The election of Scott Lee Cohen has shown us many things and confirmed other things we thought to be fact. Among these:

1. Party organization and responsibility is near dead. Both candidates for Lt. Governor dipped into family funds and in effect bought the nominations.
2. Our Media is inattentive. The Lt. Governor’s race does not interest the media, despite the recent history with Pat Quinn and Rod Blagojevich.
3. When Party organization was strong, I picked my running mates, indeed I helped pick all the candidates, did so in 1982 and …

Great-grandfather Adlai Stevenson I, then a student, later vice president of the United States, told of grandfather Jesse Fell proposing to Senator Stephen A. Douglas joint discussions of slavery in the territories with a young lawyer-legislator named Abraham Lincoln, and the “cordial” conversation with Lincoln that followed. After this series of debates — each lasting three hours — brought to Lincoln national attention, he wrote and gave Fell his “autobiographical sketch” which Fell used to promote his candidacy for president. Fell was next tasked with organizing for Lincoln the Illinois …