Ideological showdown - Republican Al Salvi, Illinois candidate for US Senate

National Review, Oct 14, 1996 by Ramesh Ponnuru

We're cruising through downstate Illinois in Al Salvi's RV -- he calls it a "Winnebago" -- peppering the Republican Senate candidate with questions about his stands on campaign-finance reform, student loans, welfare. But Nick Salvi, an elfin redhead with what his father describes as "a nonserious neurological disorder," has another agenda: he keeps interrupting the interview to demonstrate his age by giving me a "high five," or to show off a crayon drawing of a dinosaur. (It's rather abstract, to put it charitably, but Mr. Salvi beams proudly nonetheless). Up front, a reporter is trying to interview Kathy Salvi while she breast-feeds her baby.

Salvi says he's bringing his family on the campaign trail to keep it together; cynics say he's using the kids to project his "family values." I suspect he's doing both. When he misidentifies a son at a campaign stop in Farmer City, it's a reflection of his zest for politics but also the understandable confusion of a father of five. (The kids range from three months to seven years old.) But for the kids, Salvi might be mistaken for one himself. With his boyish, slightly nerdy good looks, he's 36 going on 15.

One might not guess from his easygoing manner that he's in the ideological showdown of the year. "I think it's the top race in the country," says Phyllis Schlafly. "I'm putting more effort into it than the Presidency." Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), who went to the same Catholic high school as Salvi, agrees with Mrs. Schlafly: "It's my number one priority too."

Salvi has already pulled off the year's biggest primary upset, defeating the party establishment's anointed candidate. The transition from primary to general-election campaign was a little rocky. It took time for the party to unify -- but eventually it did, thanks in no small part to the leadership of moderate Republican Gov. Jim Edgar. Early fund-raising and staffing problems have been resolved, and the national party has been fairly supportive.

The price of establishment support has been a certain blunting of the campaign's cutting edge. Salvi visibly chafes at some of the advice he gets from Washington. He answers questions, instead of sticking to his script by evading them. He cracks impolitic jokes: he tells a Republican rally in Bloomington that he hopes Ted Kennedy isn't driving us across that "bridge to the future." He's irreverent, sometimes a bit too much so. He can be a handler's nightmare: a son in his right arm, he reaches out with his left to a supporter and says, good-naturedly, "You mind if I give you that Bob Dole handshake?" An astounded reporter asks, "Doesn't he realize how that'll play?" His press secretary just rolls his eyes.

Since joining the state legislature in 1992, Salvi has compiled a solid conservative record. "He picked up a lot of hot pokers and was fearless," says conservative Chicago Tribune columnist Thomas Roeser. The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank not known for squishiness, is giving Salvi its Liberty Prize this year. He led a successful fight to knock down barriers to transracial adoption. His stump speech is a supply-side paean to the tax cuts of JFK and Reagan; he's for the flat tax and against estate and inheritance taxes (a popular stand among farmers). His rhetoric sometimes gets a bit overheated on these points: "Will there be a free market for you?" he asks the high-school students assembled at the Mt. Pulaski courthouse.

He's for school choice. And against race and gender preferences: "If you brought the fence in ten feet every time Hank Aaron came to bat, he wouldn't be the home-run king." Gun control? "I've never understood how liberals think the way to deal with crime is to disarm citizens." He'd prefer to stiffen sentences for the use of firearms to commit crimes. There are inevitably nits to pick. Salvi endorsed the minimum-wage hike in what one hopes was an act of political expedience. Only a die-hard free-trade purist (like myself) would find Salvi's position on trade -- against restrictions, but in favor of driving a harder bargain with other nations -- at all objectionable. On Medicare, Salvi takes Steve Forbes's tack: instead of directly controlling spending levels, he would introduce medical savings accounts in the hope that market forces would cut costs.

The Democratic nominee for senator, Rep. Richard Durbin, is, like Salvi, a trial lawyer ("So either way, you lose!" cracks Salvi) and a Catholic. Durbin doesn't have the well-defined ideological profile Salvi does. "It's like you take a picture of him and it doesn't come out," says Roeser. Salvi is trying to fill in the blanks with the words, "Big-spendin', big-taxin', pay-grabbin' liberal congressman." And in truth, Durbin is fully as liberal as Salvi is conservative. He supported the Human Life Amendment when he entered Congress, but now votes to keep even partial-birth abortions legal. He unexpectedly flew back to D.C. just to vote to uphold President Clinton's veto of the ban -- a slap in the face of Chicago's Cardinal Bernadin, who has led the fight against this brutal practice.