Catholic wins: the Illinois Senate race

Commonweal, Oct 11, 1996 by Gregory R. Beabout

For the first time in its history, the state of Illinois is going to elect a Catholic to the United States Senate. Paul Simon's seat has opened. Will it be filled by Dick Durbin, a fifty-one-year-old liberal from Springfield, or Al Salvi, a thirty-six-year-old conservative from Waucanda, north of Chicago? Though both are Catholic, they disagree on almost all of the major policy questions of the day. They clash not only on abortion but on the economy and the role of the federal government.

The American political map has so changed that there are now more than twice as many Catholics in Congress as adherents of any other religion. Yet at the same time that Catholics are positioned to have a significant impact on political life, a tension has arisen within Catholicism that parallels the political divide in American politics. The Illinois senate race is a textbook model of those tensions and divides.

Democratic candidate Dick Durbin grew up in East Saint Louis and is the product of nineteen years of Catholic education. He entered the world of Washington politics while a senior at Georgetown (two years ahead of Bill Clinton) a an aide in the office of Senator Paul Douglas (D-Ill.) Then, after working for Paul Simon in Illinois, he eventually won a seat in the U.S. House where he has served seven term representing what was once Abraham Lincoln's district Durbin is the heir apparent to his mentors, Simon and Douglas. From Durbin's Catholic, working-class neighborhood he developed political sympathies that were pro-worker, seeing himself as a defender of the poor and the working class, a protector of the weak and the elderly.

Durbin was influenced not only by Douglas and Simon, but also by the 1960 presidential race. Durbin claims "the reason John Kennedy was able to become the first Catholic president was that he convinced enough American voters that he would make decisions independent of the doctrinal requirements of the Catholic church." This emphasis on personal independence is seen as a strength by some, but not a few of Durbin's constituents have been critical of his voting record on abortion. He worries that some Catholic voters now have a standard of orthodoxy that would have disqualified Kennedy.

Republican candidate Al Salvi is almost a generation younger than Durbin. Like Durbin, Salvi was educated at Catholic schools, graduating from Notre Dame in 1981. Salvi grew up in a family of Catholic Democrats, and Salvi's father always voted Democratic until IN@ when he registered Republican so that he could vote for his son in the primary.

The younger Salvi became a Republican while he was in law school at the University of Illinois. He identifies himself as both a social and fiscal conservative. As the Democratic party moved to the left during the '70s and ]80s, Salvi began to feel uncomfortable with the language of choice that dominated the political outlook of many of his fellow Democrats. When Ronald Reagan spoke on campus, Salvi realized he had much more in common with the Republicans than with the Democrats. It was primarily the social issues that attracted Salvi to Reagan: the emphasis on family, hard work, and Reagan's prolife stand. But Salvi was also developing sympathies with the Republicans on economic issues: lower taxes, a balanced budget, and reform of federal welfare programs.

Salvi was elected twice to the Illinois House, but he was a virtual unknown before theft spring primaries. The Illinois Republican leaders backed Lt. Governor Robert Kustra, a prochoice Catholic, and Salvi trailed by more than 20 points through most of the campaign. Local pundits painted him as an unknown, conservative outsider. His victory caught many by surprise. Though he ran an aggressive television campaign in Chicago that emphasized lower taxes, Salvi had surprisingly strong grassroots support outside the Chicago television market, especially downstate among church groups attracted to his prolife themes.

On abortion, Durbin and Salvi silt along party lines. When Durbin was first elected to Congress in 1982, he ran as a pro-life Democrat, but his position has changed over the years and he now identifies himself as prochoice. A proponent the partial-birth abortion procedure, he defends it with the language of choice. Durbin insists that he privately agrees with the Catholic church on abortion, but he adds that "from a public policy viewpoint, I believe that this is a moral decision that should be made by individuals." In these matters the sounds more like John Rawls than John Paul II. In contrast, Salvi has been a defender of the right-to-life position, claiming that the U.S. Senate does not have an articulate spokesperson who can publicly make the civil rights argument on behalf of the unborn; he aspires to that role.

The candidates also differ on economic issues. Here, the disparity follows a tension within the two great principles of Catholic social teaching@ solidarity and subsidiarity. The principle of solidarity says that all humans are part of a common family, and that society has a responsibility to uphold the dignity of every human being. The principle of subsidiarity states that social action should always be carried out at the smallest level appropriate to the issue. Social action is best carried out in local groups rather than through large bureacracies. The principle of subsidiarity places a strong emphasis on mediating social structures (family, neighborhood, voluntary associations, the church) rather than reducing politics to individual rights guaranteed by the state.