With the Republican primary race for governor taking an aggressive turn, Jim Oberweis asked Judy Baar Topinka to apologize Tuesday for criticizing his TV attack ads while Topinka said he was trying to "bully" her because she is a woman.
The crossfire came during and after the third broadcast debate among the four major GOP contenders in the primary election. Reflecting the growing personal nature of the race, Topinka turned away as the hourlong broadcast ended and rebuffed an offer from Oberweis to shake his hand.
The debate, sponsored by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and broadcast by ABC stations in Springfield and Champaign, was ostensibly to focus on business issues. It came with only two weeks to go in a primary campaign that has, until recently, done little to attract voters' attention.
But as with previous encounters featuring Oberweis, Topinka, state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington and Chicago businessman Ron Gidwitz, the disputes surfaced largely after the formal debate had ended.
Topinka contended that Oberweis' attacks on her show he "may have some difficulties dealing with women." Oberweis countered that Topinka was again "caught not telling the truth."
Seeking a middle ground among voters, Brady warned of the damage caused to the eventual GOP nominee by too much personal sniping in the primary contest.
"If we're going to beat [Democratic Gov.] Rod Blagojevich, we've got to rebuild the strongest Republican Party we can in Illinois and that means uniting. Unfortunately, some of the other candidates are dividing the party," said Brady, who portrayed himself during the debate as "above the fray."
Much of the attention focused on how Oberweis and Topinka would deal with each other in their first face-to-face meeting since Oberweis last week began airing controversial ads attacking the integrity of Topinka, the three-term state treasurer.
In response to Oberweis' ad and an earlier attack ad aired by Gidwitz, Topinka ran her own commercials criticizing the two as "venomous" and "phony" while featuring former Gov. Jim Edgar to tout her truthfulness.
During the debate, Oberweis, an Aurora dairy owner and investment manager, tried to defend the veracity of a sworn statement that his campaign obtained from Martin Kovarik, who worked as Topinka's deputy treasurer a decade ago. Kovarik also said he had a romantic relationship with her then.
Kovarik charged Topinka had state workers campaign for her on state time and said Topinka told him to order the shredding of a document with a list of politically connected investors in a controversial state hotel-loan deal.
But in several instances, the sworn statement from the 73-year-old Kovarik, released to the media Monday by Oberweis' campaign, is inconsistent with Kovarik's previous public comments and with decade-old news accounts.
"When you talk about information from 10 years ago, you're going to get the big picture right, but there may be some details that may be missing and I certainly accept the fact," Oberweis said.
"But I think it's clear that his allegations fully justified our claims that Ms. Topinka--who had said that our advertisements were inaccurate--was 100 percent wrong and I've been waiting for an apology from her, which we haven't gotten yet," Oberweis said.
Topinka has denied issuing such an order and said she doesn't believe in shredding public documents. When Oberweis tried to bring up Kovarik later in the debate after a question on smoking bans, he was booed by some members of the audience in the Hoogland Center for the Arts, which included supporters of the four candidates.
After the debate, Topinka said that if Oberweis wanted an apology, "he's going to have a long wait, sweetie--yeah, a long wait."
"This man thinks he's going to bully me--he thinks he's going to bully me because I'm a woman. Well, forget it. I am not bullied," Topinka said. "I don't fall to bullying or intimidation or any of this kind of trashing he is doing. He has just taken politics in Illinois to a new low, which is saying something in Illinois."
After the debate, Gidwitz criticized Topinka for making Kovarik her top deputy.
"I think that's the kind of thing that is very inappropriate, particularly on a public payroll, to hire somebody you had a romantic interest in," Gidwitz said. "I wouldn't do it and frankly, it wouldn't be done in a private organization without having a lot of public conversations about that appropriateness, and I'm sure that didn't take place in this situation."
In other election news Tuesday, campaign finance reports for the period from Jan. 1 through Feb. 19 show Blagojevich raising $206,377, adding to the $15.5 million that he started the year with for his re-election effort.
His Democratic primary challenger, Edwin Eisendrath, reported raising $552,328, including $200,000 from his mother, Susan Manilow. She contributed an additional $500,000 on Friday. Eisendrath is expected to unveil a new ad campaign Wednesday.
Topinka reported total receipts of $426,758, while Gidwitz reported $4.1 million, a total that included $1.6 million in loans from himself and $2.2 million from the sale of investments.
Oberweis showed total receipts of $517,340, including $462,369 from the conversion of some stock to cash. He also made two loans to his campaign in recent weeks totaling $900,000.
Brady had total receipts of $211,441, including a $100,000 loan he made to himself.