My 2002 campaign for the U. S. Congress

David Wilhelm was managing Rod Blagojevich’s is campaign for governor and invited me to some early events. I was impressed with the candidate. He was young, articulate, and successfully cultivated a Kennedy-like charisma. I contributed a thousand dollars, and when the Bush administration made a great hullabaloo about tax refunds for everyone, I took my $69 tax refund, scheduled lunch with Wilhelm, and jokingly endorsed it to the Blagojevich campaign. At the end of that lunch, as we were getting ready to leave, David said, "You should think about running for Congress."

"What?" I said. I was reaching the end of my first term as Dean and was far from sure I wanted to serve another term. I had been poking around, exploring about what else I might want to do. As soon as David asked the question, my mind flashed back to my 20s when I was determined to run for office.

After about 45 seconds I said, "That's a very interesting idea." David was surprised.

He explained more about Mark Kirk, the first-term incumbent in the 10th Congressional District of Illinois and gave me the names of key democratic political leaders in the 10th District. I went off to talk to them. 

Later in the fall, the Olympic Torch made a stop in the district at the Ravinia concert venue. All the elected officials were arrayed on the stage. Dan Pierce presided. He introduced Kirk perfunctorily. He then said, “And we also are honored to have in the audience Hank Perritt, the Dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law.” Kirk glared a tight smile at me and squirmed. My smile was genuine.

I reached out to Jan Schakowsky, who represented the ninth Congressional District, which included Evanston. In all these conversations, people were encouraging, but no one yet was ready to make a commitment. When we talked about the issues, everyone said that no one cared about international relations and foreign policy. I promised to talk about the issues that they did care about: healthcare, Social Security, and education, but said I also would talk about international relations and foreign policy because people should care about that. I also told everyone I was gay. Everyone said they didn't think that was a big problem.

I also started fundraising. It was very hard, at first. Jack Wing, the former CEO of a big trading firm in Chicago whom I knew well from his role as chairman of the business school oversight committee at IIT, initially promised to be my finance chairman, but began to back away after his friends told  him that Kirk was invulnerable.

I was very proud of myself for having made a dozen or so fundraising calls, but when I reported my achievement to Wilhelm, he said I needed to be making a couple of hundred a day. He was getting me invited to virtually every democratic fund raising event. At one of those meetings, he introduced me to David Rosen, who had been Hillary Clinton's fundraising chairman. Rosen and I talked, and he agreed to be my initial finance chairman—for a monthly fee—and set up two-hour blocks of time every afternoon for me to come to his office and make fundraising phone calls with one of his staff assistants. After the first couple hundred calls, it became easier to make them, although dialing for dollars never was my favorite activity. The principal limitation on productivity was getting new lists of names to call.

David Wilhelm also introduced me to the key people at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the “D-triple-C,” and before long I attended DCCC school for new candidates. The facts that I had Wilhelm and Rosen on my team and had already started aggressive fundraising turned heads in Washington, although lots of people there felt burned by the 2000 Gash campaign on which they spent a couple of million dollars and still lost.

The school was interesting and the subject matter was beneficial. At that point, I knew the least about fundraising. The fundraising expert reinforced Wilhelm's advice that raising money was the most important activity for new candidate. Television ads covering the Tenth District would cost $2 million or more; radio somewhat less. The cheapest was direct mail, and each mailing to a significant portion of the 650,000 potential voters would cost on the order of $30,000.

The lecturers in the training explained, with the aid of a bull's-eye diagram, that the people most likely contribute to a fresh candidate are those that had mentioned the candidate’s name within the previous month. Next most likely were those who already knew the candidates name, followed by those who hated the candidate’s opponent, followed by those passionate about one or more issues the candidate stood for, and at the outer ring, those who had contributed to other Democratic candidates. The briefing emphasize that as fundraising progressed, the most likely prospects were those who had already contributed to the particular candidate.

An early goal was to get to get the D-triple-C to "target" my race. Targeting means designating a campaign to receive priority attention. Resources are limited and they need to be focused. Targeting would trigger cascades of money from interest groups ideologically affiliated with the Democratic Party. David explained, and the D-triple-C staff members reiterated that I needed to raise $250,000 by the end of the calendar year. In the event, I had raised about $108,000 by the time the year-end report was due to the Federal Election Commission. As it turned out, the D-triple-C didn't really expect me to raise $250,000, and was quite impressed with what I had achieved. Our hopes for targeting grew.

I also began going to as many small contributor events as I could, one organized by Stu and his boss in the Piper-Rudnick law firm, my good friend Ron Plesser, in Washington; another involving the Villanova law faculty that former dean Steve Frankino organized at his home. I made the rounds to see as many of the heavy-hitter Democratic Party finance people in Chicago who would see me, and tried to make contact with others, especially in California, where my former student Peter Harter had promised enthusiastically and optimistically to help raise money

Some members of Congress have large balances in their campaign committee accounts but face little or no real opposition in the next reelection campaign. They are allowed to make contributions out of their funds to other candidates. In many cases that's how ambitious members of Congress consolidate their influence and power– by making substantial contributions, mostly to their incumbent colleagues. We all hope that Hillary Clinton might do this. David Rosen, of course, knew her and her staff well, and arranged for me to meet Senator Clinton when she was in Chicago on the fundraising mission, and I began conversations with her staff. Jan Schakowsky was also a logical target in this regard. Jan was charismatic, outspoken and exercised influence in the Democratic Party far beyond the borders of her district. I had regular conversations with her and kept up a running dialogue with her staff

On the morning of September 11, I was driving down the Kennedy Expressway for an early morning meeting at IIT, talking on my cell phone with one of Schakowsky’s staff members. Suddenly, he said, "Wait a minute. I've got to go. Something is happening."

He broke the connection, and I turned up the volume on the radio. An airplane reportedly had hit the World Trade Center in New York. At first, it was unclear whether it was a general aviation aircraft or something else. Everyone assumed it was a light plane. By the time I reached IIT, the fact that it was an airliner was verified, and the other tower had been hit, as well. Lew Collens, the president of  IIT had just stood up in front of a room of about 100 people to make his planned presentation, when someone passed him a note about another airplane hitting the Pentagon. Lew made some appropriate remarks and adjourned the meeting. I got in my car to head back to the law school, immediately receiving cell phone calls from Steve Sowle, the assistant dean in charge of student affairs. He said that students and parents had been calling in a panic, insisting that the law school be evacuated because if the Sears Tower were hit, it might fall over on the law school. I thought that was ridiculous and told Steve to stand fast until I got back.

When I got back, I huddled Dean's conference room with Steve, with my number two – associate dean Hal Krent, and with Dawn Rupcich, the strong and capable assistant dean for administration and finance. I invited all the faculty members who drifted by to come in and join us. In about fifteen minutes, I decided that we should not close the law school and flush people out on the streets, where public transportation was shut down and they would be more vulnerable. Having decided that, we crafted a short message to be put up on the school’s website and sent in a mass email to all the students and staff. Dawn showed me how to make an announcement over the public audio system that ran throughout the building. It was mainly intended for use by the fire department in the event of a fire emergency. I began by expressing our sympathy and shock for the victims, and then proceeded to announce briefly that the building was remaining open, but that everyone could make their own decisions about whether to stay or to go home.

At some point, a Chicago police patrolman rushed in and told the receptionist on the first floor we had to shut the building down. I went down and told him that we were not shutting the building down until and unless I had some communication with the watch commander or some other senior officer in the Chicago Police Department telling me to do that.

We were no attacks in Chicago, the Sears Tower did not fall on the law school, and things gradually became less frantic as the afternoon wore on. When I drove home at the end of the day, every overpass over the Kennedy and Eden’s Expressways had an American flag draped on it. Even now, 21 years later, thinking about my feelings then brings tears to my eyes and chokes me up as I talk about it.

The first thing I did when I got home was to go to my closet and find the 48-star American flag that I'd had since before I was a teenager and to hang it on our front porch.

I was very slow to realize the impact of the September 11 attacks would have on my campaign, impacts that turned out to be both favorable and unfavorable. For the moment, I was focused on how I was going to get to Washington the following week for the fundraising event that Stu and Ron had arranged. All the airlines were shut down and it wasn't clear that Amtrak was operating, so my only option was to drive. Stu and I had many conversations about the event and the logistics. There was some sentiment that maybe we should postpone or cancel it, but I was adamant to go forward.

My original message, expressed most frequently in a stump speech, pitched my campaign as being against the Bush administration. It seemed insensitive now to take a negative tone, so I pivoted off September 11 to talk about how the U.S. should react. People now were interested in international relations and foreign policy. One of my early supporters was a law student at the University of Chicago, and he arranged for me to write a lengthy article I wrote to be published in one of the school’s journals.

I made my formal declaration of candidacy in the Winnetka Community Center, where we managed to fill hundred-seat room. That all went well.

I  talked to Wilhelm once a week or so, either in person or on the phone. In one of those conversations I said something about my resume being stronger than Kirk’s. "No one cares about your resume," David said. "Why should they, if they're satisfied with the congressman they already have? They have a lot of other things to worry about, and this would not seem to be one of them.”

“So what do I do?" I asked

"The only thing you could do," David said "is to give them a reason not to be satisfied with the congressman they have. You have to go after him."

Shortly after that conversation, the New Trier Democratic Committee had its endorsement meeting, attended by several hundred Democratic loyalists. Each candidate had five minutes or so to make a presentation. It was already clear that I had no primary opposition and so I was going to get the end endorsement anyway – the executive committee was quite enthusiastic about me.

I used the opportunity to try to fire up the crowd with a new version of my stump speech, which began, "I'm Hank Perritt and I'm running against Mark Kirk. Mark would have everyone believe that he's a moderate Republican. He isn’t. He’s lapdog of the Republican Right, Tom Delay’s (Tom Delay was the hard-right and abrasive leader of the House Republicans) consistent lackey, who has voted against a woman's right to choose, voted against education reform, and who pretends to be a Navy pilot. He isn't."

The crowd loved it.

I had done a lot of research on Kirk since the first few hours after Wilhelm's suggestion. I discovered that he strutted around, talking about his service as a reserve officer in the United States Navy. The press regularly talked about his being a pilot. I noticed, however, that his many pictures taken in uniform didn't show gold wings pinned above his left pocket. All naval aviators, pilots and flight officers alike, have gold wings, and they always wear them when they are in uniform. Further research revealed that Kirk, when he was a 35-year-old staff member to then Congressman John Porter, had found out about a special Navy program that allowed congressional staff members to become commissioned officers after little or no training. The age cut off was 36. So Kirk scurried around, got himself commissioned as a lieutenant, and was issued a uniform, which he began to wear so frequently that he reportedly earned a rebuke from the Navy for appearing in uniform at political events. He had, apparently, persuaded the Navy to take him for rides on combat aircraft on sightseeing missions over Kosovo and the Middle East, and that's what enabled him to talk about flying missions over Kosovo.

He certainly was not a Navy pilot. In retrospect, I should have made more of this. I regularly used it in private conversations, but never tucked it into a speech. The problem was that we couldn't find any evidence that Kirk had ever explicitly claimed he was a Navy pilot; he simply implied it and didn't correct anyone else when they concluded that he was.

Except for a cavalier willingness to stretch the truth, Kirk was a decent guy, young, handsome in a slightly dweebish way, and he sure did know politics. He bragged about his role in everything Porter had done over his long service bring jobs to the district and to save the Great Lakes Naval Training Base from closing. He talked about how he been in the Pentagon, meeting with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld when the third airplane struck the building. It turned out he was there as one of a hundred or so members of Congress and staff members invited for routine briefly by the Secretary. He also had done an exemplary job of insinuating himself into the basic Democratic constituencies. About 10% of the population in the district was Jewish, and their level of political involvement made them influential far beyond the raw numbers. The Jewish Federation, a prominent Jewish charitable organization in Chicagoland virtually endorsed him, despite their obligation as a 501(c)(3) organization to stay out of partisan politics. I attended an enormous event at a Northbrook school put together by the Jewish Federation for Kirk. In all but name it was a campaign rally.

When we tried to schedule appearances at synagogues in the district, we discovered that Kirk had persuaded them to lock me out.