Don’t know if I have seen anything like this before.

But, looking at it last night, not many other people have either.

It’s a video pitch of and for Dennis Palys for County Board.

I especially like the way his teenage daughter makes the pitch.

Here’s the bio he has on his web site:

• Full name: Dennis Jacob Palys
• Date of birth: 05/18/1949
• Hometown: Wonder Lake
• Marital status: Married

Education

Dennis Palys

• Vectorworks – Training in computer graphics
• McHenry County College – Coursework in Horticulture (15 hrs), Conversational Spanish, Photography
• 1972 Sangamon State University (Now University of Illinois at Springfield). BA (Individual Option –

“The Individual in a Mass Society – A Study of alienation and conformity using resources in Sociology, Psychology, and Literature.

Public Service:

• Subdivision President (11 years)
• Wonder Lake Chamber of Commerce President (12 years)
• Nippersink Watershed Association, Inc. (trustee)
• Greenwood Township Planning Commission (newly appointed)
• A bit more background with some repetition is listed elsewhere:
• A small business owner, he has run his own landscaping business since 1989
• Serves his local community as President of the Wonder Lake Chamber of Commerce since 1998
• Protects water quality as a Trustee of the Nippersink Watershed Committee
• Analyzes growth and land use issues as a member of the Greenwood Township Planning Commission
• Stood up to the county by establishing a voluntary leaf collection program that helped shape the county’s leaf collection policies
• Led his subdivision’s road rebuilding project for six years that culminated in incorporating them into the township system

This looks like a platform:

• Protecting farmland and directing growth to existing municipalities
• Protecting the quality of limited ground water by encouraging the use of abundant, renewable surface water resources
• Providing a choice to Democratic and independent voters that have had no voice in a board whose policies have been dictated by the McHenry Republican Party
• A leaner county board with fewer members
• Opposes nepotism in government (no one in the Palys family has ever been on the county payroll)

He also wants someone to buy development rights from farmers, which it has always seemed to me that the McHenry County Conservation District should have been doing all along.

His campaign is aimed squarely at Diane Evertsen, even praising Mary McCann, although the quote below seems to ask for a bullet vote:

“If you are choosing Dennis to speak out against business as usual in McHenry politics and to provide a check on the one party government that has led to the disenfranchisment of tax payers that are not ‘connected’ to political insiders then please keep in mind that in this election the top two vote getters will gain county board seats. This means that a vote on your ballot for one of Dennis’ opponents will add to those votes they will get simply for being members of the Republican establishment. In a very real sense, you would be voting for Dennis and against him on the very same ballot.”

What he doesn’t point out is that Evertsen beat one of the incumbent Republicans (Dan Ryan) and can by no stretch of the imagination be described as “one of the boys.”  No objective observer would label her as part of the “Republican Establishment.”