{"id":569,"date":"2005-08-26T14:18:14","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T21:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=569"},"modified":"2005-08-26T14:18:14","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T21:18:14","slug":"1986-lyndon-larouches-political-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2005\/08\/26\/1986-lyndon-larouches-political-peak\/","title":{"rendered":"1986: Lyndon LaRouche’s Political Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>POLITICS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE Radical candidates hijack Illinois’ Democratic primary; Richard Stengel. Reported by Lee Griggs\/Chicago
\nTime 03-31-1986<\/p>\n

Their campaigns cost a grand total of $200. They made few
\nspeeches, avoided appearing on television, and distributed only a
\nsmattering of pamphlets. They kept quiet about their platform, which
\nproposes mandatory testing of all Americans for AIDS and ”Nuremberg
\ntribunals” for those suspected of treason. Although the ballot in
\nthe Illinois state primary listed them as Democrats, that designation
\ncloaked their true affiliation.
\nThe two candidates who won the Illinois Democratic state primary
\nnominations for Lieutenant Governor and secretary of state in
\nshocking upsets are actually followers of reclusive,
\nultra-right-wing, perennial Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche.
\nMark Fairchild and Janice Hart, two travelers from the Twilight Zone
\nof politics, narrowly defeated the handpicked nominees of Adlai
\nStevenson III. Stevenson won the Democratic primary for Governor with
\nan overwhelming 88% of the vote.
\nThe returns jolted everyone in Illinois politics. ”This is
\ninsane,” said an incredulous Republican Governor James Thompson. ”A
\ndisaster,” exclaimed Democratic Chairman Calvin Sutker. Stevenson
\nwas both angry and adamant. ”I am exploring every legal remedy to
\npurge these extremists from the Democratic ticket,” said he. ”But
\none thing I want to make absolutely clear. I will never serve on a
\nticket with candidates who espouse the hate-filled folly of Lyndon
\nLaRouche and the U.S. Labor Party.”
\nThe victory of the LaRouche candidates left the Democratic Party
\nin agitated disarray and may torpedo Stevenson’s chances. Though
\ncandidates for statewide offices in Illinois are chosen individually,
\nthe Governor and Lieutenant Governor must run in tandem in November.
\nStevenson is considering forming a third party, a complicated
\nmaneuver that would require renouncing his Democratic nomination and
\norganizing a slate of candidates for nine offices. But many
\nIllinois Democrats, including U.S. Senator Alan Dixon, regard that as
\nimprudent. Dixon urged Stevenson to run as a Democrat and promise to
\neliminate the Lieutenant Governor’s office if elected.
\nAfter his victory, Fairchild, 28, an earnest-looking electrical
\nengineer who won the Lieutenant Governor’s spot, attributed the upset
\nto ”anger on the part of the public at the regular Democratic
\nslate.” For his part, Fairchild said, he would like to reach some
\nkind of agreement with Stevenson. Hart, 31, the new Democratic
\nnominee for secretary of state, was less gracious. A dark, alarmingly
\nintense woman who has been a LaRouche disciple since she was 17, she
\nspoke at her victory press conference in the flat tones of a military
\ncommander: ”We will roll our tanks down State Street, and make sure
\nevery citizen is armed, with reason and beauty. We will hang traitors
\nand hang people who are responsible for feeding our children drugs .
\n. .” There was more: ”He (LaRouche) will put the fear of God in
\npeople like Henry Kissinger and the State Department, the biggest
\nhotbed of treason in this nation since Aaron Burr killed Alexander
\nHamilton.”
\nThe bizarre outcome was skewed, in part, by the Chicago races,
\nwhere Mayor Harold Washington campaigned against the regular
\nDemocratic ticket (see box). In the statewide contests, regular
\nDemocrats were too cocky; Stevenson did not bother to campaign for
\nhis running mates, assuming, like everyone else, that they would be
\nushered in on his coattails.
\nApparently many voters around the state, unfamiliar with the
\ncandidates, cast ballots for Fairchild and Hart because their names
\nsounded more ) comfortable to them than those of their regular
\nDemocrat opponents, George Sangmeister and Aurelia Pucinski. The fact
\nthat Hart and Fairchild were listed first, alphabetically, gave them
\nan edge with uninformed voters. A shoe salesman in Taylorville told
\nthe Chicago Tribune he voted for the two LaRouchians ”because they
\nhad smooth-sounding names. I didn’t know anything about any of those
\ncandidates.” Chicago newspapers later sent reporters out to survey
\nscores of voters; none of them found a single avowed LaRouchian.
\nThat is not surprising, even though LaRouche has run for President
\nin the past three national elections (garnering nearly 80,000 votes
\nin 1984) and his followers court attention at airports by displaying
\nposters such as NUKE JANE FONDA as a come-on for their often virulent
\npamphlets. LaRouche, 63, a former Marxist, is now the leader of a
\ncultlike, worldwide organization that blames international
\nconspiracies of bankers, Communists and Zionists for the world’s
\nills–including those of the farmers, which may have attracted some
\nvotes in struggling rural Illinois. In 1984, LaRouche claimed on a
\npaid political broadcast that ”Walter Mondale is an agent of
\ninfluence of the Soviet secret intelligence services.”
\nDespite the crackbrained ideas, a former official of the National
\nSecurity Council maintains that LaRouche has ”one of the best
\nprivate intelligence services in the world.” His lieutenants have
\nhad meetings with U.S. intelligence officials. His international
\noperation, run from a well-guarded estate in Leesburg, Va., provides
\nhim with daily reports, while his printing company churns out books,
\nmagazines and newspapers that produce both converts and income. With
\nperhaps 2,000 disciples, LaRouche ran hundreds of candidates for
\noffice in 1984. Nearly 1,000 are expected to run this year. Though
\nfew, if any, are expected to do well. Democrats in Newport Beach,
\nCalif., last week discovered that a LaRouche follower was the lone
\nDemocrat to meet the filing deadline to contest a Republican
\ncongressional seat.
\nWhatever the Illinois victories mean for LaRouche’s fanatical
\nmovement, they exposed a dangerous weakness in the state’s electoral
\npolitics. Even Governor Thompson, whose re-election bid for a fourth
\nterm will benefit from the situation, was troubled. ”The bottom
\nline of all this,” he said, ”is that every politician in the state
\nof Illinois better sit himself down and say, ‘I’m never going to take
\nthe voters for granted.’ ”
\nBOX: Destroying the Dinosaur
\nEver since he became Chicago’s first black mayor, in 1983, by
\nsuccessfully challenging the city’s once dominant Democratic machine,
\nHarold Washington has struggled to gain practical political control
\nof a sharply divided government. He has been blocked from doing so by
\nAlderman Edward R. Vrdolyak, chairman of Cook County’s Democratic
\norganization, whose followers have held a 29-to-21 edge over the
\nmayor’s loyalists on Chicago’s unwieldy 50-member city council. A
\nspecial election in seven aldermanic districts last week gave
\nWashington a rare chance to break the deadlock.
\nThe election was ordered by a federal judge, who ruled last
\nDecember that the seven districts had been illegally gerrymandered to
\nreduce minority representation on the council. That very week
\nWashington, who had been steadily picking up popular support in
\npolls, was stung by a scandal over bribes allegedly offered to at
\nleast one city official to influence the awarding of contracts for
\ncollecting unpaid parking tickets. Washington was not accused of any
\npersonal wrongdoing, but his image as a reformist mayor fighting a
\ncorrupt machine was tarnished.
\nNevertheless, by election week Washington was campaigning with
\ntypical bombast, terming his own candidates ”the magnificent seven”
\nand Vrdolyak supporters ”crooks and lowlifes who climb out from
\nunder rocks.” In the voting, the mayor’s candidates won in two
\ndistricts, and a third seemed certain to be elected in a runoff.
\nVrdolyak’s men captured three districts. The pivotal seventh race, in
\nChicago’s 26th ward, was a snarl of legal disputes and charges of
\nfraud, but Washington’s candidate was ahead by a hair. If the mayor’s
\nman eventually wins, the council would be evenly split, 25 to 25, and
\nWashington’s own vote could break any impasse.
\n”We have destroyed the dinosaur,” the mayor declared
\ntriumphantly after the election. Not just yet. Washington may gain a
\nnarrow majority on the council, but Vrdolyak and his followers long
\nago passed a resolution requiring that any change in the powerful
\ncommittee chairmanships be approved by a two- thirds vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

POLITICS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE Radical candidates hijack Illinois’ Democratic primary; Richard Stengel. Reported by Lee Griggs\/Chicago Time 03-31-1986 Their campaigns cost a grand total of $200. They made few speeches, avoided appearing on television, and distributed only a smattering of pamphlets. They kept quiet about their platform, which proposes mandatory testing of all Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-larouche-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}