district,” Cullerton said of Rostenkowski. Among the other primary candidates is former Alderman Dick Simpson, who won 43 percent of the vote against Rostenkowski in the 1992 primary. With the withdrawal deadline imminent,Rostenkowski is also putting out the word that he is in the race to stay.
December 5, 1993, SUNDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
“Others are going to file nominating petitions in the chance that Rostenkowski will drop out later, is indicted or is further damaged as a result of the investigation.
“Now that he is running, the question is, ‘Is he electable?’ ” said state Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago). A year ago, Cullerton said he would not run against Rostenkowski.
Cullerton has opened a congressional campaign headquarters on North Clark and hired a campaign manager. He is going to file nominating petitions.”
I’d love to know where the New York Times got the quote. Perhaps you can find it because there’s no record of it when I’ve looked for it. It’s absurd to rely on one NYT article for the entire context of the race while the local papers covered it and covered it better.
[…] 25, 2008 · No Comments ArchPundit (Larry Handlin) has challenged my characterization of new state senate president John Cullerton’s 1994 congressional campaign […]
I think it’s clear here who is sticking to the facts and who is just kind of bloviating here. As I’ve written twice now, the NYT article I excerpted from and linked to was not the only article I reviewed, and it was representative of the rest of the coverage. But you and your readers can judge for yourselves. I have now posted relevant excerpts – and I assure you I’ve been fair about it – from the local coverage you value so much and which I’ve already reviewed. The new post is here:
divisionstreet.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/cullerton-and-rosty/
Right–you cannot provide a source for the claim made in March in the New York Times that upon getting in the race his goal was to stop Simpson. You get Sneed saying it, but in the same quote it compares David Orr to Simpson. Kinda loses any credibility right there and it’s not based on anything other than gossip.
So Lynn Sweet didn’t report a fact like that? Find another source–it doesn’t exist Steve–the New York Times coverage of the race was horrible all around and the actual reporters in Chicago never reported that claim. Or is Sweet part of the conspiracy?
People always try and claim stalking horses are around every corner, but the reality is most of the time, it’s a fantasy people employ to keep themselves from having to accept that the voters in an election happen to disagree. In this case, the horrible ‘stalking horse’ outperformed Simpson 2 – 1 and yet that doesn’t raise any flags that just maybe people didn’t like Dick Simpson and Cullerton saw that in his polling so he ran.
Listing a bunch of excepts doesn’t make your case. Nor does it answer my question above that you have avoided again along with another source for the New York Times claim–name a race in which the stalking horse candidate outperformed the candidate the stalking horse was targeting?
It is a tinfoil hat theory Steve. It’s this sort of shoddy reporting and based on conjecture and no actual evidence–same as the NYT’s piece. You are attempting to look for some nefarious conspiracy for a politician saying he wouldn’t run and then running–gee, that never happens does it?
For a guy who complains about the cult like supporters of Obama you might look in the mirror and question the cult like following for gadflies who cannot raise money or count votes, but insist, they coulda been a contenda.
You aren’t dealing with facts Steve–your entire argument is based on a conspiracy theory based on conjecture. When you hear hooves you don’t think zebras so when a politician runs for an office it’s because they are ambitious and see an opportunity not because they are involved in some dark plot.
One of the most simplistic and moronic notions in claims about Chicago politics is that the Machine was some monolith. There was always competition within the Machine between different factions and when someone was down, someone else was happy to kick them.
call me if you want to know what really happened. 773 883 0770
A few things.
First, we live in the world of Hired Trucks, of Iran-Contra, of Scooter Libby and the falsified Niger documents and “Fastball”, or whatever that guy’s name was that Cheney pretended was a legit source for info on Iraq’s supposed wmd program.
In other words, we live in a world in which, as Obama’s hero Lincoln understood (see the House Divided speech), conspiracies are real, present and powerful. Does that mean there was a conspiracy here? Of course not. But your tone about someone seeing conspiracies is reminiscent of the days when Richard Hofstetter could still be taken seriously. Conspiracy theorists flourish in American politics because conspiracies have flourished in American politics.
Second, Steve has given you loads of evidence that Cullerton was more concerned about Simpson than Rosty. He’s pointed to comments after Simpson’s first run in which Cullerton praised Rosty. He’s pointed to the Cullerton campaign’s attacks, primarily against Simpson. He’s given evidence from the NY Times, which you don’t like for some reason. What would you need? A quote from Cullerton in a Kass column, saying I’m just running in order to save my buddy Rosty?
Third, you don’t have to chat about the outcomes and arrange every role to be a stalking horse. Lincoln doesn’t seem to think that “Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James” sat down together to establish slavery across the country. But he does know that, if the timber has been cut to spec, you can assume that people are cooperating on the new building.
Cullerton simply needed to know that powerful people would be greatful if he sullied Simpson. The fact that Simpson wasn’t really a great candidate, that he’s rather full of himself, etc., doesn’t really change the fact that he’d almost won 2 years before and that a buffoon would win a few months later. The bottom line was that Rosty needed someone
Finally, your characterization of Harmon as an independent is ludicrous. While there may not have been a conspiracy to keep Rosty in the House, there was certainly a conspiracy to put Harmon in the Senate. Favors were traded between Sen. Rock and some of the worst elements of Illinois politics – the Bankses, Ald. Carothers (whose father was a convict for extortion and intimidation in a vote fraud case.) Remember, Rock didn’t cut those deals to help Harmon win — the deals were done to make sure that there wasn’t even a single weak opponent. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d guess the goal wasn’t to help him win so much as to tangle Harmon up in Rock’s web of connections. It’s pretty easy to draw some lines between Rock’s real estate interests and the old west side bloc and their modern heirs, the Banks’s and Carothers.