Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has a suburban school board candidate he wants me to vote for on Tuesday, even though Dart lives in Chicago. The sheriff sent me a letter to tell me what a great guy the fellow is that he’s backing.
Orland Township Supervisor Paul O’Grady is endorsing a candidate for Moraine Valley Community College trustee and is so enthusiastic he sent out a letter on stationery that had the words “Orland Township” in large letters at the top, just in case I didn’t read down to his signature, which carried his title below.
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But to make it clear he was just using his position in government and not our tax money in endorsing the candidate, at the very bottom of the letter, in much smaller type, were the words “Friends of Paul O’Grady.”
Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin’s face has appeared on all sorts of campaign fliers backing slates of candidates for village trustee and local school boards, but he also sent me a letter just in case the other material had been placed in the trash before I read it. The mayor, apparently realizing how addlepated voters can be, concluded with this paragraph, “I will add that you are allowed to bring this card (which included the names of the candidates he’s backing) into the polls with you.”
It would be even easier and save more time if the mayor simply did my voting for me, but there are all sorts of laws preventing that sort of behavior because some people just don’t trust people in high places when it comes to influencing the votes of the masses.
For example, there’s a law that forbids the use of government stationery to support political candidates. I am sure O’Grady is aware of that, being a municipal attorney. The letterhead he uses does not contain the return address of Orland Township on it, as official stationery might, so I’m sure it’s just a fake, not the real thing.
Trying to figure out whom to vote for in the suburbs can be difficult, and I appreciate all the help from caring, knowledgeable elected leaders who are concerned that I support the right people at the polls.
I haven’t lived in Chicago for decades, yet I feel I know Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chuy Garcia better than I know the park district and library district board members in my suburb. There’s been a story a day on the local TV news about Rahm and Chuy for nearly three months, it seems, and they each have TV commercials telling me what a dishonest, incompetent and downright mean guy their opponent is.
There’s even one with a former police officer who says Garcia wants to increase the crime rate, although I heard Garcia wants to hire about 1,000 more police officers to reduce the crime rate. I know a former police officer, paid to serve and protect the public for decades (and probably getting a pension from the taxpayers), wouldn’t mislead anyone about something like that — just as I’m sure the elected officials who sent me letters wouldn’t use their positions of public trust unless they were convinced that voters were about to cast their ballots for people unworthy of public office.
You elect the unworthy to public office, and the next thing you know they’ll be using their positions to raise money to elect their friends, relatives and supporters. It can result in an awful mess.
As someone who sat on newspaper editorial boards for a lot of years, I can tell you that it’s a difficult task picking one candidate over another. You can talk to politicians in person, study their records, interview people who know them (allies and enemies) and still pick the wrong person to endorse.
This newspaper endorsed former Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova for state treasurer in a Democratic Party primary in 1998 ago over McLaughlin. Genova beat McLaughlin in the primary but lost the general election to Judy Baar Topinka. A few years later, Genova was sent to prison for public corruption.
Speaking only for myself, Genova, a lawyer and Notre Dame graduate, seemed to understand what the treasurer’s office did and had plans for how to improve it. He was more impressive than McLaughlin, whose record as Orland Park mayor since that time has been stellar.
There have been lots of studies that show newspaper editorial endorsements have little impact on elections, but I took my role seriously (as did others on the editorial board) and believed that people trusted us to make the best possible recommendations. I recall the mistakes we made much better than the right ones (or in most cases, the better choice of two candidates who both were flawed).
But there’s a difference between being on a newspaper editorial board or a newspaper columnist and being an elected official. As the latter, you carry a title that represents an entire community, not just the people who voted for you or the members of your party.
In local elections, the endorsements of respected elected officials carry a lot of weight because suburban candidates usually don’t have a lot of money to spend on campaigns. News coverage of these elections are limited. All anyone may know about a particular candidate is the information he reads in a political flier (usually an announcement that “I will keep property taxes down”).
In one flier I saw, a school board candidate promise to defeat state legislation that would have taken hundreds of thousands of tax dollars away from his school district, threatening the quality of schools and the lives of children, he warned. That candidate’s pretty effective because the legislation he was referring to was killed last year.
Every piece of information received tells you something about a candidate. You may like Dart as sheriff but may not like him sticking his nose into your local election. Maybe you don’t like McLaughlin, so when he tells you to vote for people, you figure you’ll vote for the other side.
I don’t like O’Grady using “Orland Township” stationery to endorse his favorite candidate for Moraine Valley trustee, so I will have to think hard about endorsing his choice in that contest.
There’s never a way to be certain about candidates running for public office. I’ve seen a lot of good people over the years make promises running for village trustee or school board member to know that people can change after they’re elected. It happens more often than not.
Some people choose not to vote at all, thinking that’s the best statement they can make about their government and the political process.
People get the government they deserve, some people claim. Now there’s an awful thought.
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