The national “Blue Wave” in the November 2018 elections — which saw Democrats win a net gain of 40 seats in the House of Representatives and outdraw Republicans overall by 8.6% of the vote — also crashed ashore in Lake County.
Democrats won enough positions to take over a majority of the Lake County Board seats, and also flipped seats in the offices of treasurer, county clerk and sheriff, resulting in the top county story of 2018.
More than 56% of the county’s 448,295 registered voters turned out on Nov. 6, 2018, compared to the 50% that showed up at the polls in the 2014 elections.
Democratic County Board candidates who flipped seats previously held by Republicans included John Wasik (District 6), Jessica Vealitzek (District 10), Jennifer Clark (District 15), Julie Simpson (District 18) and Adam R. Didech (District 20). Angelo D. Kyle (District 14) also returned to the board after an absence.
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Sandy Hart, a Democrat from Lake Bluff, became the first Democratic Lake County Board chairwoman in county history after the new board was sworn in with 12 Democrats to nine Republicans.
“I look forward to serving you for the next two years, Thank you so much for your faith in me,” Hart said to a loud round of applause after she was elected to chair the board.
“I’m very proud to serve this destiny with the board,” she said of the historic election. “Newly elected members bring energy and ideas and a fresh outlook, and current board members offer a wealth of experience, knowledge and consistency that is so important.
“I’m confident we can work together as a team and, when there are differences of opinion, we will listen to understand, debate respectfully and search for common ground.”
Hart also told the board that “we have a lot of work to do, and I know you are all committed to achieving positive results for the residents of Lake County.”
Democrat Mary Ross Cunningham was appointed the board’s vice chairwoman. The Lake County Forest Preserve Board of Commissioners, which is comprised of County Board members, also selected Kyle as its president.
In other county races, Holly Kim was sworn in as treasurer and Robin O’Connor as clerk after beating Republican incumbents David Stolman and Carla Wyckoff, respectively.
Republican incumbent Mark Curran almost held on to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, as he finished behind Democrat John Idleburg by just 137 votes put of 245,633 votes cast. Curran subsequently called for a full recount that began in August but came to an end when he voluntarily withdrew his contest petition, saying the result was unlikely to change.
Following the 2018 balloting, party leaders looked to put the results into perspective.
“The sweep is complete, (and) it was as blue as blue could be,” state Sen. Terry Link of Vernon Hills, the county’s Democratic Party chairman. “It was an extremely fulfilling night.”
Mark Shaw, chairman of the Lake County Republican Central Committee, noted in a Facebook post that local Republicans outperformed state GOP candidates in other suburban counties.
“Unfortunately, despite your extraordinary efforts, the results were not what we wanted to see,” Shaw wrote to followers. “Nevertheless, you can be proud that our wins outnumbered our losses and Lake County Republicans managed to erect a larger ‘firewall’ against the much heralded ‘blue wave’ than did many of our sister Republican organizations in the other collar counties.”
Environmental concerns
Another major Lake County story in 2018 began with a baiduhai report that Medline Industries’ Waukegan facility and Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee release ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas used to sterilize equipment and to make other chemicals, according to state and federal environmental agencies.
Elected officials in Gurnee and Waukegan, along with the County Board and local representatives in Congress, began pushing for air monitoring around the plants and investigations into why the emissions data wasn’t reported properly. Citizen groups also began protests and awareness campaigns that continued into 2019, along with new reports on testing and proposals for heightened regulations.
Also in 2018, the Lake County Board and numerous communities along the Des Plaines River voiced concerns about potential environmental impacts of the Foxconn manufacturing plant that broke ground north of the border, and called on the state of Wisconsin to reconsider the waiving of certain environmental regulations related to the development.
The year also featured multiple headlines about police-involved shootings, with incidents taking place in Zion, Gurnee, Lakemoor, Vernon Hills and Wadsworth, and four of them resulting in fatalities. In the Gurnee incident, a woman who ran onto busy Route 41 with a rifle was shot dead by police after attempts to get her to drop the weapon failed.
Elsewhere across the county, a small alligator was rescued from where it had apparently had been dumped in Waukegan Harbor; an increase in Zion-area shootings resulted in a multi-jurisdictional police response; and the $200 million mixed residential and retail development known as Mellody Farm opened to the public in Vernon Hills.