Other than Abe, who’s the most inspiring person in Illinois history to candidates?

Ruth Hanna McCormick?

Now that’s an interesting choice.

On questionnaires we sent out in early December, we asked all the folks running in local contested primary elections this year to name a “historical figure from Illinois” whom they “most admire or draw inspiration from.” We asked them not to choose Abraham Lincoln because everybody would choose Abe.

Of the dozens of responses we received, many were, of course, the choices you would expect. There’s a lot of love out there for Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as for President Ronald Reagan, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and former Sen. Paul Simon.

All worthy choices.

But the fun in a survey such as this is in the names you might not see coming.

It was nice to see, for instance, that the pioneering social worker Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, remains such an inspiration to this day. She was named by at least six candidates.

“Jane Addams. She not only broke barriers — she crushed them,” wrote Ricky Gandhi, of Burbank, who is running in the Democratic primary for a seat in the Illinois House. “Her advocacy on social issues, peace, and providing services to community members should be emulated by everyone. She is my personal hero.”

And we didn’t expected that two candidates — 7th Congressional District candidate Anthony Clark and 60th Illinois House District candidate Diana Burdette — would name Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader killed in a police raid in Chicago in 1969.

“His fight is our fight,” Burdette wrote. “His light, his clarity was smothered out of fear that people would realize that the real power was in a unified organized citizenry. He was a visionary.”

Several candidates named historic figures with whom they have personal family connections.

Michael G. Grace, who is running for a seat on the board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, named James Gately, a former president of the Chicago Park District and — more famously — the founder on the South Side of Gately’s People Store. Gately was Grace’s great grandfather.

Tom Tarter, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, named James H. Howard, a farmer from the Waukegan area who enlisted as a Union soldier in the Civil War — taking the place of his oldest son. Because Sgt. Howard was older, he became “a father figure” to his fellow soldiers, Tarter wrote, and died of his war wounds soon after the conflict ended. Howard was Tarter’s great, great grandfather.

Others inspirational figures named included General Ulysses S. Grant, Ida B. Wells, federal Judge Abner Mikva, Mother Jones, Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, Daniel Burnham, Rep. Henry Hyde, Illinois Appellate Judge Eugene Pincham and Cook County State’s Attorney Ben Adamowski.

To our thinking, though, two choices stood out for unexpectedness and poignancy.

Patricia D. Bonnin (“Patti Vasquez”), a Chicagoan running in the Democratic primary for the Illinois House, named Edward Coles, the second governor of Illinois, as an inspiration.

Coles, Vasquez wrote, was born into a slave-holding family but set free 19 enslaved people. He then traveled up and down the state, persuading others to keep Illinois a non-slave state.

“Had Coles not fought to prevent the institution from taking hold in Illinois, slavery might have become commonplace and not the shock to the conscience to Lincoln as it was when he traveled to southern states as an adult,” Vasquez wrote. Coles “risked everything to spread the most sacred of American values — freedom.”

And then there was Ruth Hanna McCormick, named as an inspiration by Carolyn Schofield, of Crystal Lake, who is running as a Republican for a seat in the Illinois House.

McCormick was the first woman elected to Congress from Illinois, in 1928, and a leader in passing a partial suffrage law that allowed women the right to vote in municipal and presidential elections. A strong advocate for women’s rights her entire career, she fought for passage of the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920.

“She was a trailblazer,” Schofield wrote, “who influenced countless women to seek leadership roles in politics.”

An inspiration, to be sure.

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