“If the challenge is not withdrawn she might have 90-100 more than the minimum.”
Jon Zahm commenting on McHenry County Blog 12/28/19
Friday night, after spending the day in Springfield, 14th congressional district candidate Catalina Lauf revealed in an Instagram post her campaign would be filing a Motion To Terminate Proceedings of Petition Objection.
The objection, filed by co-objectors Greg Nichols of Plainfield and Justin R. Nudo of Pingree Grove, attempts to have Lauf removed from the March 17 Republican ballot.
Since before Christmas, McHenry County Blog had learned the heart of the petition objection had to do with a petition circulator who’s an out of state resident, and every page this circulator passed would be thrown out.
Late Saturday afternoon, political consultant Jon Zahm commented on the Lauf objection, and here is the full context of his comment in reference to the petition objection against Catalina Lauf:
“The objection was not frivolous.
“Her team of mostly out of state paid circulators turned in just 1.5X the minimum.
“If the challenge is not withdrawn she might have 90-100 more than the minimum.
“But that is only because her financial backers and consultants hired legendary election attorney Burt Odelsen, who has successfully made the case that her Kentucky circulator, responsible for about a third of the packet, will be allowed to keep her signatures, despite submitting a vague and incomplete circulator’s address.
“That should have invalidated all her signatures and therefore the whole packet.”
Jon Zahm in comment on McHenry County Blog 12/28/19
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Saturday evening, Lauf posted this video on Instagram and Twitter:
COMMENTARY: While both Zahm and Lauf said different things, the consistency in their respective comments is Catalina Lauf will remain on the ballot.
Co-objectors Greg Nichols, a Republican from Plainfield and Justin R. Nudo, a known Democratic operative who very recently relocated into the 14th district in Pingree Grove, should do the honorable thing and withdraw the petition objection first thing tomorrow morning.
But no matter whether its honorably withdrawn, terminated through Lauf’s motion or simply dismissed by the State Officers Electoral Board hearing officer, for all practical purposes, the objection is over.
And now you have an even more fired-up candidate in Catalina Lauf, her campaign organization and all of her supporters and donors across the district and across the country.
Whether momentum from the failed objection against her will propel her to the nomination remains to be seen.
And because of the unsuccessful petition objection launched as a product of the bipartisan swamp, Lauf can rightly claim the mantle to drain the swamp, support President Trump as he continues to do the same, and add the Illinois swamp into this picture.
Now that it is known there will be 7 candidates to choose from in the Republican primary, may the campaign begin in earnest, beginning with a strong finish to the 4th quarter campaign fundraising period Tuesday night and report cards filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) made public by January 15.
It’s a good thing that this challenge didn’t happen in Crystal Lake as Lauf would have been removed from the ballot based on past precedent.
Those who she is running against would have had their fellow City Council chums vote against her.
How odd is it that the election rules favor the incumbents in Crystal Lake and every election there is a challenge or two to remove any threat to the cabal that’s been running the City into the ground. What are they so afraid of and what are they hiding from the taxpayers?
Something isn’t right here. Who would want to be involved in small time City government for a few thousand dollars per year stipend unless because of massive ego or some other financial benefit in my opinion. What’s really going on in Crystal Lake?
Zahm should have just said he was wrong instead of making these bizarre excuses.
1. Sounds like a weak objection if it depended on invalidating everything that one person did. Obviously their case for doing so wasn’t the open and shut case that they thought it would be.
2. It’s kind of silly to complain about her hiring a good lawyer. What was she supposed to do? Hire an incompetent lawyer? Not hire a lawyer? People gave her money specifically to help her out with the challenge.
3. Finally, why even note that she’ll have 90-100 more signatures more than the minimum like it’s a bad thing? The minimum is the minimum. As long as you get at least that, it doesn’t matter.
Now these dummies who challenged her, who wanted her off the ballot, have unwittingly galvanized her supporters and gained her new supporters out of sympathy for her and disdain of “the swamp.”
You didn’t want Catalina Lauf to be the nominee?
Guess what?
You just made that more likely!
You helped her. lol
Short list of my favorite ‘Political Consultant’ names:
Rando Comments
Spazz Gingerbeer
Grim Mealdeal
Chub Snarkles
Lurleen Pickles
If you want and for an enormous fee.
I’ll lease you a busload of these self-proclaimed ‘political experts’, that you can than blame, when you follow their idiotic bad advice.
I don’t understand why she needed to resort to hiring out of state circulators?
Am I missing something?
She claims to have thousands of supporters across the district.
Couldn’t each one sign a petition , and perhaps get a few more signatures, and get them to her?
And if a sizable number of petitions weren’t circulated by HER, than that, alone, speaks volumes.
Again, I keep wanting to like her.
I sincerely do.
But, she continues to raise more doubts than give reassurance…
Well, I am glad to see that the young 14th Congressional District GOP candidate, Catalina Lauf, will remain on the ballot.
She is proving to be a scrappy fighter with a growing base of support.
If she can generate excitement with young Republicans in our district and state…the more power to her.
Spot on Correcting
Many people hire circulators… she announced in late August, had a lot of national media attention, had to raise money?
Like what do you not understand about campaigns?
Also I know a lot of people who volunteered to circulate her petitions.
You’re clearly not a supporter if something so trivial like that “raises doubts” to you.
A new genus discovered,
a Nudo Nichols Zahm
When you scape by as the only candidate challenged.
When you hardly show any in district support by
having few circulators from the 14th. And the majority of the signatures gathered by paid operatives out of Arizona and Kentucky.
When you lie about a “swamp” conspiracy when
the only “swamp” is your own (Lauf’s) paid work against conservative icon Jeanne Ives in her 2018 Governor’s race. And your own fake/puffed thin resume.
Then you really have no momentum coming out of this. And are masking your own problems with more vague and phony talking points.
And, to set the record straight, I did not have any role in the part of the challenge that involved the in-person county binder checks, which were found to be insufficient in the Springfield record check.
And I am not a paid consultant in this race.
But as a long time conservative activist, and one of the key recruiters of, and campaigners for, Randy Hultgren against the ultimate swamp creature, the Denny/Ethan Hastert cabal, in 2010, I have a deep interest in that district.
And I want to see the winner be someone without ethical and character problems. And that means someone besides Catalina Lauf and Ted Gradel.
And I have never met, talked to, in any way communicated with, Mr. Nudo.
Lastly, I’m not going to go back and forth with mostly anonymous people on this blog. I can be reached directly at goliathslayers@gmail.com or FB Messenger at Jon A. Zahm.
Interesting side-note. the General Consultant of the Gradel campaign, Chip Englander, was General Consultant of the disgusting Bruce Rauner campaign, that hired Lauf and falsely campaigned on the premise that Ives was “Michael Madigan’s favorite Republican.”
Thank You Jon Zahm for your comment.
I too, have concerns for Catalina Lauf.
Catalina is a very pretty young lady and might, someday run for an Elected Office and win.
Until then, she would be wise to be very careful with those that stroke her ego.
J – I understand plenty about campaigns!
Such as, When you have to hire FROM OUT OF STATE, it is a clear indication that you have not yet garnered any support…
I do not dislike Catalina…
She just continues to make herself look shallow.
Zahm’s points better be answered by Team Lauf.
Fluff is an incredible light weight, she cannot even produce a cell phone video that doesn’t look like a bad Milli Vanilli lip sync job.
The fact you all have this much angst against her is hilarious.
If she’s “Catalina Fluff” “unethical” “not to be taking seriously” “doesn’t have a chance” etc etc why are you so obsessed with taking her down?
You guys are worse than the Democrats Clinton swamp v Trump.
And no there’s nothing wrong with paid circulators – that has nothing to do with “support.”
A lot of campaigns hire them because they’re cheaper or they trust the quality of the firm etc.
All of this doesn’t matter because her true support across the district will be shown during her landslide Primary victory.
The board of elections site says the objection has been withdrawn.
I guess that means it’s official now?
Correcting, I put up the official notification of the withdrawal this morning in a new article.
The title of this article updated to reflect the official withdrawal as of today, but signed by co-objectors yesterday.
Now, it’s on to the primary.