Simon Wins as Bush Sweeps On : Jackson Is 2nd in Illinois Duel of Favorite Sons

Sen. Paul Simon, one of Illinois’ two favorite-son White House contenders, won the Democratic presidential primary here Tuesday, prolonging his own shaky candidacy and throwing the turbulent campaign for his party’s nomination into further confusion.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the other Illinois presidential aspirant, finished second. Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who had begun the day as the Democratic front-runner, having won about 40 more delegates than Jackson and having raised and spent millions of dollars more than any of his four rivals, faded into a third-place finish.

Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., making his first major effort in a big state outside his native South, was far behind in fourth place, edging only Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who made a minimal commitment to Illinois.

Simon’s First Victory

Simon, who had not won a single primary or caucus before Illinois, gained a double-barreled triumph in this contest, the first of the 1988 campaign in a major industrial state.

In addition to winning the popular vote in the so-called beauty contest, Simon also won the separate contest for delegates by an even larger margin. The delegates were chosen in what was in effect 22 different elections in each of the state’s congressional districts. Because Jackson’s strength was concentrated in three of those districts, he got a much smaller share of the delegates than of the popular vote.

With 78% of the precincts reporting, these were the results: Simon 478,315 or 41% (137 delegates), Jackson 385,779 or 33% (36 delegates), Dukakis 192,810 or 17% (0 delegates), Gore 59,789 or 5% (0), Gephardt 25,712 or 2% (0), others 18,465 or 2% (0).

The results of both the popular vote and delegate contests represented a clear setback to Dukakis. The governor, who blamed his showing on the home-state support for Jackson and Simon, maintained: “Our finish, I think, was a respectable one, under the circumstances. We’re not going to win them all. We’ll take a second or a third from time to time.”

Nevertheless, Dukakis left here empty-handed after spending several hundred thousand dollars and devoting nearly a week to trying to build on the momentum he had gained from his victory in the New Hampshire primary and his successes in the Super Tuesday contests March 8.

The returns amounted to an even bigger rebuff for Gore, who had spent about $250,000 in the state hoping to demonstrate that his appeal extended beyond Dixie.

‘More Wide Open’

“You have the race as a whole even more wide open now than it was before,” Gore said Tuesday night. He contended that he will have about 40% of the delegates by the close of the primary calendar and added that he would “use that critical mass” to convert to his cause the other delegates needed for a majority.

The damage done here to both Dukakis and Gore, who had appeared to be the strongest white candidates after Super Tuesday, was bound to increase concern among party leaders. Many are worried that the nomination race, which reaches a climax with primaries in California and New Jersey on June 7, will produce a deadlock portending controversy and divisiveness rather than any clear choice.

Such a deadlock--which could result in a brokered convention in July--is exactly what Simon predicted during the campaign here in asking for support against Dukakis.

Backers Frustrated

Even supporters of Jackson, who until now seemed the one Democratic candidate capable of generating enthusiasm, had to be somewhat frustrated with the outcome in the candidate’s own state.

Jackson found reason for satisfaction in his popular-vote totals, which pushed him ahead of Dukakis in that category nationally. “Illinois has done well today by both of its favorite sons,” he said. Seeking to explain his finishing behind the state’s resolutely uncharismatic junior senator, he said: “I focused on 22 states and Simon focused on one state.”

But the fact remained that Jackson and his strategists had hoped for a first-place finish here and had apparently fallen short of that goal because Jackson was unable to expand his white support beyond the roughly 10% he has gained elsewhere.

On the other hand, this was a bright day for Simon and the traditional Democratic liberals who have supported him. His success not only kept him in the race--Simon had said before the vote that he would drop out unless he finished first in both the popular vote and delegate contests--but it also gave him impetus to go on to the next delegate contests.

Simon will make a reconnaissance trip today to Michigan, which holds its caucuses on March 26, but he is more likely to make a major effort in the Wisconsin primary April 5.

The fact that in Wisconsin Simon will once again be fighting on the friendly terrain of the Midwest offered hope to his supporters that after that contest he could become a significant factor in the race.

So confident was Simon of the outcome here on Tuesday that, as he told a cheering crowd of supporters in a hotel ballroom, he began typing out his victory statement while the returns were still coming in.

“This victory is one of the most gratifying in my years of public life,” he said, and then he went on to acknowledge the boost he had received from his home-state supporters. “The ancient god of Greek mythology Antilles received his strength by touching the ground,” he said. “I have renewed my strength by touching the ground of Illinois.

“My friends, I shall prevail.”

The stage was set for the Democratic clash in Illinois by the far-flung battle a week earlier in 20 states, most of them in the South, in what was termed Super Tuesday.

Dukakis, Gore and Jackson each scored significant victories on Super Tuesday--Dukakis winning Florida and Texas, Gore carrying four Southern states including his own and Jackson capturing five states in Dixie--and each hoped to exploit these successes in Illinois. But Dukakis and Gore had much tougher going here than Jackson.

Campaigning on his home turf, with a solid base of black voters in three Chicago congressional districts, Jackson could afford to take their support just about for granted and try to extend his reach elsewhere in the state and into the white community.

Some local politicians thought that Jackson might be handicapped here by the death of Mayor Harold Washington, who had been expected to help rally black support for him, and by Jackson’s unsuccessful attempt to intervene in the effort to pick Washington’s successor.

Another potential obstacle cited was that Jackson sometimes had been considered high-handed in his efforts to promote black involvement in the local business community, something that had antagonized many whites and some blacks too.

But these possible negatives seemed to have been largely offset by the momentum Jackson had generated on Super Tuesday and by the emotional force of his message--a combination of down-home pulpit morality with anti-corporate, anti-militarist rhetoric reminiscent of the New Left in its heyday in the 1960s.

And perhaps most practical and fundamental of the assets Jackson enjoyed was that here, as in every 1988 campaign battleground, blacks supported him almost universally while white support was fractured among several opponents.

Serious Problem

Thus Dukakis, who came here as the front-runner in the national campaign, faced a serious problem in the person of Simon, whom he had to compete against for roughly the same pool of white liberal voters.

Simon began the Illinois campaign with his candidacy in serious trouble. Seemingly on the verge of dropping out of the race, he was pressured to hang in by state party officials whose names were on the ballot as his convention delegate candidates.

In response, he decided to make another major effort in his native state. And with support from local party activists, Simon made a formidable foe and his candidacy forced a shift in tactics by Dukakis.

On Super Tuesday, Dukakis had depended heavily on negative ads to all but destroy Gephardt’s candidacy. Reluctant to attack Simon on personal grounds here, lest such tactics backfire, Dukakis instead launched an attack on Simon’s strategy that was based on the argument that since no Democratic candidate could win a majority of delegates in the primaries and caucuses, Illinois voters should make Simon their spokesman at what he claimed would almost certainly be a deadlocked convention.

Dukakis attacked this position with a widely shown commercial that warned voters that “some people” wanted them to turn over the power to party leaders to pick the next nominee at “a brokered convention” and urged them to vote for Dukakis instead.

And Dukakis made the same argument himself in almost every stump appearance, declaring: “This nomination is not going to be decided by six guys sitting in a back room.”

Simon counterattacked by claiming that, “The Dukakis game is to try and take votes away from me”--not so Dukakis could finish first, Simon contended, but so Jackson would finish first, thus eliminating Simon from the race.

While these two slugged it out, they ignored Gore, who was having plenty of trouble on his own. His threshold problem was that most people in the state were ignorant of his existence. Unlike Dukakis, who had campaigned intensively around the country, including neighboring Iowa, Gore had concentrated his time and energy on his native Dixie.

He was rewarded for this effort with his victories in the Super Tuesday primaries, but he paid a price for this strategy here in Illinois.

A more fundamental problem for Gore was finding a message that would effectively distinguish him from Dukakis. He contended continually that he was the candidate who was on the side of “working men and women,” implying that Dukakis was something of an elitist.

But his appeal to working-class voters, the same constituency Gephardt had tried to reach, seemed less than persuasive. In part, this was because unlike Gephardt, who has made tougher trade legislation the centerpiece of his candidacy, Gore had no program of specific measures designed to remedy working-class grievances.

As for Gephardt, who was the big loser on Super Tuesday, carrying only his own state of Missouri, he made only a token effort here, saving his resources for the Michigan caucuses.

THE ILLINOIS VOTE Republicans 8,749 of 11,724 precincts reporting--75%. 92 convention delegates at stake.

Vote Pct. Delegates Bush 339,461 55 63 Dole 223,039 36 19 Robertson 42,889 7 0 Others 16,919 3 0

Democrats 9,094 of 11,724 precincts reporting--78%. 173 convention delegates at stake.

Vote Pct. Delegates Simon 478,315 41 137 Jackson 385,779 33 36 Dukakis 192,810 17 0 Gore 59,789 5 0 Gephardt 25,712 2 0 Others 18,465 2 0

For both parties, the statewide vote for presidential candidates was a nonbinding “beauty contest” with no bearing on the allocation of delegates. Most of the delegates (82 Republican and 113 Democratic) were chosen in a separate vote in each of the state’s 22 congressional districts, where they were listed by name on the ballot along with the candidate they supported. The remaining 10 GOP delegates will be uncommitted at-large delegates. The remaining 60 Democratic delegates, representing the state at large, will be allocated to presidential candidates in proportion to the outcome of the congressional-district delegate tally.