Recently, an email was sent out by the DuPage Sierra Club, excerpts from which are quoted below.
I am hoping you can fit the RPG PAC fundraiser into your Saturday on Jan. 23rd.... As you probably know, the DuPage Forest Preserve Commission is in constant threat of being over-taken by people who want to either stop new open space from being acquired (they are developers), do not want the forests managed for wildlife diversity or just don't care about the environment (Maybe it is the salary and pension). We are also electing a new DuPage County Board chairman this year. The current County Board chair was an environmentalist at one time but now denies that human activity has anything to do with global climate change, etc. It is important that the new chair feels environmentalists are an important part of his constituency.
They don't mention who it is who doesn't care about the environment. But they do say who they're fundraising for:
Honorees include: Dan Cronin (State Senator and candidate for DuPage County Board Chairman), Dewey Pierotti (DuPage Forest Preserve President), Roger Kotecki (DuPage Forest Preserve Commissioner) and Mike Formento (DuPage Forest Preserve Commissioner)
When Democrats are campaigning to turn DuPage blue (TM), often times Republicans will respond by pointing to the state government in Springfield as an example of what it would be like if Democrats took over the county.
But digging into the memory hole, we discover that Democrats only recently took over Illinois. Rod Blagojevich, who took office in 2003, was the state's first Democratic governor since 1977. The General Assembly went Democratic in 1996 and the State Senate didn't follow until 2003.
That's why some Daily Herald articles from about fourteen years ago reprinted on the Democratic Party of DuPage County web site are still pertinent today.
Court documents showed that Addison Township Republican Committeeman Patrick J. Durante and Itasca attorney James Schirott worked a deal with Primadonna Resorts Inc. to receive about $10 million each over 20 years if the firm they represent secured a riverboat casino license in Illinois, a report published this week said.
Durante, an aide to Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Wood Dale, and Schirott, who represented Senate President James "Pate" Philip during legislative remap battles several years ago, confirmed the payment arrangement. But some state legislators and gaming officials said Tuesday they were disturbed at he appearance of the influence-purchasing the arrangement suggests.
Tom Wendorf opposes the efforts of Board Chairman Michael McKinnon and College President Robert Breuder to make COD a 4-year college, which would require changes to state law. Tom Wendorf argues that such a change defeats the purpose of COD's mission and runs counter to the goal of returning job growth and middle class prosperity to DuPage County and Education District 502.
the weather could have been better. but not the company. and the dupage democrats showed that they could tackle a big festival. the candidates sure got their money's worth!
more importantly, people were enjoying themselves. it seems everyone wore their political wear, although the dominant outfit was the theme of the day: the dupage dem's spiffy new "dupage for obama" shirts.
you may not have noticed -- but hopefully you did -- the second ad in the column to your left. hmmm, an ad on the left. i wonder if there is some meaning behind that? the dupage democrats, newly expanded and coming off a fresh victory in a special election for congress, are holding a "blue fest" this saturday.
you should come.
sometimes a fund-raiser is more than just a fund-raiser. blue fest is a fund-raiser, although a universally affordable one, but it represents more than a request for contributions. blue fest represents a sea change for dupage democrats, moving away from the decades-old accommodation that dupage democrats made (granted, for survival purposes) with republicans, an accommodation that relegated democrats to second class citizens in dupage.
Overturning Republican State Senator Dan Cronin's efforts to restrict DuPage County candidate ballot access, Democratic State Senator Don Harmon and Democratic State Representative Paul Froehlich sponsored a bill passed in the Illinois General Assembly last Friday that requires DuPage candidates to collect the same number of signatures to get on the ballot as is required by every other county in Illinois. The legislation moves to Governor Rod Blagojevich's desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
It is a political campaign maxim, particularly for non-incumbents, that campaigns must jealously focus on their own race to win - and that any 'distraction' from their campaign comes at great or even unbearable cost. While examples may exist, how often have you heard of an underdog congressional campaign taking their volunteers to canvass for a neighboring congressional candidate? Perhaps more uncommon, how often have you heard of a congressional candidate taking their volunteers out of state to canvass for a presidential candidate in a party primary? It may be unconventional strategy, but 13th Congressional District Democrat Scott Harper has taken campaign volunteers to support neighboring 14th District Congressman Bill Foster in his historic win, and just last weekend was canvassing for Barack Obama in Lafayette, Indiana with his volunteers.
(Editor Note: Just experienced the dangers of Google cache. Not sure if my inadvertent "quote from behind the wall" of Rich's Capitol Fax is kosher or not (I saw the Google cache of the Naperville Dems site, but grabbed the link to the current site where, after publishing this and then checking the link, I noticed that it wasn't supposed to be published since it was subscriber content). Let me know Rich. All that said, the big point is that there isn't a better inside view than Rich Miller's Capitol Fax - and if you're serious about understanding what's happening in Springfield you should join the legislators, lobbyists and other insiders in Subscribing to Capitol Fax.)
After an impressive fundraiser yielding $14,000 two weeks ago, Democratic State House Candidate Dianne McGuire has raised over $51,000 in her bid for the 96th District open seat of retiring Republican State Representative Joe Dunn. In the last state financial report at the end of the year, Dianne McGuire had total receipts of over $19,000, with at that point almost $13,000 cash on hand compared to Republican challenger Darlene Senger's total receipts of $21,000, but only just over $4,000 cash on hand after the GOP primary.
(Dianne McGuire raised $14,000 of her total $51,000 for the race at her White Eagle Golf Club fundraiser two weeks ago. Photo Credit Mark Goldsher.)
I just returned home from the DuPage County Democratic Convention. It was a long process and the balloting process took some time. But the end result is that the county party now has a new chairman: Bob Peickert. My pen died when the exact vote totals were announced, but I believe the final count was approximately 24,000 to 17,000, or approximately 60/40 for Peickert (that's what a blogger gets for using old technology).
As his first action as Chair, Peickert made a motion to create a new position of "Past Chair" and to fill this position with Bisceglie. The motion passed unanimously and a standing ovation was given by all for Rob and his efforts as Chairman.
By this time it was after 10pm, and the park district auditorium was closing. As I left, the outcome of the Vice Chair election was not yet known, as counting of the ballots continued. Based on the outcome of the Chair race, and the support in the room for Michele Barton, I'd venture a guess that she was elected as well.
Jeffers was the candidate on both slates for Treasurer. A motion was passed unanimously for his to continue in office, and a standing ovation ensued.
My hope is that now that the election is over, people will come together and remember that we are all on the same team with the same goal: electing Democrats. Probably the one who put this best tonight was Chris Hotchkin, Bisceglie's choice for Vice Chair. During her nominatio speech, she reminded everyone that the purpose of the County organization was to help elect Democrats in DuPage. She channeled Obama's message, asking "can we elect Democrats in DuPage" then leading the house in a round of "YES WE CAN." It was an obvious call for unity no matter the results, and showed a great deal of class.
On a personal side note, I was able to finally meet Mark Garrity in person. He gave me the complement that I was considerably thinner in person than he had imagined. I guess blogging adds more pounds than the TV cameras. But it was good to put a face with a name. In the end, we may disagree often and strongly, but we are still on the same team. The Democratic team.
As I've mentioned before (for example, here and here), with the DuPage Democratic Party's County Convention next week, I get lots of mail these days. This week's Xeroxed plea on Bisceglie's behalf came with little surprise from a couple of past chairs of the party, Jim Walsh and Tinker Harvey.
I guess Bisceglie really really wants to run on continuity with the past. Personally, I'd rather look forward than backward.
NOTE: I know this may be boring and professorial, but I mean for this to be the start of a conversation!
In 1988, George H.W. Bush carried Illinois with 50.7% of the vote en route to a convincing nationwide victory over Michael Dukakis. Since then, Illinois has gone from a "swing state" to a "blue state"- having easily delivered for Democrats in each of the last four Presidential elections. My question was simple: why? Where is this change coming from? Although Cook County itself has become more Democratic in the past few decades, I focused my statistical analysis on the state's old Republican base, the five so-called collar counties: Dupage, Lake, Will, Kane, and McHenry. At over 3,000,000 people, the collar counties make up just over 24% of the state's population- or one in every four Illinois voters- and will only continue to grow in significance as each of the counties is experiencing rapid growth while Cook County's population has leveled off.
To grasp how these counties have changed politically in the last 20 years, I tracked down vote totals from each Presidential election from 1988 to 2004. I've centered in on PVI, or partisan voting index which shows how much more partisan a certain area is as compared to a larger body; in this instance, the PVI shows how many percent more Republican each county voted than the state as a whole. The numbers going left to right are each county's PVI from 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. Let's take a look...
Back in September, when out going DuPage County Chair Gayl Ferraro resigned with a scathing rant that endorsed Rob Bisceglie as her replacement for DuPage County Chairman sent out on official letterhead to DuPage PC's, I wrote this in a post titled The "Continutity" Ticket:
Question is: How much continuity with previous party leadership can DuPage Democrats take.
The post generated a full blown flame war, with over 70 comments and charges and counter charges over statements of continuity with the past leadership the results, or lack there of, that were achieved.
Then I get more mail today. And low and behold, I see damn near my own words written in Bisceglie's text (bold mine, italics original):
At this time, we are the majority party in the second largest county in a very blue state. This formula is working and now is a time for the continuity of serious and experienced leadership.
You just can't make this stuff up. The "formula" after the jump...
I get lots of mail these days. Case in point, the latest in my mailbox from Rob Bisceglie's campaign for DuPage County Democratic Chairman. In it, on a nice Xeroxed blue sheet, was a list of accomplishments followed by the catchy phrase "Vote for the slate that has done the work."
You know, I completely understand the need of candidates to put out lists of accomplishments with catchy phrases. But what really bothers me, to the point I feel the need to write about it, is when the statement of accomplishment is misleading to the point that I begin to wonder if the candidate takes the recipients of such literature to be a bunch of idiots who will just accept such claims without thought.
A closer look at just a couple accomplishments in the list , after the jump...
Last night I attended the Milton Township Party Chairman Candidate Forum. With the election of a new county Democratic Chairman at the County Convention in March, I wanted to see Rob Bisceglie and Bob Peickert, and hear why each believed he was the better candidate to be the Chair of the DuPage Democratic Party. Aside from the various personality differences and speaking styles, the themes each candidate presented throughout the night reminded me very much of two other Democratic Party Chairs: Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean.
Like McAuliffe, who is known for his record fundraising at the DNC and who is currently Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, Bisceglie touted his experience as a fundraiser and his plans for increasing fundraising for DuPage Democrats. Every answer, every statement, seemed to be tied in someway to fundraising and the importance Bisceglie placed upon it.
In a place like DuPage, where Conventional Wisdom dictates that the county is essentially a Republican gated community where Democrats are doomed to political obscurity, one of the keys to increasing Democratic turnout and electing more and better Democrats is increasing visibility of Democrats. Helping DuPage Democrats realize that they are indeed not the only Democrat on their block is a key first step to getting Democrats to come out of the shadows and socialize, organize and participate in the Democratic process.
Although there are many ways to raise this visibility, one of the quickest is through bringing local and national media attention to Democratic points of view while rebutting Republican talking points. That's why I was pleased to see the attention brought to DuPage Democrats lately when both local and national media coverage of elections featured Operation:Turn DuPage Blue Chairman Bob Peickert, candidate for Chairman of the DuPage Democratic Party, and OTDB co-founder and energizer bunny clone Amy Tauchman prominently highlighting Democratic talkingpoints that will go a long way to raising Democratic awareness in DuPage and beyond.
Links to local and national coverage of DuPage Democrats after the jump...
I've lived in DuPage the majority of my life, and honestly can't remember Democrats ever being a factor. For the first time in my life that's changed, as more Democrats pulled ballots than Republicans as noted by the Daily Herald:
Nearly 55 percent of all voters pulled Democratic ticket ballots Tuesday, according to the DuPage County Election Commission data. More than 132,000 residents voted Democrat to the GOP's 109,132 voters. In all, 242,917 primary ballots were cast.
The highest Democratic percentage of primary voters in the county before this year was in 2004 when they made up 42 percent of the vote. The low point came in 1990 when only 11.5 percent voted Democratic. Presidential primary years routinely draw more Democratic voters to the polls than off-years, according to the data.
Go ahead and read that first line again: 55% of all voters pulled Democratic ballots Tuesday. Sure there are lots of reasons why the presidential race may have driven this. But this is still a HUGE milestone sure to get the GOP's attention.
As a counterpoint to Michael's post about the number of Dem precinct committeemen in DuPage Kim Savage sent along some info she found at llinois Review.
We still have a ways to go but I think we'll be able to outwork them and certainly ought to be able to get more volunteers than they do next year. It's hard getting someone to take a whole precinct but if we have a number of block captains in each one it lessons the load.
GOPUSA ILLINOIS
Candidates file for 491 (67%) of DuPage County's 732 Republican Precinct Committeeman positions
MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE *************************************
Col. Morgenthaler's campaign plays a weird game of "will she or won't she"after having already announced that she will to local Democratic activists and party leaders. This leaves those of us in the trenches scratching out heads, then shrugging our shoulders, then thinking "whatever, at least someone seemingly credible is running". Perhaps we're thrown for a bit of a loop due to how a last minute candidacy was handled the last time around. None of us knew until she was in, while this time we knew Jill was in before she was. I think that may have been the appearance the Morgenthaler campaign was going for, anyway.
In the case of Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Hartfield and the "freeway blogging" incident, here's how it stands now. Charges about unauthorized display of signs, reckless conduct and holding a demonstration without a permit have been dropped. One of the original disorderly conduct charges, that of "throwing unknown objects" from the overpass, has been retained. Another disorderly conduct charge concerning the "making of throwing motions" has been added. Yes, that's right: one charge each of a throwing motion and of throwing something, per person, remains.
*Title is a play on the title of Bridget's post on Rob Bisceglie's behalf, and meant in playful jest...
So the struggle for the leadership of DuPage Democrats has heated up, with two candidates vying for the position of County Chair. In reaction to posts I made here and here, Bridget posted a response on behalf of Rob Bisceglie here. The response, like out going Chairman Ferarro's resignation letter, makes some rather significant claims regarding Peickert's character. Since Ferarro is whole heartedly endorsing Bisceglie, this seems significant. In light of this, I'd like to include parts of Peickert's response on the record here at PSB.
First, Peickert on unity and the distraction of a special election:
It is not divisive to speak your mind about a system that has not been as effective as it needs to be. And it is not sensible to continue following that same pattern of leadership and expect miraculously different results. However, in order to dispel any lingering perception of divisiveness, OTDB will happily forego the rigors of a special election and will not oppose Rob for interim chair. And, so there is no misunderstanding, I will run for the position of Chair of the DuPage County Democratic Party at the 2008 county convention when all of the newly elected precinct committeemen will be allowed to vote for the person they believe should lead the party for the next 2 years. Any debate or discussion of the future of the party can continue after the candidate petition drive is over and the petitions are filed.
Specifics of Peickert's accomplishments as Chair of Operation Turn DuPage Blue, and a direct rebuttal of Bisceglie's characterization of events after the jump...
In the case of Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Hartfield and the