Reflecting a growing national concern, the race for an Illinois House seat to represent much of Kane County has been focusing on crime and what to do about it.
Incumbent Patricia Reid Lindner, a 54-year-old Sugar Grove attorney who practices divorce and family law, and challenger Thomas M. Hartwell, a 34-year-old Elgin attorney in corporate transactional law and real estate, are vying in the March 15 Republican primary for the 65th House District.
Democrats have no candidate in the primary, according to the elections department of the Kane County Clerk’s office, but could slate one before the November election.
Both Republicans have found a receptive audience when campaigning against crime, especially in the industrial river towns of Elgin and Aurora, where gangs have been thriving.
“In Elgin,” Hartwell said, “we’ve had a decrease in gang crime but it is still a realistic problem that needs to be dealt with. In comparison to Chicago, it’s not that bad.”
Hartwell has been playing up his experience with God’s Gym, a gang-fighting organization whose name is a takeoff on the well-known health club chain Gold’s Gym.
Hartwell is a founder and board chairman of God’s Gym at 216 E. Chicago St. in Elgin, a gymnasium and recreation center that has managed to persuade 30 young men to leave gangs since it opened in 1992, he said.
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Hartwell said the state needs to have a more restrictive policy on the early release of prisoners; create institute boot prison camps; and establish electronically monitored minimal security facilities to house non-violent criminals.
Reid Lindner, whose mother, Charlotte T. Reid, and paternal grandfather, Frank R. Reid Sr., were Republican congressmen from Aurora at different times, said violence has become “the major issue” in the district that she was elected to two years ago.
“Our society has become so violent,” Reid Lindner said.
She and State Rep. Tom Cross (R-Oswego) sponsored hearings in Aurora and Elgin earlier this month on crime and how to combat it. Reid Lindner is proposing a bill that would allow police to release the names of minors convicted of violent crimes.
Constituents have complained about property taxes for education and have asked for funding alternatives to property taxes. Reid Lindner said she favors using some state income taxes in place of property taxes.
“There should be some reductions in some property taxes and a shift in the income tax but not necessarily a raise (in the income tax),” Reid Lindner said. “So much of it goes to Medicaid.”
Hartwell said the state needs to look at using the income or sales tax, instead of the traditional property tax, as a method to finance school expansion programs.