7/28/17
Becky
Anderson Wilkins, a Naperville City Council member and the long-time owner of
the venerable Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, Downers Grove, and LaGrange,
has decided to run in the Democratic primary for the 6th District
Congressional seat in Illinois.
Yours
truly would very much like to support Becky in her race for a number of reasons. The Quinn and Wilkins families have been
friends for years. Given where I grew
up and the many years I have been observing politics, I have come around to the
idea that, in politics, friendship means a heck of a lot more than
ideology. Most politicians, and just
about every successful politician (See the now seminal POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL PRAGMATISM: SO A DRUNK WALKS INTO A BAR AND STARTSCRITICIZING THE CROWD FOR DRINKING… (5/19/17)), treats ideology like a Kleenex,
i.e., something to be used briefly to achieve a necessary end and then quickly and
unceremoniously discarded.
Further, Becky was very helpful to
me when I first wrote my two books, The Chairman and The Chairman’sChallenge. Very few things in life are
as important as returning favors. So,
given that Becky is a friend to whom I owe (though she would not use the term “owe”
in this context) a favor or two, I would very much like to support her. But I can’t for a number of reasons.
First, the ideological gulf between
us is just too wide, so wide that it transcends the relative importance of
ideology and friendship. However, my
not being able to support Becky for ideological reasons is probably reason
enough for any Democrat to support her.
Second, even if I were to transcend
the vast ideological divide between us, I would not support Becky’s campaign
financially because I have not given money to politicians or political
campaigns since 1998, when I sent a (almost literally) few bucks to the
campaign of Peter Fitzgerald for Senate.
While there have been plenty of candidates I could have supported since,
though none as worthy as Mr. Fitzgerald, I have decided as a matter of
principle that it is not my responsibility to finance the lifelong ego trips
politicians call careers; just about any charitable cause is more worthy than the
campaign of even the most worthy politician.
Mr. Fitzgerald, by the way, did not disappoint his supporters; he served
honorably and then, after one memorable term, returned to real life rather than
squander his family’s money on what probably would have been a quixotic attempt
at re-election, but I digress.
Third, even if I could vote my
friendship rather than my ideology, I haven’t taken a Democratic primary ballot
since 1975, when I voted for the late, great Richard J. Daley for mayor of
Chicago and for the briefly insurgent Jerry Joyce for alderman of the 19th
Ward. At this point in my life, I’m not
about to change my habit of refraining from taking a Democratic ballot,
especially in DuPage County.
So, no, I won’t be supporting my
friend Becky Anderson Wilkins for Congress, but every Democrat should. And, no, I’m not engaging in the old
practice of undermining the opposing party by supporting its weakest candidate;
if I were a Democrat and wanted to achieve what now just might be possible,
i.e., beating Peter Roskam in the 6th District, I would whole-heartedly
support Becky for Congress for a number of reasons.
Ideological agreement is not the
main reason Dems should support Becky.
Indeed, it is hard to pin down Becky on the finer points of ideology,
other than that she is a liberal Democrat, and I certainly don’t know much
about what she thinks; throughout my life, I have assiduously followed the
axiom that one should not extensively discuss ideology with friends one would like
to keep who share opinions widely divergent from one’s own. From the rhetoric that Becky has released in
her initial foray in the campaign, talk of “rip(ping) health care away from
millions of people,” “putting our children and grandchildren’s futures at risk,”
and the like, one would get the impression that Mrs. Wilkins hails from the
Sanders/Warren wing of the party, which, given the general mood among more
fervent Democrats, should help her in the primary. However, the very difficulty of pinning her
down philosophically enhances Becky’s viability in a general election against Peter
Roskam.
The main reasons the Democrats
should support Becky Anderson Wilkins, however, lies in her background. She is not some wooly-headed academic (says
the guy who, late in his career, has become something of an academic, though a decidedly
not wooly-headed one, certainly not literally), a “community organizer,” or,
saints preserve us, an ACLU lawyer.
Becky is a very successful businessperson who has run a business that is
virtually synonymous with Naperville.
She can’t be accused of “never having met a payroll” or “never having
signed a payroll check” by Republican ideologues who have themselves done
neither. For what it’s worth, Becky’s
husband Chuck is a successful developer, who has the now rare distinction of
having developed a non-regional mall that, instead of following the recent
custom in that business of coming to resemble a gap-toothed ghost town, is
actually thriving, filled with blue chip tenants and crowded almost all the
time. Both Chuck and Becky have been
extensively involved in the community, as anyone who has lived in Naperville
for more than a month or two knows.
Further, Becky consistently brings world-class authors and celebrities
to Naperville, either to her store or to larger venues around town, for book
signings, lectures, and the like. She
has also been involved in various local, regional, and national trade
associations for independent book sellers, has developed a national reputation
in that business, and thus has cultivated contacts that would help her, and her
district, in Washington.
Finally, just about every politician
trumpets the virtues of his or her family and especially his or her virtues as
a family man or a devoted mom. Most of
us have no means of determining the veracity of such claims and, if your degree
of cynicism even approaches that of yours truly, you question whether some of
these pols even know the names of their children. But we’ve known the Wilkins family since our
daughters, both of whom just graduated from college, became friends in
kindergarten. At the risk of using a
trite expression, the Wilkins family is the real deal. Even a brief conversation with one of their
kids makes abundantly clear that Becky and Chuck are great parents.
So Becky Wilkins Anderson has an
ideological footprint, or lack thereof, that should help her in both the
primary and general elections. She and
her husband have successfully run businesses, employed people, and served
customers rather than following the custom, popular in some quarters of her
party, of tossing rhetorical bombs from the comfortable quarters of the media
or academia at the very notion of free markets and capitalism. This renders her immune from the often hypocritical
accusations of some GOP spin doctors and professional ideologues of being
unfamiliar with, or even hostile, toward the free market. She has a history of public service and
community involvement that goes back years rather than to the day she decided
she wanted to run for office. She is
enormously respected in the western suburbs, throughout the Chicagoland area,
and across the entire country, as an advocate for the independent bookstore, a
concept and a business that, like many retail businesses, is holding on by a
thread in the face of the Amazon onslaught but that holds tremendous respect in
the hearts and minds of the American public.
She and her husband Chuck have raised a beautiful and successful family.
I don’t like to be a cheerleader in
any contest not involving the Hawkeyes, Illini, Hoosiers, or Cornhuskers, but if
I were a Democrat, I’d be backing Becky Anderson Wilkins for Congress in the 6th
District. If I were a Republican, I’d be
seriously concerned about Peter Roskam’s prospects for re-election should Becky’s
party wise up and nominate her.
