Picking a candidate unlike the rest of us
SouthtownStar - Member of the Sun-Times Media*
September 29, 2010
BY PHIL KADNER
First came the 24-year-old running as a Republican for the Illinois Senate. He owns four Subway restaurants, a pizza joint and a landscaping business that installs swimming pools. He has been a school board member for six years. That's right, he first ran for elective office at 18.
Then came the Republican running for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.
She has a law degree. And a medical degree. And is a retired major in the Army Reserve.
And, by the way, she used to be a Benedictine nun who gave three Illinois convicts on death row a clean bill of health so they could be electrocuted.
Both candidates visited the offices of the SouthtownStar for editorial board interviews Tuesday, and I have to admit feeling a little inferior, having held but one job for most of my life.
I was immersed in my thoughts when someone on the editorial board asked the former nun, Barbara Bellar, how she finds time to campaign for office while running a medical practice and teaching a class in ethics at DePaul University.
She said something about multi-tasking not being a problem so long as you don't waste your time sitting at home watching TV every night.
That's what I do. Watch TV. Waste my time.
The 24-year-old is Adam Baumgartner, and he's running for the state Senate against incumbent Democrat Toi Hutchinson.
He never went to college but said he finished high school in three years.
I figured the guy must have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and handed money by his parents to launch his business ventures.
No, he said. He just saved every dime he earned from the time he started mowing neighborhood lawns.
OK, kid. So what do your parents do?
Baumgartner said his mother was a stay-at-home mom until recently, when she got a job wearing a yellow vest and holding signs at road construction sites. Dad, he said, is a mechanic who works on heavy construction equipment.
I asked the young man how much money he planned to spend on his campaign, and as easy as you might order scrambled eggs for breakfast he said $250,000.
He said most of that would be from campaign contributors but quickly added that his opponent would probably spend $1 million so it wasn't a whole lot of money.
When I was 24, I figured if I could ever raise that kind of money I would retire. But that was long ago, before the Wall Street boom, the Great Recession and back when most folks still read newspapers.
Bellar, who lives in Burr Ridge, is running for state representative in the 35th District against Bill Cunningham, a Democrat, who lives in Chicago's Beverly community. The district includes Chicago's 19th Ward, parts of Oak Lawn, Orland Park and Palos Park and runs all the way into the western suburbs.
For years, people have been telling me that with all the negative press about politics, all the muckraking by newspapers and the sleazy attack ads from both political parties, no one in their right mind would run for office any more.
I'm not going to comment on the state of mind of these two candidates or their qualifications for office. Endorsements will appear on our editorial pages. Reporters will write informative stories about these elections and many others.
The thing that struck me, listening to the personal histories and accomplishments of these two people, is how abnormal they were. Not in a bad way, mind you.
But the normal person does not hold multiple advanced degrees. A normal person does not own six business enterprises by the time he is 24.
I guess some people would call such individuals extraordinary.
And voters often claim that's what they're looking for in candidates. A record of accomplishment. A history outside the realm of public service.
More and more, I'm reminded of a theory I developed long ago: No one who runs for public office is someone who should be in public office.
The decision itself marks them as someone who bares close public scrutiny.
"I'm just an ordinary guy whose father died in the war when I was 3, whose mother cleaned toilets, who had a crackhead brother and still managed to go to law school and win a Bronze Star in combat, before I bathed people with AIDS and launched a high-tech company."
That's what we want to hear, we voters. A great story. A great American success story.
Because these people, we want to believe, reflect us and what our country represents.
We don't want anyone who wastes five hours each day watching TV. We don't want anyone who spent 30 years working for someone else and never became a CEO.
They're unqualified, those people. They're too much like us.
So we elect the others, those totally unlike us. Just wondering how you think that has worked out.
*The views expressed in these blog posts are those of the author and not of the SouthtownStar.