Must we bear 15-month gubernatorial campaign?

The Cubs are in first place with a cross-your-fingers shot atgoing to their first World Series in 44 years, and Neil Hartigan istelling us "there's not a dime's difference" between Jim Edgar andJim Thompson.

The Bears have just traded away Super Bowl quarterback JimMcMahon, and Jim Edgar is telling us that Hartigan is a wishy-washypolitician who lacks the "guts to govern."

Nothing personal, but do these guys really think anyone ispaying attention, or cares at this point what they are saying?

This is still the summer of 1989. The Cubs will be back inspring training before the 1990 Illinois primary election is heldnext March.

Kids not yet conceived will be born, we'll all have paid anotheryear's taxes, another summer will have come and gone, and some of uswill have passed two more birthdays before any of us get to vote forDemocrat Hartigan or Republican Edgar for governor in the November,1990, general election.

And yet, there they - and a load of other candidates for otheroffices - are, out there blowing in the wind.

They are fortunate, actually, that no one is paying attention.Because the only important truth currently on public display is thatour politicians have saddled Illinois and its voters with what has tobe one of the country's dumbest election schedules.

We complain uselessly about the presidential campaign marathon,which now runs about two years. But consider our own:

Candidates for governor and other state offices start announcingtheir candidacies in June and July of the year before the election.They file their nominating papers in December. The primary is notuntil March of the next year. The election is in November - which atthe moment is still nearly 15 months off. And the winners do not, ofcourse, actually take office until the following January.

The entire process thus slops over into three calendar years.And it produces a situation in which candidates often are talkingabout outdated matters and are often able to duck more currentissues.

Because the Legislature never gets around to doing or decidinganything by March, for instance, candidates can get through theprimary talking about what last year's Legislature did instead ofwhat this one is doing.

Right now, for instance, Hartigan appears to be running againstGov. Thompson, who is not a candidate, rather than Edgar, who is. Heis hammering the Republicans for raising taxes as if unaware thatthis year's income tax boost was crafted principally by DemocraticHouse Speaker Michael Madigan.

There is a lot more irrelevance than illumination in all ofthis. But what is mainly wrong is that there is too much of it andit goes on too damn long.

It is numbing and it is unnecessary, especially so in the caseof candidates like Hartigan and Edgar (and most of the others thisyear) who have been around for semi-ever. Name recognition is farless a problem than overexposure.

It is useless, of course, to expect the candidates to pipe downand disappear until, say, next Valentine's Day. But there is asolution - a solution that was, in fact, available this year: A billin the Legislature to move the primary from March to September.

That would have given us a far shorter and more civilizedelection season of the kind most states already have. But the bossesof both political parties scuttled the bill and it wasunceremoniously buried, a too-common fate of civilized solutions inSpringfield. Now there is something for Hartigan, Edgar and theothers to talk about - but not yet, please.

Raymond R. Coffey is the editor of the editorial pages.