John E. Yang and Associated Press
Sunday, October 26, 1997; Page A07

Illinois State Comptroller Loleta Didrickson (R) said she has been listening to the people and the people want her to challenge Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) in 1998.

Didrickson, who for weeks had resisted calls to take on the first-term incumbent, said in a statement that she was giving in to popular demand.

"I didn't accurately gauge the strong support I had to make the Senate run," she said three weeks after she announced she would run for secretary of state. "It is the people who will elect me, and it is the people who I am listening to now."

In 1991, Gov. Jim Edgar (R) tapped Didrickson, then a state representative from Chicago's affluent suburbs, to become director of the state Department of Employment Security.

She was elected state comptroller in 1994.

State Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, an heir to a family banking fortune whose personal wealth is estimated at more than $20 million, is Didrickson's main opponent for the GOP nomination.

Moseley-Braun expects no serious primary opposition. But Republicans view her as the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection.