Regarding the April 19 column on low turnout in local elections, Sandwich reader A.A. writes: “I didn’t vote for any candidates in either of our contested library board or fire district elections because I was unable to find any information on any of them. My wife found a sample ballot on the La Salle County website, but that was all the publicly available information we could find. I have several questions.
“Was this situation due to our ignorance of available public information? Does your paper bear some responsibility? The paper used to publish information on local candidates. Could you create some kind of online candidate forum where the candidate was allowed to submit a statement supporting their election?
“I’m not sure what the answer is, but I wish I could be better informed the next time I vote.”
All fair. In my area, information on community college board candidates was scarce. That said, in decades of print journalism, I’ve never seen a profile on a fire district race – an admission this problem has festered for years. Online forums can be useful, and newspapers have the tools to run them outside of social media sites. But just as in the shoe-leather reporting days, select candidates simply prefer remaining mostly unknown.
I regularly encourage readers to become informed voters, and the media should play a role so voters don’t have to track down individual candidates at home just to get a question answered. It’s definitely worth exploring.
SLIDING DOORS? In December 2018, I speculated about whether Adam Kinzinger, then a Channahon Republican representing Illinois’ 16th Congressional District, might consider challenging U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in his 2020 reelection bid. The whole piece is quaint – a few months earlier, Kinzinger told a group of Shaw editors he hoped Trump would be “president for another six years” – but this paragraph is a time capsule:
“[Durbin] would be 75 on Election Day 2020 and has already served nearly four full terms, but hasn’t given any indication he’ll retire. Kinzinger turns 41 in February and is already entering his fifth term in Congress. That gives him the experience edge over 50-year-old U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria, who assumed office in September 2015 after a little more than four years in the Illinois Senate, and the youth edge over GOP Reps. Mike Bost and John Shimkus, who are 57 and 60, but have been in Congress since 1995 and 1997, respectively.”
Durbin this week announced he won’t seek a sixth term in 2026. The list of hopeful candidates is rife with politicians few might’ve suggested seven years ago. But it’s especially interesting to consider how Kinzinger entering that race might’ve changed so many political outcomes.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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