Sen. Adlai Ewing Stevenson, III

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_III

Adlai Ewing Stevenson III (born October 10, 1930, in Chicago) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981.

Education, military service, and early career

He received a law degree in (1957).

Stevenson was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. He continued to serve in the Marine Reserves and was discharged in 1961 as a captain.

In 1957, Stevenson went to work as a clerk for a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and worked there until 1958 when he joined the law firm of Brown and Platt.

Illinois political career

In 1964, Stevenson was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives as an at-large representative due to reapportionment problems, serving from 1965 to 1967.[1][2] He then served as Illinois Treasurer (1967–1970).[3]

United States Senate

After U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) died in office in 1969 and Ralph Tyler Smith was appointed to the seat, Stevenson defeated Smith in a 1970 special election (during which a young intern named Karl Rove gained experience working for Smith) by a 58% to 42% margin to fill Dirksen's unexpired term. Stevenson introduced legislation requiring an end to all foreign aid to South Vietnam by June 30, 1975.[4] He authored the International Banking Act, the Stevenson Wydler-Technology Innovation Act and its' companion, the Bayh Dole Act, to foster cooperative research, organize national laboratories for technology utilization and commercialization, permit private sector interests in government funded research. He was the first Chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee charged with implementing a code of ethics he helped draft. Stevenson was also chairman of a Special Senate Committee which reorganized the Senate and served on the Democratic Policy Committee. Inter alia, he also conducted the first in depth Congressional study of terrorism as Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Collection and Production of Intelligence, leading to introduction of the Comprehensive Counter Terrorism Act of 1971 with warnings of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" and another measure to distance the US from the settlements policy of the newly elected Likud government of Israel.

Stevenson was re-elected to the seat in 1974, and in 1980 declined to stand for re-election, thus serving in the U.S. Senate from 1970 to 1981.

Stevenson was encouraged to run for President in 1976 by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, declined and was one of the finalists for Vice-President at the Democratic Convention that year. Daley's push to get Stevenson on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate collapsed and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota was nominated for vice president.[5]

Post-Senate political career

Stevenson ran for Governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986, losing both elections to James R. Thompson. In 1982 the initial vote count showed Stevenson winning; however, the final official count showed him losing by 1/7 of one percent. Stevenson promptly petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for a recount and presented evidence of widespread election irregularities, including evidence of a failed punch card system for tabulation of votes (later to become infamous in the presidential election of 2000). Three days before the gubernatorial inauguration, the Court, by a one vote margin, denied the recount, asserting that the Illinois recount statute was unconstitutional.

However, the Illinois Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, and did so in a curious way. Instead of following the normal standard that decides a motion to dismiss, the court did not assume, for purposes of the motion, that the facts stated in the complaint were true. Instead, the court went "behind the pleadings" to look at the conduct of the original partial recount and then dismissed the case because it said that Adlai Stevenson had no reasonable cause to complain about the conduct of the counting and recounting activities. A grand jury later determined that Adlai Stevenson had unwittingly benefited from some 100,000 illegal ballots that had been cast in Chicago in the 1982 gubernatorial election. U.S. to probe primary vote fraud, Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1987. The Illinois legislature later changed election contest procedures based on the court's ruling.

In the 1986 campaign for Governor, in a fluke, two followers of Lyndon LaRouche won the Democratic Party primary nominations for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. Stevenson objected to their platform and refused to appear on the same ticket. Instead, he organized the Solidarity Party to provide an alternate slate for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, which was duly endorsed by the regular Democratic organization. Persuading Democrats to vote a regular Democratic ticket and then cross over to also vote for the Solidarity candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor and Secretary of State was doomed to fail; however, Stevenson and the candidate for Lieutenant Governor position, Mike Howlett, won 40% of the vote.

Post-political career

Since leaving the Senate, Stevenson has been active in business and cultural relations with east Asia. He is chairman of SC&M Investment Management Corporation, and co-chairman of HuaMei Capital Company (the first Chinese-American investment bank).

He has also held many positions with non-profit organizations in this area. He has served as chairman of the Japan-America Society of Chicago, the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association, and the Midwest U.S.-China Association, and as President of the U.S. Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC). He is also co-chairman of the PECC's Financial Market Development Project, a member of the U.S.-Korea Wisemen Council, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Korea Economic Institute.

Stevenson has been honored by the government of Japan with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, and is an Honorary Professor of Renmin University in China.

He is Chairman of the international Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy housed at the family home near Libertyville, Illinois. The Center brings practitioners from the real world of politics together with scholars and experts from many parts of the world to address systemic challenges to democratic systems of government.

Political family history

Stevenson's great-grandfather Adlai E. Stevenson I was vice president of the United States (1893–1897). His grandfather Lewis G. Stevenson was Illinois secretary of state (1914–1917). His father, Adlai E. Stevenson II, was governor of Illinois, Ambassador to the United Nations, and two time Democratic presidential nominee. Actor McLean Stevenson was his second cousin once removed.

Adlai Stevenson IV, Stevenson III's son, became a television reporter in Chicago in the 1980s. It is reported that when asked if he liked his name, he said he intended to become "Adlai the Last"[citation needed]. However, in the summer of 1994, Adlai Ewing Stevenson V was born.

Sen. Aldai E. Stevenson, III was the great-grandson of Vice President Adlai Ewing Stevenson and the son of Gov. Adlai Stevenson. He was born Oct. 30, 1930 in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. degree in 1952 and then was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He served as a platoon tank commander during the Korean War and then returned to Harvard Law School where he received a law degree in 1957. In 1964 he was nominated by the Democratic Party to run at large for state representative on the infamous Orange Ballot. The Orange Ballot listed 118 candidates for the Illinois House from each party due to a failure to agree on reapportionment. He was elected State Treasurer of Illinois in 1966. US Sen. Everett M. Dirksen (R-Pekin) died in the fall of 1969 and was replaced by Gov. Ogilvie with former House Speaker Ralph Tyler Smith. Smith ran against Adlai Stevenson, III for the US Senate vacancy and Stevenson won in November 1970. Stevenson defeated former State Rep. George M. Burditt in 1974 but did not seek re-election in 1980 and Democratic Secretary of State Alan J. Dixon defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Dave O'Neal for the seat. In 1982, Stevenson challenged Republican incumbent Gov. James R. Thompson in one of the closest races in state history. Thompson won with a margin of less than one-half vote per precinct statewide. Adlai, III tried again to win the governor's office in 1986 but the whole Democratic Party campaign was badly disrupted in the primary. The state Democratic Party was shocked when two statewide candidates backed by Lyndon LaRouche were nominated by Democratic primary voters for Lt. Governor and Secretary of State. Stevenson was forced to form a new temporary party, the Solidarity Party, in order to run on a slate with traditional Democrats. The multiple parties split and confused Democratic voters and Stevenson lost to Thompson a second time.