Schillerstrom discusses failed bid for governor, the campaign, his future

Bob Schillerstrom is going back to just being a lawyer, and he's fine with that.

After splitting the last 12 years between his law practice and helming the DuPage County Board as its chairman, Schillerstrom gave up the chance for a fourth term when he launched a bid to be the Republican nominee for governor. A massive field of competitors, including three others from DuPage, kept his campaign from ever getting a foothold. Despite being in the race longer than most of his competitors, Schillerstrom eventually abandoned the gubernatorial campaign when financial resources became scarce.

With a little less than a year left in office, Schillerstrom recently sat down to talk about his future, some disappointments from the gubernatorial primary and prognosticate the general election in November.

Q. So, will we have you to kick around again?A. Ten months, do your kicking now. I don't know. I'm not really thinking about running for anything at this point. But I have learned a long time ago never say never and never say ever. Keep your options open and enjoy what you're doing.Q. Did you enjoy your run for governor?A. I'm obviously disappointed my run for governor didn't work out. I have to admit I had hoped it would go better. You get a seven-person race with a bunch of people coming out of DuPage, it proved to be difficult. I also recognize when you go into something, that you go in hard and go in to win, but there is a possibility that it may not work out the way that you want and you need to have another plan in place. Essentially, I have a year here and I'll continue to work hard here. I feel confident that I'm going to leave the county in good shape; that's my goal, to leave it better than when I came in. My plan after that is to go back to practicing law. That's what I've done that in the past. I'm sort of looking forward to having one job.Q. What went wrong with the governor's race?A. Well, you know, I think the state Republican Party could have done a better job. One of my disappointments was that I believe that many of us went to see (former) Chairman (Andy) McKenna, and instead of having his focus on a slate, he had the focus on himself. I think because of that, there was a bigger field than there needed to be and I think that was unfortunate.Q. How did all those candidates affect your campaign?A. The problem is that when you get so many in the race it divides up the resources in many, many ways. People don't want to contribute funds to a big race because they can't tell what's going to happen. A lot of us had support from the same areas, so that gets splintered. Or more often what we saw was people just sitting on the sidelines because they didn't know what to do.Q. How did there get to be so many DuPage Republicans in that race?A. I reached out to (state Sen.) Kirk (Dillard) early on. I told Kirk I was thinking about doing this and let him know when I was officially announcing and he said, 'I'm with you 100 percent. It's your time. Anything I can do to help you, let me know,' and essentially that was my last conversation with Kirk. I also talked to (former Illinois Attorney General and DuPage County State's Attorney) Jim Ryan early on and Jim gave me no inkling that he was going to run. I think he called me the night before he announced or it hit the press or whatever, but I was caught unaware on that just like everybody else. I never figured Andy McKenna was going to get in the race because he was the party chairman and he was supposed to be working to put together a slate. I thought that I did the appropriate due diligence to put together support and find out who was going to be in it and who wasn't. There were a lot of things that surprised me about this and disappointed me.Q. Like your former chief of staff (Kathy Selcke) joining Dillard's campaign?A. Well, yeah, that was disappointing to me. It was a disappointment, you know. But I was disappointed many times. I've been in this game a long time and I know that disappointment is part of it and you do learn a lot of things from those. But I do have to admit that there were a lot of disappointments and a lot of surprises on this campaign. I want to leave it behind me. You want to push on and remember positive things, but I will just say I was disappointed a number of times by people who I thought were going to be supportive of me, had been supportive of me and had led me to believe they were going to be supportive of me. But I guess that's all part of the business.Q. Can Republican nominee Bill Brady defeat Gov. Pat Quinn in November?A. I think Bill's got a real good chance. I believe that Bill is a true fiscal conservative and he is prepared to make the difficult decisions that need to be made in this state. Perhaps the biggest thing is that the Democrats have had a clear hand in running this state for the last 11 years - Quinn has been there a year plus - and things are not working. I do think that people are unhappy with the status quo and I don't see the Dems fixing things. I think Bill offers a good alternative to what there has been down there.Q. What about Judy Biggert's seat in Congress?A. I think Judy is a good Congresswoman and I've said this to her many times. Anytime someone brings up her seat to me I say she's doing a good job and I'm going to support her as long as she's there. I still feel that way and will continue to support her.Q. What about Naperville mayor if George Pradel doesn't run again? That's a fairly high-profile job.A. I've never been the type of guy who's taken a job because I thought it was a steppingstone to something else, and I don't like people who do that. My theory is if you've been lucky enough to be selected to do a job, focus on doing that job and who knows if you'll have an opportunity to do something else.Q. What did you think about the nastiness in the Republican race to replace you?A. To a large degree, I kind of missed it. While I did read the newspapers, I didn't spend a lot of time on the ground or at the same events those folks were at. I think there were four good people who ran the race. I think (Republican nominee and state Sen.) Dan (Cronin) is going to be a good chairman. He ran a good race, but I think any of them would have done a good job. Republicans have a history of running kind of nasty races. It will be Dan's responsibility to mend the fences and bring things back together. There's 10 months between the primary and the general election, so there's a lot of time to heal those wounds. Dan's a skillful guy and I'm sure he recognizes the importance of doing that.False20001980On Bill Brady's chances against Pat Quinn: "I do think that people are unhappy with the status quo and I don't see the Dems fixing things. I think Bill offers a good alternative to what there has been down there."Associated Press fileFalse