GOP lacks top candidates to challenge Durbin

WASHINGTON -- With only two months to go before qualifying petitions must be filed, Illinois Republicans have a problem: No big-name candidate has surfaced to run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in a race that tops the state ballot in 2002.

Gov. George Ryan is retiring. Attorney General Jim Ryan and Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood have opted to try to continue the GOP's uninterrupted string of governors dating to 1977. And all 10 of Illinois' Republican House members, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, are focused on re-election.

The only Republican facing Durbin, who hasn't lost an election at any level since the 1970s, is John Cox, a wealthy, anti-abortion, right-of-center businessman who got only 10 percent of the vote last year in a failed primary bid to succeed retiring Rep. John Porter of Wilmette.

"I think (Durbin) looks strong," Republican U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald said. "No one that would clearly be able to defeat him has emerged at this point. He's a Senate incumbent with good poll numbers. Not many Senate incumbents are defeated, period, let alone those with good numbers."

Republican fallout

In recent days, some other potential GOP candidates have dropped from the radar screen.

Jack Ryan, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned Chicago high school teacher, talked of running for months and made numerous trips to Washington to meet with party operatives, but decided to stick to teaching English literature.

Some within the party also looked overseas to try to recruit former Chicago resident Catherine Bertini from her post in Rome as executive director of the United Nations' World Food Program. But Bertini, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Illinois two decades ago, is now a registered voter in New York, and she said in a recent interview that she plans to finish her term in April.

The focus has now turned to Winnebago County Board Chairman Kris Cohn, who has been approached by party officials about possibly running for one of a number of statewide races, including the Senate.

'Recruiting a ticket'

" We're trying to recruit an entire ticket," said Bob Kjellander, a national GOP committeeman from Springfield.

"I'm very flattered and I'm thinking about it, and speaking with my family members and political advisers," said Cohn, whose husband, Stuart Cohn, is president of Behr Metals, a Rockford-based recycling and scrap metals firm.

Rep. Tim Johnson, a freshman congressman from Urbana and former Champaign County GOP chairman, said the Senate race is important beyond the issue of who wins.

"Dick Durbin is credible, and we have to make sure that there's a Republican who's credible because I think that's important to the whole ticket below that," he said.

As Durbin crisscrosses Illinois with increasing regularity, seeing little signs of any opposition to a second term in the Senate, he maintains the caution of a seasoned politician.

"I began my political career by losing three straight elections," he recently noted. "I learned a valuable lesson: You never take any election for granted."

Cox, who said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have led him to curtail some of his political activities and partisan attacks, said some of Durbin's Senate votes could be used to paint him as too liberal, but declined to provide specifics right now.

But what Republican strategists see in Durbin is a foe who already has a war chest of $3 million, is a hard-working campaigner and has developed a national reputation in the Democratic Party.

National Republicans acknowledge that Durbin is not a major target as they map out their strategy to recapture the Senate majority.