Post-Senate Political Career
Stevenson ran for Governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986, losing both elections to James R. Thompson. In 1982 the initial vote count showed Stevenson winning; however, the final official count showed him losing by 1/7 of one percent. Stevenson promptly petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for a recount and presented evidence of widespread election irregularities, including evidence of a failed punch card system for tabulation of votes (later to become infamous in the presidential election of 2000). Three days before the gubernatorial inauguration, the Court, by a one vote margin, denied the recount, asserting that the Illinois recount statute was unconstitutional.
In the 1986 campaign for Governor, in a fluke, two followers of Lyndon LaRouche won the Democratic Party primary nominations for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. Stevenson objected to their platform and refused to appear on the same ticket. Instead, he organized the Solidarity Party to provide an alternate slate for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, which was duly endorsed by the regular Democratic organization. Persuading Democrats to vote a regular Democratic ticket and then cross over to also vote for the Solidarity candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor and Secretary of State was doomed to fail; however, Stevenson and the candidate for Lieutenant Governor position, Mike Howlett, won 40% of the vote.
Read more about this topic: Adlai Stevenson III
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“... by and large, wife-changing and high office are not compatible. This inequity accounts for the many dull women in Washington and is the cause of much smug complacency on the distaff side of political marriages.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)