GOP Club Says D64 President Made False Claims

The Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 school board election may have been swayed by an email from board President John Heyde making allegedly false claims, the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate Reports.

District 64 parent Charlene Foss says Heyde sent out an email claiming that the Republican Women of Park Ridge (RWOPR) endorsed Dathan Paterno and Ben Seib, the newspaper reports. Foss says the women’s club did not endorse any candidates in the election or provide them with any campaign money.

“It is the position of RWOPR that all of Mr. Heyde’s statements pertaining to RWOPR not only are false, but appear to have been knowingly false, given the very public nature of the true facts here.  RWOPR therefore respectfully requests a written retraction by Mr. Heyde for these false statements,” a press release from RWOPR reads.

Foss told the District 64 Board her concerns at their April 22 meeting, as seen in this video. 

The emails in question have been posted on publicwatchdog.org. In those emails, Heyde recommends Scott Zimmerman and Terry Cameron for the open board seats. The email also states the following:

“I believe it is important to keep an independent school board that is not connected to partisan politics; if you feel the same way, you may not want to vote for these two (Paterno and Seib),” the email reads.

Paterno, Zimmerman and Cameron were elected to the board, while Seib was not. Heyde said during the D64 board meeting that he sent the emails as a “private citizen” and did nothing inappropriate.

"I do not surrender my free speech rights by being a member of the board," Heyde said in the meeting video. 

He added that the email was sent from his campaign email account, and that he also listed his D64 email address in case any of the email recipients had any questions about D64 business, and his personal email in case they wanted to contact him personally.