Surprise winners?

The results were in and people were just hanging out in the office of the Democratic Party of Evanston (DPOE) on election night during the 1986 primary election.

At around 2:00 a.m. the phone rang and Jonathan Baum, who lost a state representative race to Jan Schakowsky four years later, answered it.

“What?” he exclaimed. “Jeff Smith won? And Adrienne Goodman, too?”

He paused and then asked, suspiciously, “Who is this?”

It turned out that Smith had beaten the slated candidate for 9th district State Central Committeeman in a city/suburban district and Goodman had beaten the slated candidate for Committeewoman. Neither of them were expected to win those “less important” offices so nobody in the DPOE office had been keeping tallies of those contests.