After
losing five state Senate seats and ending up on the wrong end of a veto proof
majority, there's bound to be a lot of second guessing and finger pointing. But
Senate Republican Leader Frank Watson probably did himself no favors by going
to Europe for ten days just a month before the November election.
Watson's
spokesperson, Patti Schuh, did her level best to tamp down this story last
week, and she made a few good points. Watson, she stressed, called in every day
from Europe to check up on things, much as he would have done if he had been in
his Decatur or Greenville district offices. "He was in constant
communication by telephone, by e-mail."
Watson,
Schuh said, is "the head of the campaign committee, not the head of the
any particular campaign... He doesn't micromanage every decision." There
was, she said, "never any lack of communication."
Schuh
claimed that Leader Watson was attending a National Conference of State
Legislatures event in Italy with NCSL President and fellow state Senator Steve
Rauschenberger. Schuh said last week that her boss was out of the country for
"ten days or so."
Word
of the trip has been rumored for weeks, but some of Watson's members apparently
didn't know for sure about the out-of-country experience before voting to reelect
him as Senate GOP Leader during the second week of the fall veto session.
Watson faced no opposition in that race and was unanimously reelected.
Schuh
said she was "positive" that a caucus leader leaving the state so
soon before an election has "happened before," but spokespersons for
the other legislative leaders said they could not think of a time when it has
occurred. One high level staffer, who asked not to be named because of the
sensitivity of the matter, said his boss "felt guilty about taking a day
off" during the campaign season. But Schuh stressed this wasn't actually a
vacation.
Some
lobbyists and former staff members have been quietly grumbling about the trip
since they first heard about it, but most of them have conceded that it probably
didn't make a lot of difference in the election's outcome.
Watson's
organization was swamped by a national Democratic wave in a year when national
issues prevailed and the top of his Republican Party's state ticket was blown
out of the water. His direct mail program was inferior to the Senate Democratic
program, his candidates weren't as strong as the other side's, his polling was
deficient (Watson was reportedly confident until the very end that former GOP
Sen. Judy Myers would win handily in her Champaign-Danville district, but she
lost) and he got outspent by Senate President Emil Jones, who pulled out all
the fundraising stops.
Schuh
pointed out that Watson had visited every one of the targeted districts at
least once during the campaign, something that not every caucus leader does.
House Speaker Michael Madigan, for instance, is not exactly known for getting
out and about in the hinterlands. "Frank makes the rounds," Schuh
stressed. Before he left for Europe, she noted, Watson transferred "over a
million dollars" from his personal campaign fund to the Senate
Republican's campaign committee.
Still,
I've talked to some of Watson's members who are just furious about his trip.
What bothers them the most is that they and their volunteers were in some of
the more hotly contested districts walking precincts and doing other work while
Watson was in Europe. Important meetings or not, a legislative leader's top job
- perhaps his only job - during campaign season is making sure his caucus does
well at the polls.
So,
even if he ran all his traps before he left and checked in every day, Watson
nevertheless left the field of battle, and that fact has most definitely
rankled some of his members. If he was in one of his Downstate offices and
crisis struck, he could have been in Springfield or in the district in question
within a few hours at most. He couldn't have done that from Europe.
Considering
all the backstage fussing about this right now, I doubt Watson will ever leave
the country again a month before an election.
-30-
Rich
Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com