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Once upon a time, after he moved from a top spot in Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH into Democratic politics, Roland Burris was considered a smart, pragmatic, progressive politician–one who could win with support from African-Americans, Chicago “reformers,” and a handful of downstate voters he’d won over with reminders that he was originally from their part of Illinois. Thirty years ago he broke a barrier as the first African-American to hold statewide office in Illinois, and in 1990 he became just the second in the country to become a state attorney general.
Now, of course, it sounds like Governor Rod Blagojevich, always true to his word, is about to pluck Burris from his lucrative consulting and law gigs and name him to fill Barack Obama’s empty U.S. Senate seat.
YEAR
OFFICE
ELECTION
OPPONENTS
RESULT
1976
Illinois comptroller
primary
Michael Bakalis
Lost
1978
Richard Luft
Won
general
John Castle
1982
none
Cal Skinner Jr.
1984
U.S. Senate
Paul Simon
1986
Donald Clark
Adeline Jay Geo-Karis
1990
Illinois attorney general
Jim Ryan
1994
Illinois governor
Dawn Clark Netsch, Richard Phelan
1995
Chicago mayor
Richard M. Daley
1998
Glenn Poshard, John Schmidt
2002
Rod Blagojevich, Paul Vallas
