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Paul and Jeanne Simon were married in 1960, and their daughter Sheila, now a lawyer, was born eleven months later. Over the next several years Jeanne had five miscarriages; the family adopted their son Martin, now a photographer. She has accepted that her husband, for all his other accomplishments, will never earn a college degree. Jeanne remembers mentioning the credentials problem to Martin Simon in the mid-1960s, only to be told gruffly, "Paul's doing fine without it."
Elected to the state senate in 1962, Simon remained stubbornly resistant to the "money talks" morality of the legislature. In a gesture that he considers the most courageous act of his political career, he finally went public with his complaints in an article in Harper's titled "The Illinois Legislature: A Study in Corruption." Along with a legislative colleague, Anthony Scariano, now an Illinois judge, Simon followed up by testifying to no avail before an Illinois crime commission. "As a result, we were pariahs," Scariano recalls. Simon developed a bleeding ulcer. The only good thing to come out of it, Jeanne Simon says, is that on his doctor's orders the abstemious Simon began drinking a glass of wine with dinner.
Amid a Republican landslide in 1968, Simon was elected Lieutenant Governor under Republican Richard Ogilvie and thus became the top Democrat in the state. In his bid to become Governor four years later, he won the endorsement of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. It was a rare miscalculation for Simon: not only did this marriage of convenience sully his reform reputation, but the Daley machine failed to deliver. He was upended by Maverick Dan Walker in the primary.
Scars from that race lingered, even as Simon won a House seat in 1974. What haunted him was his failure to respond directly to Walker's charges. "I learned that if your opponent takes out after you, you take out after him," he says. If anything, Simon erred the other way in his 1984 upset of three- term Senator Charles Percy: he was too aggressive. As David Axelrod, who was and still is a top Simon campaign adviser, puts it, "When he lashed out against Percy, there was no question that some of that anger was lingering anger about 1972."
His nearly three years in the Senate have been uneventful; the soft-spoken Simon is universally well liked by his colleagues, but even while on the Judiciary Committee during the Robert Bork hearings, he did little to claim public notice. He is very much a loner, acting as his own chief speechwriter and counsel. His presidential race began almost by accident. He endorsed Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers, and then belatedly jumped into the fray in May after Bumpers joined the ranks of Democratic sideliners.
To each campaign there is a season, and as Dukakis sizzled in the summer, so has Simon flowered in the fall. The New Republic plastered his image on the cover, along with the Warholian legend, "Paul Simon, your 15 minutes have arrived." Joseph Biden's top Iowa lieutenants endorsed him. The latest New York Times-CBS poll showed Simon jumping into first place among Democrats in Iowa, with 16% support. New York Governor Mario Cuomo tossed an unexpected garland in Simon's direction last week, pronouncing that he looks "strong" and that "I feel great, great empathy with him."