Skokie Caucus Party, Mayor Urge Voters To Oppose Election Reforms

SKOKIE, IL — Skokie's mayor and the political party that has controlled its village board for six decades are urging residents to oppose a trio of voter-initiated referendum questions on the ballot this year.

If approved, the referendums will make local elections non-partisan, establish staggered terms for village trustees instead of voting on the entire board every four years and make four of its six at-large seats elected by districts.

According to the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform, which collected signatures from about 4,000 voters to get the proposals in front of voters, has argued that the three changes will improve turnout in local elections, offer voters more candidate choices and ensure that all parts of the village are represented on the village board.

"Taken together, these referenda would radically uproot and divide the Village of Skokie," Mayor George Van Dusen said last month in a letter mailed to households.

Van Dusen, who was first elected to the village board in 1984, appointed mayor in 1999 and last year was elected unopposed to fifth term, said that skipping the referendum questions was the same as voting yes on them.

As the electoral reform group collected signatures over the summer to get the binding referendum questions in front of voters, Van Dusen proposed three other, non-binding advisory questions instead, which would have kept the citizen-initiated proposals off the ballot.

But after more than 100 residents showed up at a village board meeting to protest the move, the mayor withdrew his plan. In his letter to residents, he laid out his opposition to each of the three ballot questions.

A change to non-partisan elections could threaten the dominance of Skokie Caucus Party, which often runs unopposed for local offices. Van Dusen and, since 1965, all previous mayors and all but one village trustees have been members of the party.

Removing the party label from the ballot would require voters to pick candidates by name. Van Dusen said that meant voters would be "blindfolded" and warned residents to "beware of unidentified associations or hidden agendas."

Among Skokie's neighbors, Chicago, Glenview, Morton Grove and Niles have partisan elections, while Evanston and Wilmette have nonpartisan elections.

According to Van Dusen, requiring some village trustees to be geographically distributed across four districts and elected by residents of those areas would "cause ongoing, persistent anger within our community."

The vast majority of village trustees elected in the last 20 years have lived in Skokie's wealthier, northeastern areas, according a map produced by the reform group.

"Currently members of the Village Board make decisions based on the totality of our community other than any one section of the Village to the detriment of our common good," Van Dusen said.

Van Dusen indicated that having members of the village board on the ballot every two years would be more expensive and hinder long-range planning.

"Changeover of trustees every two years would result in a Board with half its members on a perpetual learning curve," he said, suggesting that he anticipated all village trustees would lose or not seek reelection.

Local school districts already stagger their elections. According to referendum backers, Skokie is the largest village in the state that does not stagger its elections.

"It is our current government process which has delivered the community we enjoy," the mayor said. "We should focus our energy on new and important issues and not make radical changes to a process that is simply not broken."

A ballot initiative committee opposed to the referendum was formed the same day the reform group submitted signatures.

The new group, called Neighbors for a United Skokie, has the same listed officers as Midwest Construction PAC. Its treasurer is Stanley Wallach, the chair of the 26th Ward Democratic Organization in Chicago.

The group ended the third quarter with $4,000 on hand and received an additional $2,000 from Lin-Mar Towing last month, campaign finance records show.

According to campaign finance records, the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform's committee had about $5,500 on hand at the start of October and received an additional $1,000 from the campaign funds of State Rep. Denyse Stoneback, who has backed the referendums. The rest of its funding has come in small-dollar donations from members averaging $66.

Meanwhile, the Skokie Caucus Party, which has produced lawn signs and campaign mailers calling encouraging residents to vote "no" on the referendum questions, had nearly $70,000 at the end of September and collected $5,000 since then in four-figure donations from a local hotel operator, a real estate company, a car dealership, a village trustee and Lin-Mar.

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Advertisements produced by the party have characterized the proposal for a hybrid of at-large and district-level seats as "wards," with one mailer showing a smiling family of five with the caption, "We chose Skokie because it's a great place to live. Don't let extremists meddle with our elections."

The anti-referendum campaign led longtime Skokie Caucus Party member Robert Kusel to resign, ending his life membership.

"Simply put, I can’t allow my name to be attached to the fear-mongering distortions recently published under the [Skokie Caucus Party] banner by the Mayor and the Party," Kusel said in a post on Patch.

"The attack on an authentically optimistic grassroots effort to improve our local elections, endorsed by 4,000 members of our fellow Villagers, saddens and offends me and I won’t countenance it."

Update: Electoral Reform Referendums In The Lead: Skokie Election Results