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In its current mood, the public seems disposed to favor candidates who promise the least instead of the most, a dramatic switch from the chicken-in-every-pot, two-cars-in-every-garage philosophy of the past. "The public has gotten off the spending binge," says Deloss Walker, a Memphis political consultant who engineered the surprise victory of Businessman Fob James in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Alabama. "People feel they themselves have tightened their belts, but the political leadership has not."
Increasingly, voters seem to be turning to relatively obscure businessmen to run state governments. A variety of millionaires won victories in this year's gubernatorial primaries: Democrats Robert Graham in Florida and Jake Butcher in Tennessee; Republicans William Clements in Texas and Jack Eckerd in Florida. "I am not a lawyer," boasts ex-Wall Streeter Charles ("Pug") Ravenel, who is running against veteran Republican Senator Strom Thurmond in South Carolina. Candidates who have never met a payroll, Ravenel argues, are not equipped to balance budgets. "I think we have a crisis of management in government. To solve public problems, we must energize the private sector and encourage it to take the initiative."
All the stress on bread-and-butter issues—inflation, taxes and spending—has blurred party distinctions, sometimes beyond the point of recognition. Democrats are sounding like Republicans, or even more so. Specifically, Democrats have been quick to sense, and act on, the popular support for some traditional Republican arguments. "It's beginning to look like everybody is in the same party," says
Utah's Republican Congressman Dan Marriott. In Oklahoma, a Democratic wit sums up the formula for success at the polls: "If you have a Democrat who walks, talks and acts like a Republican, then you have a lead-pipe cinch to win." Democratic Representative Abner Mikva of Illinois, long known as one of the most liberal members of Congress, is trying to live down his reputation in this election. He tells voters that no other member of the Illinois congressional delegation has voted against more spending bills.
By nature, Mike Bakalis appears to be a fatalist. On a bumpy flight between Peoria and Bloomington, Ill., he admitted that he would fly in almost any weather. "When your time comes to go down, then you go down," he explained. With similar stoicism, he has learned to cope with political buffeting. Asked where he stands in the political spectrum, he replied without hesitation, "Right of center" — words that would not have been uttered by a leading Democrat in a big industrial state a few years ago.