Illinois: True to Form

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When Charles Harting Percy sets out to do something, he doesn't kid around. His skyrocket rise has become folklore in the business world: at 16, he was a clerk in Chicago's camera-making Bell & Howell Co.; at 23, a board member; at 29, president. In all this, of course, he had to have a bit of luck.

When Chuck Percy, now 44, announced last summer that he would seek the Republican nomination for Governor of Illinois, it was a safe bet that he would go after it furiously. He did. Hitting the campaign trail in a bus dubbed the "Chuckwagon," which was chuck-full with Percy, his wife and five kids and an eight-piece band, he rolled into every corner of the state, showed up at no less than 43 county fairs to pump acres of hands, spent 18-hour days plugging his candidacy.

But for all his energetic activities, Percy figured to run a poor second in the April 14 Illinois Republican primary against Secretary of State Charles Carpentier, 67. One of his problems was that he looked pretty liberal to Illinois' Goldwater Republicans, no matter how hard he tried to show that he didn't dislike Barry. Then, last week, there came that bit of Percy luck. Carpentier withdrew from the contest on account of illness. Suffering from what he thought was an old stomach ailment, Carpentier entered a hospital, was told that he had had a mild heart attack. Even though State Treasurer William Scott, 37, then jumped into the race, Chuck Percy now was clearly running well ahead.