 Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn spent the beginning of the week on a
seven-city fly-around. Republican candidate Bill Brady, a state
senator from Bloomington, has spent the last week and a half focused
on downstate voters on his so-called "Clean Break Express" bus tour.
Jim Nowlan, a former state lawmaker who now works with the
University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public Affairs,
said state tours can be a smart campaign move if combined with
wider-reaching mediums such as TV.
"They complement one another," Nowlan said. "The television ads
certainly are pervasive and reach just about everybody, but the
personal touch is even stronger. So the more people one can reach
personally, the greater the impact."
But Nowlan said Quinn's fly-around makes more sense than Brady's
bus tour.
"The kind of old-fashioned bus tour is in my mind inefficient
unless the candidate is able to bring media along on the tour,"
Nowlan said. "(But) the standard fly-around is a fairly efficient
way to reach a lot of people by television and by earned or free
media in one day's time. So that technique seems to make a lot of
sense to me."
Nowlan said Brady might be touring in downstate Illinois -- where
he is leading by double digits -- to lock down his early lead in the
area.
"He needs to maintain that strong support downstate," Nowlan
said. "People don't like to feel they're forgotten, so with his
apparently strong lead downstate, he wants to reinforce that."
Quinn's and Brady's "meet the folks" tours have come later in the
election season than during campaigns in years past. Statewide bus
tours during late summer fair season used to be common practice
among top-of-the-ticket candidates.
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Kent Redfield, a professor of political science at the University
of Illinois Springfield, said tours have become more beneficial in
the fall.
"When you get to the end of the campaign, all the commercials are
cut, all the TV time is bought," Redfield said. "The candidates'
time is the only commodity left that you can make decisions about.
And you might not be able to do an ad buy in an area, but you can go
make a visit if you can put it together in a way that makes sense."
But Nowlan said the most important objective of Quinn's and
Brady's tours lies at the root of campaigning: Make sure voters get
to the polls.
"Of course getting out the vote is a key component late in the
campaign," Nowlan said.
Quinn and Brady will square off during the Nov. 2 general
election.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By JENNIFER WESSNER]
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