WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Sen. Paul Simon, the Illinois Democrat who embodied Midwestern liberalism and the New Deal traditions of the Democratic Party, died Tuesday at a hospital in Springfield, Ill., one day after he underwent heart surgery. He was 75.
A fixture in Illinois politics, Simon will be remembered as "the guy in the bow tie," expertly lampooned during his 1988 run for president by Saturday Night Live's Al Franken.
"I am not a neo-anything. I am a Democrat," he said in May 1987, announcing that he would seek the presidential nomination to lead "an America at work in a world of peace." Simon abandoned the effort after winning only 5 percent of the vote, finishing in last place in the 1988 Wisconsin Democratic primary, which he had hoped to win.
The son of Lutheran missionaries, Simon quit college in 1948 to become the editor and publisher -- at age 19 the nation's youngest -- of the weekly Troy Tribune in downstate Illinois.
The author of 11 books, he went on to become a fixture in Illinois politics, winning election to the Legislature and as lieutenant governor before winning a congressional seat in the Democrat's post-Watergate 1974 landslide.
In 1984, the newsman-turned-politician won a four-way primary, going on to oust three-term Republican U.S. Sen. Charles Percy by 89,000 votes in one of that year's most expensive contests. Simon was one of only two Democrats in the nation to defeat an incumbent while Republican Ronald Reagan was being re-elected in a 49-state landslide.
A traditional liberal in the FDR mold, Simon once described his vision of politics as commitment to "the Democratic tradition of caring and dreaming." Many looked to him as the heir to the late Sen. Paul Douglas, another Illinois Democrat, who embodied caring liberalism in the otherwise placid 1950s.
At one point, Simon aspired to be the new Walter Lippmann, but his career turned to politics in 1954 while he was editorially exhorting readers to stand up to the local political machine.
"So, just to show you could buck this dominance of key positions by underworld elements, I announced I would be a candidate for the state Legislature," Simon said in a 1987 interview. "I was 25 years old then. I won, and I've been in politics ever since."
It was during the 1954 race that Simon adopted the bow tie as a trademark. He served in the state House and Senate and a term as lieutenant governor before suffering his only electoral setback, defeat by Dan Walker in the race for the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He spent a year as a college professor and then was elected to Congress.
Just before he entered the presidential race in May 1987, Simon said, "I recognize I'm a long shot." It wasn't his first time; in 1984, he entered the Senate race despite a poll that showed him 17 points behind Percy and with the tough primary election ahead of him.
"Sometimes, you have to go (with your gut)," he said later. "I don't do the sensible thing all the time." At the time of his death, Simon was serving as director of the public policy institute that bears his name at Southern Illinois University.
Simon wed fellow state Rep. Jeanne Hurley in 1961. They were the first husband-and-wife team in the Illinois Legislature. They had two children.
