Personal PAC's openly gay CEO, Terry Cosgrove, spoke with Windy City Times about some of the state's most critical races. Personal PAC is a bi-partisan political action committee dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates to state and local office in Illinois.
Windy City Times: For Personal PAC, what are the top priority races?
Terry Cosgrove: The reelection or re-nomination of Rod Blagojevich is tremendously important to us. He is one of the most pro-choice governors in the United States, and his leadership on reproductive rights has been incredible. Of course we're supporting Lisa Madigan, Jesse White, Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn—none of them have primary opposition though. And then 'Alexi' Giannoulias [ for State Treasurer ] is one of our top priorities—solidly pro-choice and has always been that way.
We have some incumbent pro-choice senators who have primary challenges. Some are up here and some are downstate. Martin Sandoval is one of them in the 12th District. And Mike Jacobs [ 36th ] , Don Harmon [ 39th ] and Dave Koehler [ 46th ] are three other senators. Mike Jacobs is from the Quad Cities area, Dave Koehler is from Peoria and Don Harmon is from Oak Park. Those are all top priorities.
Then in the House … the races that we're most involved with are Lisa Hernandez in the 24th, Barbara Flynn Currie in the 25th and David Miller in the 29th.
On the Republican side, we've made no statewide endorsements because Judy Baar Topinka refused to return our questionnaire. And she has voted anti-choice 84 percent of the time.
... She's completely not genuine, and says she's pro-choice with a wink and a nod to the right wing. She's voted with them most of the time, and I think it's really important that your readers know that. She doesn't do what she says. And like I said, she has a voting record from when she was in the Illinois General Assembly…, and 84 percent of the time she has voted anti-choice. In fact, one of the votes was particularly appalling because it would allow a married woman to get spousal consent in order to have an abortion, and Gov. Thompson at the time found this bill to be so abhorrent that he vetoed it, and then she voted to override the veto.
And then in the Illinois House, our biggest races are the reelection of Mark Beaubien [ 52nd ] and Sidney Mathias [ 53rd ] . Mark is from Barrington Hills; Sid is from Buffalo Grove. And we're also involved in Sandy Cole, the 62nd House District, who is a pro-choice Republican. That is about it! Those are keeping us quite busy.
WCT: What does being involved in these races entail?
TC: It's not just an endorsement. … We have a statewide voter file of close to 400,000 names across the state. In these targeted districts, we've made phone calls and we've added close to 50,000 more voters. From there, the voters we've identified as pro-choice in some of these districts, we send them direct mail … and a day or two before election day we do more phone calls and more get out the vote and coordinated some ground activity. … We'll also ask them if they'll volunteer for our campaign, and one campaign in Peoria, for example, we recruited 890 people who said they would put a yard sign up. And in others it's been 150. So, it's really a grassroots, nuts and bolts, expensive full-out commitment to electing these people. And then we provide campaign consulting and all kinds of other things. We help the campaigns with polling and all kinds of other pieces that make a campaign successful ... It's a full-out commitment once they've assured us that they're pro-choice.
WCT: What are some interesting races?
TC: Well, I think one of the ones that very interesting is Denny Driscoll, who's running against Mark Beaubien. And if you go back to the endorsement of Beaubien … [ Driscoll ] went in and told the editorial board of the Tribune that homosexuality is disgusting, or something. [ Driscoll was quoted as calling homosexuality a 'dangerous pathology.' ] Apparently, he lectured a bunch of editorial boards about how horrible gay people are and how disgusting we are. So this isn't just someone who opposes gay rights. This is a full-out, you know!
Most of the candidates—certainly Beaubien's opponents and Sid Mathias' opponents—are people that have filled out the anti-abortion questionnaires like the Illinois Right to Life.
These candidates are also supporting a proposed state law that says that pharmacists can refuse to fill any prescription, including those for birth control, including those for the morning-after pill. These people are the same people that if someone comes in with a prescription for HIV medication and you live in a small town and they say you live a disgusting lifestyle—they can refuse to give you these prescriptions! ... See, that's what the right wingers are after with this whole Pharmacists for Life, and they're calling these HIV medications and anti-depressant medications 'lifestyle' drugs.
WCT: And I bet they'd do that for hormones.
TC: Oh, totally! The bottom line is, when you go to your pharmacist, you better make sure that your pharmacist agrees with your medication choices morally. … And the pharmacist, in my opinion, shouldn't even raise this with you. If I go into my pharmacist, and I'm filling a prescription and he happens to notice that I have a prescription that might counteract with this one, what that pharmacist should do is call my doctor. … It's a medical decision. And that's the only thing I want to hear from my pharmacist. That there's two drugs that might possibly counteract with each other. I don't need a moral lecture that I shouldn't be taking high doses of vitamin D for a skin decision … or the morning-after pill—not that I would need it! [ Laughs. ] Now that would really be serious. In that case, call the doctor and say, I've got a prescription here for Terry for the morning-after pill. And in my opinion, I think it's highly unlikely he could get pregnant. [ Laughs. ] OK, call the doctor and find out what's going on. ... This has been aimed at women—this whole Pharmacists for Life…, but I have warned ... that I really think the gay community really needs to brace itself for this attack that's coming. This is another place where the interests intersect completely. The same pharmacist that feels that it is his or her moral obligation to deny women birth control pills or other prescription birth control devices will also be the same pharmacists that will turn around and not fill prescriptions for HIV medications or other things. As I say all the time, and I will continue to say it, the same racists that will hang a Black man from a tree with hang a gay man from the same tree and you don't have to be very smart to get that.
