McHenry County Blog

This is the time of year when candidates, well, mainly candidates’ supporters, knock down opponents’ signs, replace them with then own, if they aren’t very bright, or just put their candidates’ sign in front of the opponents, if they are more astute.

Dennis Anderson yard signs on the Route 14 Right-of-Way in Crystal Lake.

Candidates without supporters in an area, put their signs on the public right-of-way, not remotely legal.

Just talked to a Republican candidate for County Board in District 5 who said his volunteers were campaigning in Lake in the Hills, leaving literature at front doors, when one saw a girl get out of a car, go up to a house and take the literature.

When confronted, the girl said, “Oh, I thought that was out literature.”

Strange.

Why would someone remove their own candidates’ literature?

In this day of phones that take pictures, that’s a really strange thing to do.

Not to mention politically dangerous.

This could end up being a developing story.

David McSweeney

State Rep. candidate David McSweeney did something that might seem strange on the surface.

He released the results of a 300-person poll to a publication that costs about $300 a year.

That’s Rick Miller’s Capitol Fax.

Although most people probably receive it via computer now, it was designed to provide inside information about Illinois politics.

So yesterday, the McSweeney campaign released the survey results exclusively to Capitol Fax.

Why?

McSweeney wasn’t interested in voters reading that he was way ahead of appointed incumbent Kent Gaffney.

He wanted to tell potential Kent Gaffney contributors–those who run Political Action Committees and others who write checks right out of their corporate treasuries–that he was beating the pants off Gaffney and that future contributions to Gaffney would be both

• a waste of money and
• remembered by McSweeney when he took office.

Not a bad strategy.

Attempted intimidation, of course, but this is the stage of the campaign.

If you can keep people off the ballot by convincing them they can’t win, that’s as good as beating them at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, Danielle Rowe was in Crystal Lake Sunday afternoon for the Tea Party demonstration against Outback Steakhouse.

An email from Congressman Randy Hultgren:

Randy on the Campaign Trail

Our campaign has been travelling throughout the entire 14th District meeting with voters, supporters, local business leaders and local elected officials every week. It’s clear to me that the voters of the 14th district need and deserve responsible leadership in Washington that they can trust. I look forward to providing that leadership to you and your families.

Randy Hultgren presents a Certificate of Appreciation to McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren at the Nunda Township Republican Party Picnic. Between Nygren and Hultgren are former Nunda Township Road Commissioner-McHenry County and Lakewood Board member Ed Dvorak and State Rep. Ed Sullivan.

Kendall County Meet and Greet

McHenry County Day

Will County Meet and Greet

Sycamore Parade

DeKalb County Day

Warren Township GOP Pig Roast

In Case You Missed It

Rep. Hultgren decries ‘adversarial’ regulators

Oswego train stop slow to station

Amtrak, Not Metra, Could be Area’s First Passenger Rail Service

Hultgren makes a stop in Sycamore

Hultgren Statement On The October Jobs Report

Hultgren Statement On UNESCO’s Vote To Admit Palestine

Call to Action

Campaign season is upon us and petitions are needed to secure my spot on the ballot for re-election to Congress in the 14th District of Illinois. We need volunteers to join our team to gather signatures. Whether you collect 25 or 250, your assistance will be critical to accomplishing our mission of reaching 2500 petition signers by November 15th.

Click here to download a copy of the petition, and click here for the instructions.

Volunteers of the Month

Our volunteer of the month is Marie Moulton, a former Lyric Opera flutist of 40 years and political junkie who has transferred her passionate Constitutional Conservatism to support for candidates who exhibit the core values of character and solid family virtues. Marie loves to meet people and share her experiences in politics with them. Obviously, this is working for her as she has collected 170 signatures for Randy to be on the March 20 Primary Ballot. Please give Marie a hand when you meet her!

Katherine Keefe

Lou Bianchi

Phyllis Walters

Dr. Anne Majewski

Today, I thought it might be interesting to look at what countywide officials have in their campaign funds. This is the first year the public has not had to wait until January. The new quarterly reporting law took effect on January 1, 2011, so this is the first October snapshot of summer-fall fundraising.

Let’s look at the McHenry County officials up for election first:

• Circuit Clerk Katherine Keefe – $580
• Recorder of Deeds Phyllis Walters – $19,341
• State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi – $93,723
• Coroner candidate Anne Majewski – No report

Campaign disclosure reports do not have to be filed until either $3,000 is raised or spent.

There’s a quote from McHenry County State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi in the Chicago Tribune Wednesday that’s worth passing on.

It’s in an article by Amanda Marrazzo and Robert McCoppin’s entitled,

McHenry sheriff

says Bianchi out

to get him

That’s the article about the Monday hearing on former Deputy Zane Seipler’s suit asking that a Special Prosecutor be named by Associate Judge Thomas Meyer to probe whether Sheriff Keith Nygren used office resources for campaign purposes.

Here are Bianchi’s words:

“If I was out to get him [Sheriff Keith Nygren], I could impanel a grand jury, question a couple of witnesses and indict him.”

What does that mean?

Should be understood in the defense attorney’s parlance that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, that is, it is so very easy to indict someone, if a state’s attorney wants to do so, he can?

Or should it be interpreted that Bianchi knows people working in the Sheriff’s office who would be willing to testify that Sheriff’s employees worked on Nygren’s campaign on office time and/or using office resources?

As the 1966 song asked,

“What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie? Are we meant to take more than we give?…Is life only to the strong, Alfie? So long as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie, I know there something much more..”

Sort of a meaning of life song, don’t you think?

A major change that motorists will notice is the curve east of McHenry Avenue will be made gentler. The shift will also open up new commercial space for Crystal Lake as Material Service, owner of the land on both sides of the present curve, ends up with a much larger parcel of property to market. Click to enlarge.

The tradition of highway contractors contributing to political campaigns undoubtedly goes back decades, probably to the building of the first roads like the construction of Route 47 north of Huntley that Henry Marlow told me was built with horses.

Is it evil for a company doing work for county government contribute to campaigns of those in power?

Are there untoward implications?

Campaigns obviously cost money and not many significant ones are run on small contributions.

Even ones with significant volunteer effort, such as 8th Congressional District Congressman Joe Walsh’s, required well over $100,000.

You can make the value judgments, if you wish.

And, if you do, please think of how campaigns costing tens of thousands of dollars and growing each year the Post Office raises the cost of direct mail, should be financed.

You know that adequate space is not available in local newspapers to allow candidates to send out press releases and expect them to get published. Those days of when newspapers were willing to publish such campaign material ended shortly after my campaign for McHenry County Treasurer in 1966.

With big money being spent in McHenry County on Rakow Road’s widening and the Western Bypass’ construction, I thought it might be interesting to look up campaign contributions from those doing the work on the projects.

Today we look at contributions from Rakow Road contractors.

My original intention was to look at recent contributions, but so many older ones popped up in my search of the Illinois State Board of Elections

What you see is the plan for the Pyott Road intersection with the new six-lane Rakow Road. Those coming from the north from Pyott will be able to enter Rakow Road without stopping.

I started with Rakow Road. After all, it had a rainy, everyone-under-the-tent commencement ceremony recently.

The McHenry County Transportation Department send me documents for three contractors on Radow Road:

• Patrick Engineering of Lisle
• Mathewson Right of Way Company from Frankfort
• Jorgensen & Associates of Lake Villa

Surveying company Jorgensen made no contributions I could find.

Mathewson Right of Way Company, whose job seems to be to work through the land acquisition process for road projects, made the following political donations.

Here’s the $5,500 given to Ken Koehler’s campaign fund:

• 1-19-7 $550
• 2-11-8 $500
• 4-8-9 $500
• 11-27-9 $500
• 4-10-10 $1,000
• 9-20-10 $1,000
• 3-14-11 $1,000

In addition, State Rep. Mike Tryon received $250 on 8-4-10.

Algonquin Township Road Commissioner Bob Miller’s campaign fund also received a 10-17-10 check for $500. His campaign committee filing with the Illinois State Board of Elections filing notes that his wife, County Board member Anna May Miller, is financed by the PAC. Miller is head of the County Board’s Transportation Committee.

Patrick Engineering’s donations are grouped below by recipient.

The McHenry County Republican Central Committee received regular contributions during the middle of the last decade:

• 7-1-4 $1,000
• 7-10-5 $1,000
• 7-1-6 4 $1,000
• 7-23-7 $1,000

My search found McHenry County Board member Ken Koehler got $3,300:

• 1-19-7 $550
• 2-11-8 $500
• 4-27-9 $500
• 11-27-9 $500
• 8-24-10 $250
• 9-20-10 $1,000

Former McHenry County Board Chairman, now-State Rep. Mike Tryon was another recipient:

• 12-11-3 $250
• 6-22-4 $500

So was State Senator Dan Duffy. He got $250 May 28, 2008.

McHenry County Recorder of Deeds Phyllis Walters was the wife of the man Rakow Road is named. Jim Rakow used to be McHenry County Highway Superintendent, although he was not when these contributions were made:

• 10-4-99 $160
• 10-5-2000 $240
• 9-26-1 $250

What caught my interest today was an article on the Lake County Tea Party site by Paul Mitchell about Grayslake Unit School District 46.

It is based on emails sent to and from the school district’s email server and shows the planning and execution of the re-election campaigns of incumbent school board members Sue Facklam and Mary Garcia.

I dipped into the email source documents (which can be accessed at the bottom of Mitchell’s article) obtained through a Freedom of Information request and found some that I would like to share with you.

In long,  long documents like state budgets, I start at the bottom and work my way up.  That’s works for budgets, because legislative leaders often bury bad things near the end.

It works for emails because the last one sent responsive to the FOI request is on the bottom.  For you though, I’ll put them in chronological order starting about two months before the April 5, 2011, election.

What I find most interesting is the interaction between consultant Alex Finke and the candidates.  (In any of these emails, you can click to enlarge them, if you can’t read them.)

This March 1st email from incumbent Mary Garcia to consultant Alex Finke seems to give advice on how to evade the Illinois Campaign Finance Disclosure laws.

This email from incumbent Sue Facklam tells of how gift cards were give to high school students who registered to vote. She notes that practice "is probably illegal."

This email tells how the incumbents reached out to Lake County Democrats for data base help.

A retired teacher apparently sent a letter to the editor. The reaction was to try to find out how much of a salary bump he got before retiring.

Teachers are filling out "friend-to-friend" post cards. The union will pay postage.

Lake County Democrats are unwilling to share Votebuilder because Mary Garcia, one of the incumbents, did not vote in the Democratic Party primary election.

"You won last time doing nothing."

Campaign FaceBooking about noon at school.

Here's a campaign appearance invitation.

"Is it illegal for me to forward this??" asks Diane Elfring, the District 46 teacher union president.

The Patf's Pizza fund raiser does not have the required campaign disclosure telling where one can purchase a copy of the political action committee's campaign disclosure report.

What follows–in two parts–is an email telling how a joint campaign might avoid filing campaign disclosure reports.

The local library's email seems to have been used for political purposes.

More later. (Here are Part 2 and Part 3.)

Sheriff Kieth Nygren and his wife Marge in the Lake in the Hills parade.

McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren ran a $51,822.74 campaign last fall when he overwhelmingly won re-election.

But he wasn’t in fund raising mode.

Only $600 was contributed to his campaign.

The only one that was identified was from the Burnham Fund, a political action committee controlled by Chicago Alderman Ed Burke.

That was recorded on November 4th, two days after the election.  The check was apparently written Nov. 1st, the day before the election.

It was one of 34 contributions the Burnham Fund made.  The only other one to a McHenry County candidate was to State Rep. Jack Franks. The only other Republican I see was Dan Cronin, who was elected DuPage County Board Chairman.

Nygren started out on July 1s, 2010, with $73,924.17. He had $22,101 left at the end of the year.

With what other political entities did he share his campaign money.

Only the McHenry County Republican Central Committee. It received $250.

There was another $412 contributed elsewhere, but in amounts small enough not to be identified.

Filling up the tank of the campaign sign truck is listed in Sheriff Keith Nygren's campaign expenditures.

How did Nygren spend his campaign money?

• Telephone
• Beverages
• Camera
• Campaign meals
• Postcards (Creager Press – $455)
• Direct mail (MultiMail Solutions – $22,287.65)
• Tee shirts and campaign materials (e2 promotions, inc DBA Discount Distributors – $1,238)
• Fuel for sign trucks (at the ExxonMobile station in Walworth twice on election day and four times on December 6th)
• Hebron-Alden-Greewood Rescue Association
• County fair entrance passes
• McHenry County 4-H ($2,092)
• Lake Geneva Country Meats
• Billboards (Liberty Outdoor $7,749)
• McHenry Co. Economic Development Corp.
• McHenry Co. Friends of NRA
• Newspaper advertising ($4,234 for Northwest Herald and $50 for the Woodstock Independent)
• Palm cards (The Copy Express, Woodstock – $2,297)
• Sign materials
• Sign posts
• Reimbursements to himself for everything from parade car and sign truck gas to FBI NAA Ill. Chapter raffle tickets, Shop With A Cop raffle tickets, campaign meals, parade candy and a McHenry Rotary dinner
• Office supplies
• Campaign decals (P.F.Pettibone & Co. – $506)
• Trinity Baptist Community Church of Palatine (community relations)
• Sign for Lakemoor Fest
• UPS
• Brent Smith to reimburse for sign truck gas

Today’s “Message of the Day” was found at a Nunda Township Republican Picnic.

It’s a button saying,

Obama
Tax Plan:

Trickle Up
Poverty