Belated congratulations are in order for the Chicago Tribune's Thomas Hardy, a 20-year veteran of the paper who's been doubling as one of its political commentators for the past decade. That's because on January 31, Gov. Jim Edgar announced that Hardy was joining his administration as its "press secretary-designate." Hardy later will become the Governor's chief spokesman on June 1, replacing Mike Lawrence, who's resigning.
"Thomas Hardy is a highly and widely respected journalist," the Governor said at the time. He holds a Masters degree from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Thus in joining the Governor's administration, Hardy and his new boss emulate the practice of former governors Richard Ogilvie, Dan Walker, and Jim Thompson, each of whom were smart enough to employ former journalists as their press secretaries, in the grand tradition of the endlessly revolving door that stands between this country's government and corporate sectors -- its media in particular. (Oh, yes. It's worth remembering that Mike Lawrence used to cover Springfield's Statehouse before he signed on with Edgar nine years ago, while Edgar was serving as Thompson's secretary of state. Old habits die hard.)
"I still have, I hope, some relative youth and vitality to take on a different kind of opportunity to see government and politics from the other side of the coin than I've been looking at them," the 44-year-old Hardy told one of his colleagues at the Tribune. And from the other side of the state of Illinois, too. But unlike Lawrence, who carried out his duties for the last six years from his office in the Statehouse Building, Hardy plans to run the Governor's press show from an office in the James R. Thompson Center, in downtown Chicago.
"Hardy has had a good relationship with Edgar and is respected by colleagues in the news media," his one-time colleague with the Tribune, now a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Steve Neal wrote in a piece celebrating the news. Perhaps a more important qualification for the job, Hardy has had a miserable relationship with U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun. On this count, in fact, that makes Hardy's credentials impeccable in Jim Edgar's eyes. Since Moseley-Braun defeated the right-wing Republican Richard Williamson to win her Senate seat in November, 1992, Hardy has employed his by-line in the Tribune to hound the Democratic senator. And hound her. And hound her. With Moseley Braun's "unelectability" in 1998 now a major worry among Illinois Democrats, and with cost-projections for a victory in 1998's Senate race ranging anywhere from $8-$10 million per candidate, Moseley-Braun's vulnerability and her history of campaign finance problems look like a golden opportunity to Republicans. Particularly if the Governor himself decides to seek Moseley-Braun's seat, a decision he might announce sometime this summer.
Enter Thomas Hardy: erstwhile political writer with the Chicago Tribune, long-time Carol Moseley-Braun nemesis, turned into Jim Edgar's press secretary-designate, all in a flash of smoke.
"Moseley-Braun is losing luster," Hardy wrote not more than six months into the Senator's first year in office. A Market Shares Corp. poll for the Tribune had found that 42 percent of the state's registered voters were giving Moseley-Braun a "favorable" rating, down from an unimpressive 46 percent in the weeks prior to the November election. "The residual effect of her brief honeymoon," Hardy explained, "finds that the only blocs in which a majority view her favorably are poorer voters, blacks and Democrats...." But a "plurality of voters in Chicago's white ethnic neighborhoods and the Cook County suburbs disapprove of her work," he continued. "And among women, independents, collar-county and Downstate voters, only about 4 in 10 said they approve of the job she is doing..." (Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1993). Naturally, given the Senator's race and gender.
Eighteen months later, another Tribune poll of registered voters reported even more slippage in Moseley-Braun's ratings -- and Hardy was quick to pounce on that poll, too. "Two years remain until Moseley-Braun's term expires, but the survey results indicate that the self-beset Democrat would be vulnerable in either a primary or general election," Hardy wrote last October. Now, as many as 47 percent of the voters disapproved of her performance, the survey found; and only 31 percent said they approved. Focusing on the Senator's August, 1996 trip to Lagos, Nigeria, and her disgraceful visit with Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha, Hardy observed that the trip "was emblematic of Moseley-Braun's cavalier attitude and sense of entitlement." Indeed. He even called Moseley-Braun the "luckiest politician in America" for her victory during 1992's "Year of the Woman," and summed up her first four years in the Senate as a "profile in discouragement." ("Moseley-Braun's show is a voting-bloc disaster," Oct. 13, 1996.) Boy. Illinois Republicans must have rejoiced when they read that commentary. Sign him up. Now.
But that was nothing. Moseley-Braun is a "sneaky" politician, Hardy wrote two months later. Yes. Sneaky. As in being "of or like a sneak," he explained. And in moving "quietly and stealthily so as to avoid being seen or heard" (here quoting from his own edition of Webster's). The Senator's crimes? She schemed with her siblings "to avoid paying the state for a share of Medicaid costs for her aged mother, then [blamed] it on mama," he contended. She hired a "boyfriend" to run her campaign. Later, she traipsed "around the world with aforesaid boyfriend-campaign manager," and offered "conflicting explanations for how the travel was financed." Worse, she rendezvoused "with the same gentleman, once a registered agent for the oppressive Nigerian regime, in the African nation to schmooze with dictator Sani Abacha." All "Pretty sneaky stuff," in Thomas Hardy's book. And all damnable. And yet Moseley-Braun remains confident that her re election chances in 1998 are unassailable, Hardy continued. "In other words," he complained, "Moseley-Braun has as much as stated that she is entitled to renomination."
After all, hasn't she been quoted by the Arlington Daily Herald as saying that "I'm the only African-American in the United States Senate. Anybody who is going to take me on in this state -- a Democrat -- is going to have a hard time getting elected in November"? A comment to which Hardy appended his own sense of outrage: "Imagine the reaction if a troubled white male incumbent from either party issued such a brazenly racial rationale for high office. As Bob Dole wondered aloud about President Clinton's ethical lapses, where's the outrage?" ("Moseley-Braun is not mysterious, just sneaky," Dec. 15, 1996.)
Answer: It's been lurking in Thomas Hardy's political commentaries for the Chicago Tribune these past four years. That's where.
And it'll be spouting from the mouth of Gov. Jim Edgar's new press spokesman for a couple of more. At the very least.