AP News, January 31st, 2007
Sheila Simon has come a long way since her first speech at a political picnic.
"Thanks for the hot dogs," she recalls muttering as a teen after being prompted to say a few words by her father, popular U.S. senator and former presidential hopeful Paul Simon.
Since then, she said, "public speaking has been pretty natural for me." Now at 45, Simon wonders if her next political step will come as easily.
Three years into her term as a city councilwoman here, Simon wants to be mayor of her southern Illinois hometown, taking a baby step in the footsteps of the bow-tied family patriarch.
At least for now, Simon has no aspirations to turn the family into the latest Illinois political dynasty, like the Daleys or the Stevensons. She is unwilling to uproot her children _ one a high school junior, the other in seventh grade _ in a quest for a state or federal post.
"People have been speculating about my political career for a very long time," she says.
Come Feb. 27, Simon hopes to be one of the top two vote-getters in the four-person nonpartisan primary that includes first-term Mayor Brad Cole, who's seeking re-election. Voters in this 25,597-population city will decide the winner April 17.
While insisting he's taking Simon no more seriously than the other two candidates _ one a political novice, the other a community activist who hosts a radio talk show _ Cole wonders if the free publicity Simon gets because of her lineage is fair.
"My dad was a great man, too. It's just that people didn't know him," Cole said. His late father _ a former banker _ was "just an everyday working American, a family man."
Even if Sheila Simon doesn't evoke her father's name during her campaign, his shadow still looms large.
By the time Paul Simon retired in 1997 _ he died six years later _ his resume was the story of great political ascent: muckraking newspaper publisher, Democratic state lawmaker, lieutenant governor, congressman, U.S. senator and, in 1988, presidential candidate. Squeaky clean, he was known in Springfield as "Reverend."
Paul Simon and his wife, Jeanne, met on the Illinois House floor when both were state representatives. In 1960, they honeymooned at the Democratic National Convention; Jeanne Simon gave up her seat to raise a family.
A young Sheila attended her dad's rallies. Years later when he ran for lieutenant governor, she and her brother, Martin, went along for the ride through Illinois in a station wagon.
"It was real easy to campaign for dad," Sheila Simon said. "I can think of very few things dad and I would disagree about. He had a very optimistic outlook, not wanting to brush over the bad things but always assuming things can be made better."
Four years after graduating from a Maryland high school in 1979, she earned a political science degree from Ohio's Wittenberg University. Simon later got a law degree from Georgetown and returned to Illinois.
She spent years as a legal aid attorney in divorces and housing matters, then worked in private practice before spending four years as a Jackson County prosecutor.
For the past 10 years, she's taught law at Southern Illinois University here while raising a family, doing her best to shun special treatment because she was Paul Simon's daughter.
She delayed political pursuits until 2002, when a neighbor suggested she parlay her passion in a community dispute over how to reuse an abandoned school _ Simon wanted to ensure it didn't fall into disrepair or get torn down _ into a seat on the Carbondale City Council that was being expanded.
As councilwoman, Simon has trumpeted environmental causes but admits some of her votes "make me seem kind of wacky." She voted against a community cleanup program, saying the $250,000 project included no study of who needed help in getting their yards cleaned.
"We wound up cleaning up the yards of lots of landlords in town," she said. "I don't think we need to do that for people who own their own real estate for their own profit."
If elected mayor, Simon, who long has favored her bicycle over any motorized vehicle, wants locals to become "better environmental citizens," proposing putting solar panels on City Hall. She also likes that violin instruction is offered to second- and third-graders.
"Part of the job of mayor is letting people inside and outside of Carbondale know the cool things going on, and that is cool," she said. "I want to make sure everyone knows we have outstanding schools."
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On the Net:
http://www.ci.carbondale.il.us/
