This is sure a strange town we live in.
I always thought the expressions was "sore losers" but apparently we have
"sore winners" here, too.
Sometime between 10:30pm and dawn, some miscreants stole all nine (9) of the
campaign signs I had in my front yard. Note that 8 of them supported losing
candidates, so it certainly was not sore losers who took them. Others with
the same signs in their yards had them stolen, too. Such selective theft
certainly points to "sore winners" rather than random criminal acts.
Otherwise, the elections pretty much turned out as I expected. The only
surprises to me were just how many votes Booker T. Hodges took away from Jon
Olson in Park District 2 (2,802 votes and 43.55%) while barely even running a
campaign and only throwing his hat into the ring at the very last minute, and
Cam Gordon's win.
It appears pretty likely that the FBI raid that took Dean Zimmerman's
computers, mailing lists, campaign materials, etc. yet brought no indictments
could well have made all the difference in Ward 6, where Robert Lillegren won
by all of 46 votes.
Despite shooting for the moon, park reformers did incredibly well in raising
awareness, getting 4 seats and putting others on notice with tough races
despite being a very small grassroots effort run on a shoestring budget. This
is in stark contrast to the many tens of thousands of dollars spent by the
opposition, much of donated by developers, and the inside connections, favors
and deals years of incumbency and gluttony at the public trough provide.
And it seems to indicate that the outcome of elections are, more often than
not, determined not by a desire for good government or democratic process, but
by far less noble motivations. We suffer the bad government of complacency,
ignorance and apathy when we don't have an informed electorate and better
turnout -- which some would argue is exactly what the self-serving power
brokers want.
--
Chris Johnson
Fulton
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