It was the first major poll conducted after Blagojevich admitted last week he once experimented with marijuana. The results indicate the issue isn't a big one with voters.

The poll also found that Democratic state Sen. Lisa Madigan and Republican prosecutor Joe Birkett are virtually tied in their race for attorney general. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, meanwhile, is leading comfortably over his Republican challenger, state Rep. Jim Durkin. The statewide telephone poll of 501 likely Illinois voters was conducted Wednesday and Thursday. It showed Blagojevich, a congressman from Chicago, leading 51 percent to 32 percent over Ryan, currently Illinois' attorney general. The poll has a margin for error of 4.5 percentage points.

"This is Blagojevich's to lose," said John Zogby, whose company, Zogby International of Utica, N.Y., conducted the poll for the Post-Dispatch. "This
is the Democrats' to lose. The Republican Party has been hurt" by aprotracted scandal under incumbent Gov. George Ryan.

The governor's race so far has been mostly about which candidate can roll back the perception of corruption in Illinois government.

Blagojevich has tried to tie Jim Ryan to Gov. Ryan (they are not related), who isn't running for re-election because of a bribes-for-licenses scandal among his former state employees. Jim Ryan has reminded voters of Blagojevich's connections to Chicago's Democratic machine and Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan, Lisa Madigan's father, who is struggling with his own political scandal.

Blagojevich's 19-point lead follows a series of recent media polls showing him ahead.

"For three months, there have been very, very consistent polls showing (Blagojevich) with leads in the teens," Chicago political consultant Don Rose said last week. "When you've got a pattern like that in mid-September . . . it becomes hard to break."

Rose speculated that three factors are responsible: ideological splits within the party, voter bitterness over the scandal involving Gov. Ryan, and a united Democratic Party.

The latest poll was conducted just after Blagojevich acknowledged last Monday that he had smoked marijuana twice while he was "college age."

Zogby said he wasn't surprised that the marijuana revelation apparently didn't hurt Blagojevich. "Voters are pretty libertarian when it comes to marijuana," unlike other illegal drugs, he said.

Name confusion Illinois' election this year is laced with potential name-confusion issues for voters:

* Jim Ryan has been struggling throughout the campaign to remind voters that he isn't Gov. George Ryan and isn't related to him. Jim Ryan's strategy has included a campaign logo in which the "Jim" is far larger than the "Ryan."

* In the attorney general's race, Lisa Madigan has been trying to distance herself from her father. Michael Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House, has been accused by critics of using state workers to help the campaigns of fellow Democrats. That's put Lisa Madigan in the position of calling for an investigation into the political dealings of her father's office.

* In the Durbin-Durkin race for the Senate, some poll respondents who identified themselves as Democrats nonetheless listed Durkin, the Republican challenger, as their choice. At least one of those respondents, interviewed last week, indicated he thought Durkin was the Democratic incumbent.

Jim Ryan's campaign has blamed name confusion for at least part of his polling problems. The latest Zogby poll didn't test for name confusion, but a Copley News Service poll published last week did. That poll showed an 11-point lead for Blagojevich - but also found that his lead dropped to 5 points after a follow-up question which clarified that Jim Ryan isn't related to George Ryan.

Still, the two Ryans are both Republicans and were political allies until friction arose earlier this year. That, as much as name confusion, could be hurting Jim Ryan.

"This guy (Jim Ryan) is no different than the Ryan we have now," said poll respondent Joe Stolte of Blue Mound, Ill., a registered Republican who plans to vote for Blagojevich this year. "I think (Jim Ryan) is going to follow in the footsteps of the (incumbent) who's there already. Look at the (state budget) deficit we're in. It's time for a change."

As in other recent polls, the results indicate Blagojevich's support is coming not only from the Democratic stronghold of Chicago, but also from traditionally Republican areas.

Most daunting for Ryan is the fact that Blagojevich is running even in the Chicago suburbs (41.4 percent vs. 38.7 percent), where Republicans traditionally trounce Democrats.

Other racesIn the race for attorney general, Birkett polled ahead of Lisa Madigan 44.5 percent to 39 percent. The poll's error margin of 4.5 per centage points means the race is essentially a tie. This is consistent with a different poll last week that showed the two candidates neck and neck.

The race has been especially contentious, with Birkett accusing Madigan of leaning on her father's clout and Madigan trying to tie Birkett to the unpopular incumbent Republican administration. Birkett is now the DuPage County state's attorney.

Madigan has perhaps been hurt by recent media investigations of her father, including one that found he had steered $300,000 from the state's deficit budget to fund a horse show run by an old college friend.

"I just don't like her at all," said Jan Potter of Rockford, a Blagojevich and Durbin supporter who is crossing over to back Birkett in the attorney general's race. "I guess some of it has to do with her father."

In the race for the U.S. Senate, incumbent Democrat Durbin is leading Republican challenger Durkin 53.5 percent to 28.8 percent.

Durbin has been helped by a relatively strong job-performance rating. The Zogby poll shows 51.6 percent of respondents rate Durbin's performance in his first term as "excellent" or "good"; 25.1 percent rate it as "fair"; and just 6.9 percent assess it as "poor."

Publication: Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau
Date: September 22, 2002
Author: Kevin Mcdermott

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