Local Races?

[watcher]

Are there any contested races for Berwyn voters this April or were any/all challengers done in by the objection process?

[Ted]

Are there any contested races for Berwyn voters this April or were any/all challengers done in by the objection process?

  The only contested race is for the South Berwyn District 100 elementary school district. 

  There are two groups of candidates running. One slate is Lisa Clemente, Mark Titzer, James Woywod and Jennifer Mitchell.  They submitted their petitions as a single slate to the Cook County Clerk and they formed a PAC called "Education First for Berwyn" for their election.  Their campaign material identifies as being paid for by that PAC but the Illinois Board of Elections site identifies that PAC as inactive.  Not sure why the PAC is inactive if material is being distributed for those candidates as saying it was paid for by Education First for Berwyn.

  The other group running together is Elizabeth Jimenez, Darlene Yoder and Tim McNeilly.

  Jimenez, Yoder and McNeilly had FOIAs done against their petitions by Ric Cervone, who put down the address of the DelGaldo law firm on one of the FOIA requests. Delgaldo is the law firm for District 100 (as well as the city of Berwyn) so if Cervone did the FOIA on behalf of DelGaldo and it led to objections against any candidates, then what DelGaldo did was at least problematic if not unethical.

  Elizabeth Jimenez was objected to by Berwyn Park District Commissioner Frank Amaro but was able to beat Amaro's  objection (although she had to hire a lawyer to do so).

  One of the main differences between the two sets of candidates was their support or opposition to the referendum last year.  Candidate's in the slate of 4 (Mitchell, Woywod, Titzer and Clemente) voted in favor of both referenda while Yoder, Jimenez and McNeilly were against at least one of the referenda.

  I was not at the forum, but I heard another issue that came up last night was the hiring of the Delgaldo law firm by the district.  I heard that Jennifer Mitchell said she was supportive of the hiring of Delgaldo. The issue of DelGaldo's FOIA also came up.

[Ted]

For people who live north of Cermak road, there is really no reason to go to the polls.  There are no contested races for either District 98, District 201, the north Berwyn Park District or for Morton College District.

  In fact, District 98 is one candidate short.  Not enough people are running.  There are 4 seats up for election but only three people are running.

[Ted]

By the way, I heard Jean Lotus video taped the whole thing. I think she will be posting somewhere on the internet (but am not completely sure of that).