Governors: Return of Two Favorite Sons

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In Illinois and Arkansas, two onetime Democratic stars attempt comebacks in gubernatorial races. In Massachusetts and Colorado, ideological differences raise sparks in two House contests. For the duration of the campaign, TIME will provide weekly reports on races for the House, Senate and Governors 'mansions that are important both for the personalities involved and for their refractions of national political trends.

Adlai III, Part 2

He was certainly trying. Mingling with 400 friends and neighbors who gathered on his Illinois farm for a beer-and-bratwurst fund-raising picnic, he wore a blue denim jacket and red Funk Seeds cap. In that down-home outfit, it was almost possible to forget that former Senator Adlai Stevenson III, 51, is a patrician intellectual and an unarousing public presence. Nonetheless, the crowd gave him a rousing sendoff, erupting with whoops and whistles when the local Democratic chairman asked, "Is Ad going to win?" Candidate Stevenson, meanwhile, just smiled, looking more embarrassed than flattered by the hoopla.

Is Ad going to win in his race against two-term Governor James Thompson? The Republican incumbent dropped behind Stevenson in the spring; a Chicago Tribune survey published last week puts Thompson ahead once again, 48% to 40%. It is the toughest race ever for two candidates who harbor presidential ambitions.

Stevenson, who decided in 1979 not to seek a third Senate term, mainly pounds away at one potent issue: the flaccid economy. In a detailed, 200-page campaign exegesis, he proposes luring pension-fund investments to Illinois and encouraging high-tech industries. During a debate earlier this month that rapidly turned acrimonious, he accused Thompson of presiding over the worst economic decline in the U.S., citing the state's 12.2% unemployment rate and soaring debt. Stevenson, who later accused the Governor of "subterfuge and deception" to conceal his failures, tried to justify the snappish tone: "I'm portrayed as bland and dull. As a tactical matter, I thought I ought to take him apart."

Their disparate styles figure prominently in a campaign between two political moderates. The Governor, 46, seems to be much that Stevenson is not: big and bluff, and happy to chat with anyone. Thompson, with $4 million in campaign funds (to $1.3 million for Stevenson), worked the crowd at Chicago's Labor Day Parade, wearing a hard hat and a Chicago Bulls windbreaker. "We had 4,000 Thompson balloons," he said. "We gave out stickers to everyone. There were only four Adlai hats and two pins—and Adlai didn't see them because he spent the day with his head down, talking to reporters."

Chicago voters in particular remember Thompson's career there as a crusading U.S. Attorney who won 300 political-corruption convictions. But "Mr. Clean" seemed a bit besmirched earlier this year, after disclosures that as Governor he had accepted expensive gifts from people doing business with the state. Stevenson has declined to harp on that affair. Such tempting distractions from his economic analyses, he feels, merely feed the media's "appetite for the sensational."

Southern star rising again