As reported yesterday on McHenry County Blog, veteran Oakwood Hills Republican precinct committee- man and frequent national convention delegate Bernie Narusis called for Bill LeFew’s resignation because of LeFew’s hiding his identity when he mailed a hit piece attacking McHenry County State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi.
In doing so, Narusis called LeFew a “spineless coward,” echoing a Northwest Herald editorial yesterday which characterized LeFew’s behavior as “cowardly.”
Why didn’t he put his name and return address on the envelope, a copy of which you can see here?
It was done without my name and address because many committeemen have expressed to me their feeling that the Chairman should not use his name or title to endorse.
That, plus what is below, was emailed by McHenry County Republican Central Committee Chairman LeFew to all GOP committeemn:
Subject: Bernie Narusis email
Importance: HighDear Fellow Republican Committeemen,
Some of you may have gotten an email recently from Bernie Narusis. It brought up several points and I thought it might be best for you to know both sides.
In the email he criticized me for mailing a copy of a Sept 23rd Daily Herald
article to about 900 people in McHenry County. Bernie and I obviously disagree. All of the costs were paid by me. No one else contributed to this.No candidate was told about this in advance.
It was done without my name and address because many committeemen have expressed to me their feeling that the Chairman should not use his name or title to endorse.
Election law says that the mailer must be identified if mailed by a POLITICAL COMMITTEE. No funds from any committee, including my own, were spent on this. My own personal funds were used.
All United States citizens have the right to free speech, including party chairman and elected officials. I would not criticize Bernie or anyone else that did a mailing that was simply an exact copy of a newspaper article. In fact, those copies were printed by that same newspaper.
The real issue here is not the mailing. The real issue here is the actions talked about in the Daily Herald article.
Our present States Attorney has spent over $60,000 in petty cash funds in the last 3 years. $17,000 of that for things like parade candy, cookies, donuts, and food.
The article was sent out without comment so that people could have the facts and decide for themselves.
As to the mailing lists, around 700 of the 900 went to Republicans in the northern part of the county. The other approx 190 went to elected officials county wide. No Republican fund raising list was used.
As to my resignation, I announced that I had become aware that a request for an investigation of our current States Attorney had been made to the Illinois Attorney General. I stated that should the Attorney General ask my office, as County Treasurer, for information on the money spent for cake, candy, cookies, etc., I believed I would have a conflict of interest between the job of Chairman and that of Treasurer. If I gave the Attorney General all the information they requested, as required by law, some could say that I didn’t do my job to protect Republicans and at that time, I would have to resign to avoid this conflict.
The mailing that is in question here never said anything negative about anyone. It was simply a copy of a newspaper article that was printed back in Sept of 2007 in the Daily Herald.
As to the name calling done by Bernie in his email,(spinless coward) I have never done that to him, nor any other candidate and would not support anyone that does this. Each of us must choose who we support, and who we do not, but we cannot let it make us into enemies.
What is trying to be done here is quite simple. Since the facts of the mailing are 100% true and are not in question, some are trying cloud the issue.
It is the old method of “if you don’t like the message, kill the messenger” Bill LeFew
I cleaned up a couple of typographical errors.
Tomorrow – Do As I Say, Not As I Do