[Peace-discuss] What's next?...An entire Champaign County Government of Tim Johnson's Cronies?

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Worth yr attention...

--- On Tue, 12/6/11, David Noreen  wrote:     Heh-heh-heh!  Remember the WILL-TV debate in the Election 2000 campaign that Tim Johnson tried to fix, yet that ended up a win for Mike Kelleher, when Johnson bungled things up even worse than he typically does?  This is the debate that opened with moderator Carl Caldwell taking up Johnson's signature theme, that Kelleher was [allegedly] running an unfair, negative campaign (when Kelleher was simply pointing out the differences between himself and Johnson so that the voters could make an informed decision!)...  In responding to the opening question, Johnson was given a chance to provide some specifics to back up his complaints, to try to put some flesh on his bare-bones complaints (and also to whine about how much his feelings were hurt by voters finding out about his voting record as
 an Illinois State Legislator!).  Kelleher, in his turn, completely demolished Johnson’s apparent advantage on this issue by pulling out a flyer, 
showing it to the studio audience (and indirectly to the audience at home),
 and pointing out how back during the Republican primary, Johnson had 
distorted the face of his opponent, Bill Brady, on the flyer, had covered Brady's face with red lettering, 
and had mailed the flyer out as an attack piece on Brady!  While holding up the incriminating flyer, Kelleher said to Johnson, “But if we’re talking about negative 
campaigning, Tim, your ads speak for themselves!”  Johnson 
took note of the flyer, but then later when it was his turn to respond,  just decided to take a trip down the memory hole, act as though he had complete 
amnesia of what had just happened, and (dishonestly) claimed that all his 
campaigning had been positive!…That was just a priceless moment!  The
 debate had just started, Johnson’s signature issue had been shown to be nothing but 
hot air, Johnson was graphically depicted as a negative campaigner, and, to top it all off,
he’d falsely claimed to the viewing audience that all his campaigning had been 
positive - despite the flyer the audience had just had the opportunity to view!  WOW!
      What followed that opening exchange was a series of audience questions.  There was
 only time enough for 13 questions in the entire hour of programming, 
but it turned out that both the first question and the last question of the evening were obviously-planted questions that were posed in an attempt to aid Johnson!  In fact, Question #1 was by Jim McGuire, who at that time had worked in Tim Johnson's campaigns for more than 9 years! McGuire, waving an affidavit in the air and desiring to salvage Johnson's negative campaigning theme despite moderator Carl Caldwell's expressed desire to move on to something more substantive, demanded to know what the source was for Kelleher's claims of registration irregularities in the County Clerk's office, which at the time was run by McGuire's friend and Johnson's former campaign manager, Mark Shelden. The 
whole thing ended up in another big loss for the Johnson Campaign, though, when Kelleher 
pointed out that the source of his allegations of impropriety was an article in the News-Gazette (of all places!), that he’d had a chance to 
talk to the student victims involved, and that an investigation had been opened
 into Shelden’s limiting the number of students who could register at a 
single time and Shelden's tracking of where students were registering from! 

     So, Jim McGuire's planted question didn't seem to bear fruit for the hapless, misguided Johnson campaign back in Campaign 2000, when Johnson first sought to show his qualifications for being elected to the U.S. Congress...Now, it's many years years later, Johnson has little to show for his 11 years in Congress (when he'd vowed to serve no more than 6), and his planted questioner, McGuire, has been working in Johnson's campaigns for over 20 years (by Johnson's own admission)...and we find out from WILL news today that McGuire has decided that it's time that he should be elected to a seat on the County Board!!!!

     Yes-siree, folks, you just can't make this stuff up! Having failed just earlier this year to be appointed
 to a vacant seat on the Champaign City Council, McGuire now wants to be elected to the County Board!  Here's the story, from the WILL website:

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http://will.illinois.edu/news/spotstory/29-file-petitions-for-22-seats-in-champaign-county-board-primary/
29 File Petitions for 22 Seats in Champaign County Board Primary
Story date:  Tuesday, December 06, 2011 from Illinois Public Media News
In the upcoming March primary, Champaign County voters will be 
selecting candidates to run for seats on a county board that is smaller. 



The Champaign County Board is slated to slim down from 27-to-22 
members next December. The current arrangement … of nine county board 
districts with three members each … will change to eleven districts of 
two members each. Urbana Democrat Brendan McGinty is a longtime backer 
of the idea. He said a smaller county board with fewer members per 
district will be more accountable to voters.


“I want engaged members,” McGinty said. “My hope is, a smaller board 
will by nature be more engaged, because it has to be more accountable. 
Two members per districts, rather than three, there’s frankly no 
hiding.”


But McGinty will not be on the smaller county board. He’s one of 10 
incumbents who have decided not to seek re-election. Others include 
current county board chairman Pius Weibel, and longtime members Steve 
Moser and Tom Betz. Only 17 incumbents filed ballot petitions by 
Monday’s deadline, to run for Champaign County Board slots in the March 
primary. They were joined by 12 newcomers, including Republican Jim 
McGuire, a recent candidate for Champaign City Council. McGuire said 
working together to fix problems is a higher priority for him than 
winning back the majority that Republicans lost on the county board a 
decade ago.


“I hope that either way it goes, that when we get together and we do 
have make decisions for county government, that we work together,” 
McGuire said. “And I think we can. We’ve got some good people on both 
sides; that we work together to move things forward for the community.”


McGuire said he thinks finances at the county nursing home and the 
future of the aging county jail in downtown Urbana will be two of the 
major issues facing him, if he’s elected to the Champaign County Board.  
------------------------------------------------
     What an incentive to get Democratic and Republican voters alike to turn out for the Spring, 2012 primaries and the Fall, 2012 elections!  You not only can prevent Tim Johnson (who attends Ron Paul's "John Birch Society", "Liberty Caucus Luncheons" on Thursdays) from being sent back to Washington, D.C., but you can also stop his "Mr. IlliniPundit" campaign manager, Gordy Hulten, from being elected to the position of County Clerk, and also keep Johnson's long-time campaign worker and crony, Jim McGuire, from being elected to the County Board!







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