Mike Bakalis used to be the next governor of Illinois. Until January 30, he was one of four Democratic candidates that aimed to take the state house from the GOP for the first time in 26 years. But as he stood and spoke before his supporters, he made it clear. The campaign was over."This just wasn't the time for me because of the money," he said, as reporters scribbled notes. In attendance were 30 students at the University of Illinois, brought there by the Hellenic Students Association and not expecting to meet a future governor. It was a poetic ending to a campaign that, by its pilots instructions, never got off the ground.
The end of Kellogg Prof. Michael Bakalis's campaign was abrupt but not unexpected. Bakalis wavered between 4 and 6 percent support in the polls, filling in the bottom of the Democratic field. The three remaining candidates are actively seeking his supporters, but in the words of the Chicago Sun-Times, the decision was "a cherry bomb that might go off somewhere down the road."
Bakalis, 62, dismissed the spin as much as he dismissed the rigors of campaigning. "I've never viewed myself as a professional politician," he insisted. "People should not be in politics as a career. The founding fathers didn't want it that way."
The professor's on-off career began with his election as State Superintendent of Education in 1970. In that post and as State Comptroller from 1977, he earned a reputation as a wunderkind with bold ideas about improving education. He spent only one year on the job before the party selected him to run in the state's first gubernatorial election under a new constitution.
"There's no such thing as a Democratic machine anymore," Bakalis said. "I didn't run, as much as I was selected by the Cook County party. And the mood was very different that year."
In 1978, the incumbent governor was Republican Jim Thompson, elected in 1976 with 65 percent of the vote.
"Thompson had been in office for nine months when we had to start running against him," Bakalis said. "It's very difficult to criticize a man who has just been inaugurated."
Bakalis targeted Thompson's education and tax policies, but he was largely ignored. As columnists speculated about Thompson's winning margin and presidential hopes, Bakalis charged up and down the state courting voters.
For all of the then-comptroller's effort, the campaign ended in a crushing 60-40 defeat. With the drop in turnout common in a non-Presidential election year, Bakalis won less votes than any Democrat since 1928. But he wasn't deterred. After a short respite, Bakalis found employment in the Education department of the Carter administration.
In the long wilderness years between his loss and his 2002 campaign, Bakalis became bitter and not a little naïve about the state of politics.
"The money in 1978 came from average people," Bakalis reminisced in an interview with the Chronicle. "It cam from party donors, personal contributions. It came from unions, but never from corporations."
The money issue proved insurmountable in 2002. Bakalis invested $80,000 dollars in his own campaign, enough to "get you started" in 1978 but now barely enough to maintain his three-person staff.
"What's very different about now was the enormously raised cost of the campaign," Bakalis said. "Any serious aspirant has to have $15 million, which is an obscene amount."
Bakalis, who took a leave of absence from Kellogg during the campaign, plans to return to the school and keep his job as president of American Quality Schools. He does not plan to run for future office, but he believes his brand of leadership still has a place in public policy.
"There's a growing sense of cynicism in politics," he said. "But when I was in public office, I showed it could be done."
