Gov, County Board fights in last round

Fearing loss of votes, GOP rips Greens' candidate

Less than 48 hours before Election Day, Illinois Republicans went after Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney on Sunday, accusing him of hiding his past as a Socialist and alerting voters of the "shocking revelation."

Obviously worried that the third-party candidate would pull enough votes to hurt GOP gubernatorial challenger Judy Baar Topinka, state Republican Chairman Andy McKenna Jr. called a news conference to publicize a newspaper report about Whitney's past.

"Voters need to know the extreme views of Whitney when they step into that voting booth on Tuesday," McKenna said.

Whitney insisted he never hid his past, but admitted he didn't brag about it, either.

"I have not volunteered it -- I don't want to shoot myself in the foot," he told reporters outside a South Side church. "But when people have asked me, I've answered the question."

The civil rights lawyer said he joined the Socialist Labor Party in California in the late 1970s, writing for its newspaper and briefly serving as its editor, but he said he became disenchanted with the philosophy and left the party in 1992, a year before he moved to Downstate Carbondale.

"I have not been a Socialist for over 14 years," he said. "When I got out of college in the '70s, there were a lot of radical political groups around, and because of my devotion to working people, I was initially attracted to the socialist ideology."

Whitney said he rejected socialism because he became convinced workers need "both a healthy public sector and healthy private sector."

He said his positions in the governor's race -- funding education by raising the income tax and lowering local property taxes, universal health care and cleaning up corruption -- are "mainstream" positions.

"I'm the one that's running on the mainstream," he said. "Putting a casino in Chicago? Now that's a kooky idea, OK?"

But even as McKenna denounced Whitney's views, Topinka, who proposed a Chicago casino, sought to downplay the third party's significance.

"I don't think that's particularly mainstream Illinois," she said of Whitney's past. "But, you know, again, I'd have to stress, I don't think he's really been a big issue here. It's between Rod Blagojevich and me.

"If you like what Rod's doing, fine," she said outside Old St. Patrick's Catholic Church on the Near West Side. "But I think most people are fed up."

Gov. Blagojevich spent the day visiting African-American churches on the South Side and in the south suburbs.

At the Democrat's first stop, he got a warm introduction from Bishop Arthur Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Brazier urged his huge congregation not to put much stock in newspaper articles about federal corruption probes of those close to the governor.

Blagojevich touted his fight to raise the minimum wage and pledged to move the state toward universal health care.

"It's the Golden Rule," he said. "We're doing unto others as I would have done unto me. We're making real progress in this state to improve the lives of people."

sfornek@suntimes.com