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The impossible dream? Steven Sauerberg takes on Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 17, 2008 - Republicans used to have a fighting chance in Illinois politics. The GOP for years held the governor's mansion and at least one of the U.S. Senate seats with such officials as Gov. James Thompson, Gov. Jim Edgar, Sen. Charles Percy and Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Incumbent Democrats didn't have a lock on re-election in statewide races.

Those days are long gone. Democrats now hold both the administration and the legislature, although you might not know it from the fighting that goes on, and Sens. Richard Durbin and Barack Obama have been winning their elections easily.

So, Dr. Steven Sauerberg, 55, the Republican family physician who is running against Durbin this year, may be forgiven if he feels like he picked an inopportune time to enter politics.

The latest Rasmussen Report polling shows Durbin's share of the electorate creeping up to exactly double that of Sauerberg: 62 percent to 31 percent. Sauerberg's high point was in September, when he claimed 35 percent of respondents to Durbin's 59 percent -- before the economic collapse began lifting all Democratic boats. If the latest poll is how the vote turns out, Sauerberg can at least take comfort in doing better than Alan Keyes did in 2004, when Obama had almost 70 percent of votes.

How does a family doctor in his first political run wind up campaigning against a popular and powerful senator? For Sauerberg, it started in 2004 and 2005 when his interest in national issues intensified and he began some volunteer political work, raising funds for candidates and sponsoring a town hall meeting. "I was not doing anything else with that, and I thought maybe I should," he said in an interview.

He realized his interests were more on the national level, and he had no beef with the legislators representing his home town of Willowbrook in Chicago's western suburbs. But he wasn't too happy with Durbin, whom he says is out of touch with his constituents, so he ran in the Senate primary and defeated two other candidates.

"He's a career politician and represents everything that's wrong with politics today," Sauerberg said. "People needed to have a choice. He's the lawyer, I'm the doctor."

It's been a hectic learning experience for the doctor, who is still on the road campaigning most days despite the polls.

He hired political activist and prosecutor Christopher Hage, 36, to manage the campaign, and they put together a group that includes both rookies and experienced hands. Hage previously managed the campaign of Joe Birkett for lieutenant governor in 2006.

Hope can be hard to find when you're down 2-1 in the polls. Sauerberg says he is finding it in reactions to the financial bailout, which he opposes. He cited a separate Rasmussen poll, reported on Oct. 5 after the bailout, in which 59 percent of respondents would gladly throw out all the members of Congress and start over.

Sauerberg runs his medical office in LaGrange and has been in practice since 1985. His program is laid out in a campaign website that reflects a lot of current Republican thinking -- plus a few twists, particularly on his key issue, health care.

Presidential nominee John McCain's plan has been criticized as a step toward eliminating the employer-funded health insurance that has long been the backbone of the health care system. But Sauerberg wants to take a big step beyond that -- to get employers out of the health-care business altogether.

To do that, he would create a system in which private insurers would be required to offer a basic plan for all Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions, but then would be free to sell more expensive and fully featured programs. Government's role would be to provide tax credits or vouchers to help people pay for the basic plans. In their only televised debate, held earlier this month in Chicago, Durbin noted that the plan could mean the end of Medicare and Medicaid.

Sauerberg also sees his energy proposals as being somewhat out of step with the major parties. He calls for a three-stage plan that would emphasize increased drilling for oil to ease the current situation, greatly expanded use of nuclear power for the medium term and development of renewable energy sources as the long-term solution.

Noted Hage: "For all the talk of energy independence, nobody's looking more than two years, three years down the road. We could have foreseen some of these things. Nobody wanted to deal with it."

While attending living-room gatherings and public forums, Sauerberg is still seeing some of his patients, too -- 13 this past Thursday morning. He says the days when he finds willing listeners interested in his health-care plan and other proposals help make up for the harder times. "Today's been a great day," he said. "It's going to be really interesting to see how I feel about it in a month."

Sauerberg sees himself playing a continued political role in the future, although he hasn't yet determined what he'll do. "I don't think I'll be able to just walk away and go back and never be involved," he said.

In his view, Republicans used to succeed in Illinois politics because they were seen as being capable and having integrity, but that was lost in the legal problems of Gov. George Ryan and his administration. But Democrats have left the door open for a Republican comeback by their inability to agree in Springfield, he said.

"They've made us the most dysfunctional state in the union," he said. "It's almost incomprehensible."

Hage said Illinois Republicans need to reach out beyond their suburban enclaves, citing substantial Hispanic populations in collar-county cities such as Joliet, Elgin, Aurora and Waukegan. "We need to get out there and talk to them," he said. "We sit back and wait for people to come to us, and that's how we got where we are." 

Carl Green is a freelance writer living in Collinsville.