Jackson got 50,600 votes; Jones, 38,865; and Palmer 9,260. She lost her own ward, even her own precinct.
Obama and Harwell followed the returns from Obama’s campaign office. To Harwell, Palmer’s loss meant nothing for the state senate race.
“We need to move forward,” she told Obama.
Obama, however, was genuinely conflicted. Palmer had endorsed him, and he wasn’t going to make a decision without talking to her first.
“We need to call Alice,” he said. “She’s still the senator, and if she wants the senate seat, she should have it back.”
Obama drove to the hotel where Palmer was making her concession speech.
“I wanted to build a coalition that bridges city and suburbs, young and old, men and women and ethnic groups in order to forge a new social contract,” Palmer told her small crowd. Of the fact that not many people had voted, she said, “I’m not disappointed for myself, but for the missed opportunities people had to say change was needed.”
Once she left the podium, Palmer repeated to Obama and Hal Baron that she did not plan to reenter the race for state senate. That satisfied Obama.
“If she’s not running, then I’m still running,” he told Baron.
It did not, however, satisfy Palmer’s husband, Edward “Buzz” Palmer, a politically active Chicago police officer who had helped found the African-American Patrolman’s Union.
“What the shit is she saying?” Buzz Palmer exploded to Baron. “Go up there and tell her to take it back!”
The filing deadline for the March primary was on December 18. That was three weeks away, plenty of time for a politician with her own ward organization to gather the 757 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot. The next morning, the Tribune reported that Palmer was “undecided” about reclaiming her seat.
Palmer’s husband was not alone in wanting to keep his wife in Springfield. State Representative Lou Jones, an influential member of the Legislative Black Caucus, thought Palmer was too valuable to lose. The easiest way to avoid a fight, they figured, was to talk this young upstart Obama into stepping aside. Without Alice Palmer’s knowledge, Obama was summoned to a meeting at Jones’s house. Buzz Palmer was there, as were historian Timuel Black and Adolph Reed, who taught political science at Northwestern. These were elders of Chicago’s black community. They told Obama that he was a promising young man, but it was not yet his turn. The senate seat belonged to Alice. In Chicago, you get ahead by working your way up through an organization. If Obama stepped aside now, they would support him for another office down the road.
Obama shook his head.
“I’m not gonna do that,” he said.
He had made a deal with Palmer, he said, and she had told him on Election Night that she wasn’t running. He’d opened a campaign office and collected thousands of dollars from supporters.
If anything, the sit-down made Obama more determined to stay in the race. He left Jones’s house livid at the condescending, bullying tone of the lectures he’d just heard. By the time he caught up with Harwell, he was still angry. It was one of the few times she’d ever seen him vent his emotions.
“They talked to me like I was a kid,” Obama sputtered. “They said, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’ It was ‘Alice said this, Alice said that.’ ”
Since Obama refused to yield, the Draft Alice Palmer Committee was formed. Headed by Black, it also included state Senator Donne Trotter and one of Obama’s old supporters, Alderman Barbara Holt. The unexpected primary fight put many Hyde Park independents in a quandary. Obama and Palmer were both progressives. Both had been endorsed by the IVI-IPO in their races. The voters had to ask themselves which was more important: Palmer’s pledge to Obama or her experience in Springfield.
“Like many, I supported Obama as a successor to Alice,” former IVI-IPO chairman Sam Ackerman told the Hyde Park Herald. “But now we don’t need a successor.”
A week after losing the congressional election, Palmer decided she would attempt to reclaim her state senate seat, and asked her supporters to begin collecting signatures. Suddenly forced to play hardball politician, Obama found a way to call Palmer an Indian giver without actually using that politically incorrect term. The primary, he predicted to the Herald, would be determined by how voters felt about his message.
“I’m not going to win because people feel Palmer went back on her word,” he said, using his rival’s last name, in case anyone thought they were still friends.
Privately, though, Obama was uncomfortable