As Democrat Jack Franks was winning the Chairmanship of the McHenry County Board, Republicans were taking control of the Madison County Board, located in the Metro East area.
County Treasurer Kurt Prenzler took out Democrat Alan Dunstan.
But, unlike in McHenry County the party of the winning County Board Chairman also took control of the County Board.
In McHenry County, Franks’ Democrats won but one seat on the 24-member McHenry County Board.
In Madison County, the Republicans switched the 18-10 Democratic majority to a 15-13 margin with one Independent.
The Republican County Board Chairman candidate got 62,499 votes to the Democrats’ 61,993.
The Madison County Republican apparently had coattails in contrast to Franks lack thereof.
Madison County has 225 precincts and 267,899 people in 2012.
McHenry County has 212 precincts and 307,729 in that same year.
Well what is that saying about McHenry County
That we are really stupid? OR that we got really flipped? It’s either of the two.
I think the candidates have to organize their campaigns better.
Also before the Republicans put up a candidate or back them they should really check out how many years the person was a Republican.
Too many people say they are Republican but are not.
Also that pig Franks got in but be wise and stay close to your enemy.
Read his mind and see how he ticks.
Republicans can get around slime ball if they are smart.
We are now in the JACK FRANKS ERA.
He has brought Chicago style campaign tactics into our county and used them very effectively.
Anyone who ran against him would have lost given the fractured nature of the local GOP.
They have spent the last 156 years since Lincoln’s election, fighting with themselves because there was no need to fight anyone else. They were not able to make the shift.
I won my County Board seat both in the primary and in the general elections by large margins so my background was not a problem there.
The problem was Franks’ resources and tactics.
I am very familiar with those tactics and tried in vain to get our local people to adopt them so we could fight fire with fire.
Just as there are now liberal Democrats in the streets who have been woken up by the Trump win, perhaps our own local people will be woken up by what has happened here.
I hope so. The Midterms are going to be rough.
Mike?
Being that your public facade appears to be that of a milquetoast, I would not expect such harsh words from you.
Why didn’t you say that earlier?
This was what the unlearned people needed to hear. Locals know practically nothing abut you.
They also know nothing about the real Franks.
They just are familiar with the name (if only from having heard it for eighteen years).
Mike, do us a favor, move to Minnesota.
Although imo Gottemoller cannot be trusted to work for the people, he would have been a better candidate.
The GOP did not choose you – the voters did and you let them down.
Based on your financials you raised zero money.
You recruited zero people to work on your behalf!
Look in the mirror – you will see why you lost!!!
No amount of fundraising could have competed with Franks.
And it is not easy to recruit people when no promises of patronage jobs are made.
“I want in”, or “I want my payback” is the mindset of many who volunteer for campaigns once a candidate gets elected.
I’ve already witnessed it.
Wrong.
Just wrong.
But this is what the McHenry County GOP is all about–ask the Chair who now has a six figure job because of her help with a campaign and dear old daddy.
How many more patronage hires will be in the State’s Atty office after Pat gets in?
Franks knew he would win because the Republicans are lazy unless there is something in it for them.
Hi. Franks supporter here.
Do Cal or his readers think this blog have any influence on anything?
Reality check:
1) Franks’ big win means McHenry is no longer a Republican County.
2) “Voter” is right. This blog is a total non-factor, it doesn’t matter at all. How do we know this? Well, just look at all the anti-Franks’ posts on this site … and Franks’ won going away.
815? Is that you, Moderate?
I would point out again that Steve Reick knocked Jack Franks votes under 60% in 20140–about the same percentage Franks received this time.
Connect.
No one could have beat Franks.
I ran because no one else was willing.
I and others spent six months a year and half ago looking for other candidates and that was just to take on Joe.
No one contemplated that Franks would eventually run, although it was in the back of our minds.
It was not something I wanted to do at this point in my life.
I took it on because there was literally no one else.
Joe could not have beaten him either, as it would have been even easier to tie him to whatever people didn’t like about county government than it was to me as I am not the incumbent Chairman.
Nevertheless, I spent the last 14 months doing as much as possible.
I literally knocked on thousands of doors throughout the county.
I have been going non stop since early July, every single day.
I was just reading a Facebook post by an attorney friend of mine in Lake County, Lou Atsaves, who is a very active Lake County Republican, complaining about how badly the GOP was beaten there, and saying that the problem is that the committeemen do not knock on doors but are content to maybe send letters, if that.
Letters don’t work well in general elections. You have to go out and meet people.
We have people now who run for committeemen just so they are there to vote for Party officers and then are not expected, nor do they intend, to do anything else.
This is true in a lot of places, not just here.
Basically anywhere that you have a one party system you see this sort of thing.
The Party devolves into what is basically a social club which spends all of its time fighting over who gets to run the club and then they organize a party for election night and order pizza.
There is no competition to worry about.
We no longer have a one party system in McHenry County and we can no longer afford to have merely a social club on one side while the other side has a real political organization.
I had help from a lot of precinct committeemen and some people who weren’t, some of whom really knocked themselves out (Thanks again, you know who you are!), but we needed several times that to counter all of the money and paid workers that Franks had.
The Township Committeemen were mostly great, but in the end it was disorganized and I did not have standing as just a candidate to do much about it.
You don’t need a lot of money if you have enough people who will do the work and some way to organize them effectively.
If you want to know more about me, what motivates me is honesty in government.
In the past I worked for several campaigns in Chicago for independent organizations like the Better Government Association and the Independent Voters of Illinois/Independent Precinct Organization who were dedicated to destroying the corrupt Chicago Democratic Machine of Richard Daley and his successors.
Some of the people in those were Republicans.
Others just cared about good government.
We won some and lost some.
But we always had lots of dedicated volunteers.
At one point I ran an entire ward in Chicago and had 100 people working under me on election day in the precincts and polling places.
That was with only 25 precincts, about the size of one county board district here.
Each precinct had 4 to 8 workers.
No one was giving them jobs for this.
They were trying to destroy the system that did that.
We had only a handful working out here on election day for 212 precincts.
Candidates spent their day going around putting up signs and taking them down while Franks was standing outside of polling places greeting voters and had minions at those polling places he didn’t get to.
Candidates also did not cooperate enough with one another.
Each one tended to be the Lone Ranger.
A lot of time was wasted with different sets of people going around putting up signs for just one candidate instead of grouping that together for all the candidates and dividing up the county, for just one example.
It was hard for people to get out of the Primary election mindset of every man for himself.
We are going to have to change that going forward or we will be eaten up.
If this sounds “harsh” so be it.
It needed to be said.
I will take responsibility for the loss and am not trying to duck that, but we have to get our Act together or it will be a short Play.
No one can do this kind of thing alone.
Moving on,
The Franks people at the Fair were saying that Franks has a “Three Part Plan”.
Part one was to elect Jack Franks.
At the Fair, the Franks people were saying that he has a “Three Point Plan”.
Part One was “electing Jack Franks”.
They didn’t know what the other parts were.
I think I do.
Part Two is to field candidates for the offices coming up this Spring in Townships, school districts and municipalities which are non partisan.
Several of the Democratic candidates for Board that were slated this year got their starts on school boards.
Part Three is to embarrass the Republican County Board Members who are up for election in two years by proposing all sorts of things that can’t be done and then blaming those people for his failure to do them and “reduce the county property taxes by 10%”.
For example, one of the ads he ran against me had me being responsible for the ENTIRE property tax bill, whereas I am only one of 24 people who votes on 9% of the bill and usually votes against any tax increases.
I didn’t know I was that powerful.
Then he will take advantage of what will probably be a disastrous Republican midtgerm election year due to having a Republican President in the White House which always favors the opposite party, and run people against them. He may even run fake GOP candidates in the primaries like he did with Reick.
I am speculating even more on Part Four, but there are tea leaves out there if anyone cares to read them.
See the statewide “Cut Ten” group that has formed using the same logo and led by a long time Franks associate.
Think statewide advisory referendum to cut everyone’s property taxes by 10%.
Think Jack Franks is the next Pat Quinn, who got his start from organizing populist statewide referenda.
Franks and Donald Trump are cut from similar cloth.
They both promise things that no one can deliver so they can get elected.
That appears to have worked this year.
They told people what they wanted to hear.
It’s a funny thing about telling people what they want to hear…….
They want to hear it.
Everyone looks in times of crises for the Man on the White Horse.
You may conquer an Empire from horseback, but you can’t rule it from one.
Michael Madigan is no social club.
If the blog didn’t have an influence the agitators wouldn’t be here.
Part of the problem was you didn’t get to the PEOPLE, the average voter.
Every fund raiser and gathering were the same old GOP people.
What is that going to get you.
They like free food and beer.
How many average voters even know what the President of the County board does?
You have to educate them.
Don’t use the excuse of you have to pay volunteers, you don’t.
The idea of the GOP couldn’t find anyone who wanted to run?
Well that is just sad.
All I saw on the blog was the negativity about Franks, which was true but the most important thing should have been posting all the positive things about Mike.
That should have been repeated every day.
The name got out but it was all Franks.
I even mentioned that, talk about Mike not Franks.
I think the McHenry Republicans better get their doo – doo together.
To 815 voter, Yes Cals blog is a media opportunity and I have seen it work to elect others, only this time it was used so so wrong.
Don’t get bothered by the “harsh” as you called it.
It was tongue-in-cheek.
Voter,
You complain about the negative reporting on this blog.
Cal is one person doing this for free (although he’s living off a taxpayer funded pension).
Where were all the Republican County Board members or Republican “Leadership” with writing letters to the editor or at local high schools, or knocking on doors talking with people about their Republican candidate?
They were pretty much completely absent.
People want to make Walkup the scapegoat.
That is bullshit.
Organize or lose.
Does the blog have any influence on anything…
The blog was the first to report that Jack Franks supporter Democrat Jeffery Lichte filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections to run as a Republican in the March 15, 2016 primary election.
———-
The largest individual contribution ever from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association PAC to a Republican candidate was on March 9, 2016 for $15,000 to the “independent expenditure committee” named “Government for the People” that supported Jeffery Lichte and opposed Steve Reick.
Steve Reick defeated Jeffery Lichte in the primary election (in which Jack Franks ran unopposed) and defeated John Bartman in the November 8, 2016 general election (Jack Franks withdrew on May 15th and the McHenry County Democrats selected Jack Franks friend John Bartman as a replacement on July 9, 2016).
———
Jack Franks is a trial lawyer.
Jack Franks father, Herb Franks, is also a trial lawyer and was a long time member of the board of managers of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and served as its Treasurer.
They are Partners in the same law firm.
————-
The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association PAC has contributed $57,050 to Jack Franks PACs from October 12, 1999 through September 16, 2016.
————-
The largest single contribution (in a single expenditure) from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association PAC to Jack Franks PACs was $10,000.
————-
The largest single contributions (in a single expenditure) from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association PAC to any candidate were (3) $50,000 contributions to Taxpayers for Patrick Quinn, Democratic Party of Illinois (Chair of that PAC is Michael J Madigan, and it contributes to Democratic candidates statewide), and Friends of Rod Blagojevich.
————
The Illinois Trial Laywers Association PAC has expended $7,297,265 from July 1, 1999 through September 26, 2016.
The 63rd State Representative District candidates for the March 15, 2016 primary election were:
Democrat Jack Franks – unopposed
Republican Jeffery Lichte (he is a Democrat that filed to run as a Republican) v Republican Steve Reick
++++++++++++++
The 63rd State Representative District candidates for the November 8, 2016 general election were:
Democrat John Bartman
Republican Steve Reick.
bouttimeon,
Cal’s blog was used in the wrong way.
Should have been about the positives of Mike.
You guys just don’t get it and that is why he didn’t win.
Maybe Mark who thinks he knows everything should stop writing for awhile. Y
ou sure didn’t help Mike.
Oh and Cal is the greatest but the people trying to help Mike really hurt him
Another agitator.
IMO, a big part of why Mike W. lost was because of his eliminate Township position.
Why would pro TWH supporters vote for a dude that wants to eliminate what they see as the cheapest and best form of gov?
No plan, no good numbers or facts on saving anything.
I was one of the under votes, it’s difficult to have pinched my nose with either candidate.
What All of you don’t realize Jack would not have run if Joe Gottemoller would have won.
It was the fact that Walkup won that he decided to run.
Thanks to the republican party they put Jack in and you can take that to the bank.
The Republican Party eats their own
Voter,
Great of you to villify those who actually worked to try and help Walkup.
You should be directing your criticism at those in the GOP who did little to nothing for Walkup’s campaign.
Stand4truth,
Gottemoller was a weak candidate–obviously, he lost to Walkup in the primary.
Franks pushed this position in 2014 for his political ambitions; we all know that.
As ’bouttime said–keep using Walkup as your scapegoat.
Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear.
My criticism IS at those in the GOP.
I know people worked hard but I was talking about the McHenry GOP.
Re-read some of the things I wrote.
All the GOP did was meet for pizza
I was told at the very beginning when Franks announced that the Party did not believe it had any obligation to help candidates in the general election.
The purpose of the Party, it seems to me, is to help whatever candidates have won their primaries win in the general election.
I don’t know what other reason there is for the Party to exist.
They didn’t see it that way.
First clue is in the name.
Party?
That means pizza!
Nobody would have beaten Franks.
Both parties will at times decide which candidates throughout an election cycle have a viable chance of winning.
You all know this.
Like elections, these decisions have consequences.
Cal’s political past is a perfect example.
Because of his “off” positions and “off” causes, he was never really supported by the Republicans because he was most likely not going to win.
Mike Walkup is another example of not funding a weaker candidate against a well known/funded opponent.