VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 239investigative journalist to the task of profiling the hapless Blair Hull. Here is some of what this
operation unearthed:
Blair Hull can afford to be cavalier about a senator’s $158,000 salary, because he is the richest
person ever to seek office in Illinois. He has a larger staff than any of his competitors. He pays his
staffers more than any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates pay theirs. And there is a very
good chance that he will spend more just on Illinois’s March 16 Democratic primary than all but
one or two of the Democratic presidential hopefuls will spend nationwide throughout the campaign.
When I joined him for a few days in November, Hull was in the midst of the most expensive
campaign in Illinois history, having pledged to spend as much as $40 million in pursuit of the seat
being vacated by the Republican Peter Fitzgerald. Hull’s has all the trappings of a state-of-the-art
campaign: meetups, a blog, and a timeshare in a corporate jet, not to mention a red, white, and blue
“Hull-on-Wheels” RV that is featured prominently in his television commercials and has become a
rolling symbol of the campaign. And at least in theory Hull, who is sixty-one, is a formidable
candidate: as a former high school teacher, union worker, and board member of NARAL, he
appeals to important Democratic constituencies; as the lone veteran in the field, he can oppose the
war in Iraq unquestioned. His unusual life story, too, sets Hull apart from the drab lawyers, state
representatives, and political scions who normally pursue office in Illinois, though in fact he is less
flamboyant than his campaign and personal history suggest.
Trained in mathematics and computer science, Hull became part of a notorious card-counting
ring that operated in Nevada in the 1970s. ... Hull always expected future gain. As if to
underscore his analytical rigor, he used his winnings to found Hull Trading Co., a computerized
options firm that earned him $340 million—and the means to run for the Senate—when
Goldman Sachs bought it, in 1999. ... But Hull’s campaign does demonstrate a shrewd
understanding of what it takes to buy a Senate seat. In the past few years Corzine and Warner
(this time running for Virginia governor) got elected, laying out a strategy that Hull’s campaign
has largely adopted. Unlike Checchi and Huffington, Corzine went beyond television
advertising to build his base of support. “Any self-funded candidate who relies on mass media
to carry his message in the absence of creating a warm and lasting connection with voters is
going to lose,” Steve DeMicco, who managed Corzine’s campaign, warns. Corzine courted key
state officials and built an intricate grassroots network well in advance of the election.
(Hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable donations to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition and similar organizations didn’t hurt either.) And he largely resisted the urge to
overrule his advisers, though he did refuse the suggestion that he shave his beard. “For the most
part,” DeMicco says, “he knew what he didn’t know.” Hull, too, has assiduously cultivated the
grass roots—particularly downstate, where he is counting on outperforming his Chicago-based
competitors in the primary. Given that at least six other candidates are vying for the Democratic
nomination, the winner should need only 25 to 30 percent of the vote. Though the millions Hull
has spent to date have yet to make him the front-runner, his campaign is showing reasonable
progress in the difficult task of turning a virtual unknown into a serious prospect for the state’s
12 million citizens. Hull has already campaigned full time for more than a year, blanketing the
state with television ads, joining parades in the “Hull-on-Wheels” RV, and giving endless talks
in small towns similar to Orland Hills. Like other candidates, Hull supports drug re-importation
from Canada. He recently took a bus trip to Windsor, Ontario, with seniors who were buying
prescription drugs. Unlike other candidates, he paid for the bus, the hotel rooms, and even the
doctors’ visits. And just as Corzine did, he has spent an astonishing amount of money courting