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After the Democratic bosses had endorsed their gentleman, they began to worry. How would the voters downstate like his Brooks Brothers button-down collars and his Princeton pin-stripe suit? What about his dulcet and cultured tone of voice, which made him sound, to Chicago ears, like Actor Ronald Colman?*
But Stevenson soon showed that he had a way with the folks. He was affable, though reserved, and flatteringly humble before the veteran politicians. He told a Jackson Day dinner: "I have a bad case of hereditary politics, and I hope by associating with veterans like you to contract an equally bad case of practical politics." He went after the Green administration with good old Illinois haymakers.
"We cannot allow the rats of corruption and neglect to undermine the foundations of our state any longer," he told a Springfield audience. "The Green machine has given politics and greed the priority over public service and honesty—because the Green machine has treated politics and morality apart. Each week brings some new revelation. A murder in Peoria reveals evidence of protection of gambling by state officials . . . The machine purchases property at grossly inflated values . . . People want something better than all this cynical, costly, gang government."
"Hi, Governor." This kind of campaigning soon had the Democrats, and many a Republican, cheering Stevenson on. But more than cheers are needed to win a campaign. At times, his supporters had to go out and beg for contributions to pay the overdue rent on the campaign headquarters. "Our campaign funds are so low that it's become a joke around my house," said Stevenson. "Even my kids now take one look at me when I come home, say 'Hi, governor,' and stick their hands in their pockets to protect their loose change."
Adlai Stevenson was elected governor by the biggest margin any candidate ever piled up in Illinois: 572,000 votes. He ran well ahead of Douglas, who defeated C. Wayland ("Curly") Brooks by 407,728, and far ahead of Harry Truman, who carried the state by a slim 33,612. But Stevenson's resounding victory was bittersweet : the governorship cost him his wife. She had been taking an increasingly unsympathetic view of his public life and its growing demands. Now she left him and asked for a divorce. Less than a year after he became governor, she got her divorce at Las Vegas, Nev.
In spite of this paralyzing private blow, there was a lot to learn and a lot of work to do. Stevenson plunged in. Running the government of Illinois (pop. 8,712,176) is no job for an amateur. One of the special problems is the fact that more than half the population is in Cook County (Chicago), but the 101 other counties control the legislature. When Governor Stevenson came before a joint session to make his inaugural address, he faced many hostile lawmakers. The Republicans held firm control of the senate, and the Democrats had a narrow margin (80-72) in the house.
"We can show the world what a government consecrated to plain talk, hard work and prairie horse sense can do," he told them. But he admitted privately to friends in those early days in Springfield that he was "rattled."