 | This article includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(June 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Illinois Solidarity Party | |
|---|---|
| Founder | Adlai Stevenson III |
| Founded | 1986; 40 years ago (1986) |
| Dissolved | 1992; 34 years ago (1992) |
| Headquarters | Chicago,Illinois |
| Presidential candidate | Lenora Fulani (1988, 1992) |
| Ideology | Anti-LaRouche movement Liberalism |
TheIllinois Solidarity Party was an Americanpolitical party in thestate ofIllinois. It was named afterLech Wałęsa'sSolidarity movement inPoland, which was then widely admired in Illinois because of its very largePolish-American population, especially aroundChicago.
The party was founded in 1986 by SenatorAdlai Stevenson III in reaction to theDemocratic Party's nomination of two followers ofLyndon LaRouche in the race for high state offices:Mark Fairchild, who was running forLieutenant Governor, andJanice Hart, who was running forIllinois Secretary of State. Stevenson, a Democratic candidate forIllinois Governor, did not want to run alongside anybody associated with LaRouche's organization.
There are a number of explanations as to how LaRouche's followers became nominees. Some believe that it simply boiled down to the names of the LaRouche candidates, which sounded less "ethnic" than those of their opponents,George E. Sangmeister andAurelia Pucinski. Hart's victory over Pucinski was likely helped by a voter reaction to Pucinski, whose father,Roman Pucinski, was a prominent opponent of Chicago MayorHarold Washington.
Many criticized the Democrats for their failure to inform voters exactly who the candidates were, which allowed campaigning efforts in rural areas to be very effective. "LaRouche Democrats" claimed that the Democratic Party, especially ChairmanCharles Manatt, was under the influence of the Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev. LaRouche maintained that the population voted for his followers to take the party back from elitist bankers.
In any case, most analysts, including Stevenson himself, agreed that the whole ordeal confused voters and helped theRepublican Party'sJames R. Thompson win the election.
The "Solidarity Democrats" and the LaRouche supporters blamed one another for the subsequent years of Republican control in Illinois state government. Stevenson left politics and went on to become aninvestment banker.
The Solidarity Party continued to exist, completely unaffiliated with Stevenson, after the 1986 incident. In the1987 Chicago mayoral election,Edward Vrdolyak ran for Mayor of Chicago on the Illinois Solidarity Party ticket, which provided the major opposition to incumbentHarold Washington, Chicago's first African-American mayor, losing to Washington by a final tally of 53%–43%.
Its continued existence afterward made it an easy target for other small political parties to"take over" whenever necessary. One such group was theNew Alliance Party (NAP), which was largely unknown in Illinois but still managed to run some of its candidates for local offices. The NAP founderLenora Fulani campaigned as a Solidarity Partypresidential candidate in 1988 and 1992.
