The Simon Review
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The Simon Review The Man and the Land The Politics of Paul Simon and Southern Illinois, 1950-1973 By Eugene P. Trani 1975 Paper #21 July 2010 A Publication of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute Southern Illinois University Carbondale 2 EDITOR’S NOTE: The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute is very pleased to present this paper by Dr. Eugene P. Trani, President Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Trani taught in the History Department at Southern Illinois University Carbondale during Paul Simon’s first race for the U.S. Congress in 1973-74. He and other scholars at SIUC had planned to write a book based on that campaign and this paper preserves the original edition as it was written in 1975 with only minor editorial changes. We are pleased to preserve and publish this historically important document. John S. Jackson Series Editor 3 INTRODUCTION In 1972, when I was teaching in the history department of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, the late Senator Paul Simon, then Lieutenant Governor, lost in the Democratic primary for Governor of Illinois. I was sad and said to myself that if he ever ran again, I would help in his campaign. Soon, he announced for Congress from the district that SIU was in. Some faculty from SIU, myself included, helped in 1974 in the campaign, as noted later in Paul Simon’s book, “P.S.: The Autobiography of Paul Simon” (Chicago, Illinois: Bonus Books, Inc., 1999), p. 128. We also agreed to write a book after his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. The book, for a variety of reasons, never materialized. But my chapter, which was completed in 1975, did, and is hereby attached without revision. Later, I did review one of Paul Simon’s books, “Paul Simon, Midwestern Progressive: A Review Essay of Paul Simon’s Winners and Losers: The 1988 Race for the Presidency – One Candidate’s Perspective,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 73 (1989-1990), 134-141, co-authored with Jerrold C. Rodesch. Paul Simon was a first class public servant, and during his years in the House of Representatives (1975-1985) and in the Senate (1985-1997), he made remarkable contributions to better the people of Illinois and our country. His 1974 campaign was my last involvement in politics as I became a university administrator, and served at the University of Nebraska (1975-1980), the University of Missouri-Kansas City (1980-1986), the University of Wisconsin System (1986-1990), and then Virginia Commonwealth University (1990-2009). I am proud to have been involved in his “political comeback” and treasure his memory. Since Senator Simon’s daughter, Sheila Simon, is the 2010 Democratic candidate for his old office, Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, there might be current interest in this account. Eugene P. Trani President Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor Virginia Commonwealth University May 24, 2010 The above statement by Dr. Trani was taken from his website on June 4, 2010 http://www.eugenetrani.vcu.edu/news/desk.html 4 On November 14, 1973, the 49th birthday of United States Representative Kenneth J. Gray, Paul Simon announced his intention to be a candidate to succeed Gray as congressman from the 24th District in Illinois, the 22 counties of southern Illinois. This announcement, triggered by Gray’s decision not to seek re-election in 1974, brought Simon, Gray and southern Illinois all together. It is necessary, as a prelude to studying Paul Simon’s election victory in 1974, to trace the political development of the three from 1950 to that November day. Paul Simon’s public career began in Illinois in the late 1940s, a long way from where he had been born, Eugene, Oregon, on November 29, 1928, the son of missionaries who had served in China in the 1920s. Simon spent his boyhood in Oregon, where his father, a Lutheran minister, displayed a family trait – political independence. His father aided American citizens of Japanese ancestry whom the United States government removed from the west coast, placing them in internment camps hundreds of miles away. Simon’s youth showed an interest in religion, serving as statewide president of a Lutheran youth organization, political reform and newspaper work. From his father, Simon and his younger brother, Arthur, now a minister in New York City, “learned of Roosevelt, LaFollette, and other progressive heroes of the time. He decided upon a hero of his own – Abraham Lincoln.”1 A high school graduate at the age of 16, Simon entered the University of Oregon to study journalism and wrote for the sports department of the Eugene Register-Guard. After one year at Oregon he transferred to Dana College in Nebraska, a small Lutheran school, where he was soon elected student body president. After his junior year at Dana, Simon borrowed $3,600 and 5 purchased a defunct weekly newspaper in Troy, Illinois, near where his father had moved, and at the age of 19 he became the youngest editor and publisher in the nation. His youth had displayed four characteristics that would mark his whole life: a deep belief in religion, with a resulting sense of moralism, that makes him “a remarkably self-possessed individual, if often sanctimoniously so”2; an extraordinarily inquisitive mind, that made reading a major staple of his life; an intense interest in newspaper work, eventually to lead to his becoming the publisher of a chain of 14 newspapers in downstate Illinois; and the beginnings of a political career. Each of these characteristics became even more important as the years went by. It was the Troy Tribune that brought Paul Simon to the attention of the citizens of Madison County, his new home, as well as the rest of Illinois in the late 1940s. As Simon began his career as a news publisher, he found much that distressed him. He later recalled about the Tribune: “The dust in the shop seemed an inch thick. The equipment – some of it went back to the 1870’s – was ready to fall apart, and it did!” Soon the newspaper had a growing list of subscribers but Simon saw much else that alarmed him. Madison County, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, seemed dominated by organized crime, with payoffs to government officials, gambling casinos and houses of prostitution the order of the day. Simon exposed these activities in his paper, “embellished with as much detail as he ever lavished on a local nuptial,” and his work came to the attention of Illinois’ new governor, Adlai E. Stevenson. Stevenson talked with Simon and then ordered raids to help clear up the crime. But Simon was not done. He called for the indictment of a recently-retired sheriff and the censuring of the Madison County State’s Attorney. Simon did not enjoy exposing political corruption but noted in a letter to U.S. Congressman Melvin Price that, “I feel strongly that in the long run anything that can be 6 done to eliminate corruption and devices which lead to it, will be the healthy thing.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized about his efforts: Paul Simon, editor of the weekly Tribune at Troy, Ill., is only 22 years-old. But he is far more courageous than many citizens of Madison County who are much older, much better established and much better equipped in resources to stand out for law and order. Simon’s efforts also brought him national attention, and on February 24, 1951, he appeared on television as a witness before Senator Estes Kefauver’s Senate Crime Investigation Committee, then holding sessions in St. Louis. He told the Committee about the extent of organized crime in Madison County and of the need of governmental action to control it. Newsweek magazine called Simon a “star witness.”3 It was natural that Simon would move on to politics, but the Korean War forced a two- year delay and assignment for Simon as a member of the Counter Intelligence Corps of the U.S. Army along the Iron Curtain in Europe. He returned to Troy in 1953 and soon announced that he would run as a Democrat for the Illinois House of Representatives in the April 1954 primary. The odds seemed great, as the powerful party machine looked with little favor on a reformer, stirring up trouble by insisting on honest government. Even his friends told him that he did not have a chance, that nobody beat the organization in Madison County. With little money, but a campaign style that led Paul Douglas to proclaim Simon “the most effective campaigner I have ever seen,” Simon and his voluntary supporters went out to meet the people. Knocking on doors, meeting people in the streets, in laundromats, at bowling alleys (a favorite Simon campaign stop), in barber shops, and at factory exits, Simon made the rounds in the district, calling for political reform. He later estimated that he had shaken the hands of 30,000 people in the primary campaign. On primary day, he showed his political skill by leading the field in a three-man race, 7 beating his nearest rival, an incumbent, by more than 9,000 votes. The Alton Telegraph termed it a “sensational upset,” and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat called his nomination a stunner.4 Election to the State House was a formality in November 1954, since the district was heavily Democratic. In 1955, Paul Simon became the state’s youngest lawmaker. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year career in the state Legislature that saw Simon serve eight years in the State House and six years in the State Senate.