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News :: Elections & Legislation |
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Marisellis Brown For Illinois Governor? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jim B
Email: jbuell (nospam) prairienet.org (verified) |
01 Nov 2002
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Quick - name the candidate on the Illinois ballot for governor who is an African-American Vietnam War veteran with a Purple Heart, grew up in public housing and always signs "political prisoner" following his name. If you guessed "Marisellis Brown, of Danville" you know how to read between the lines of the official press, which has effectively buried any news of the independent's candidacy. |
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Quick - name the candidate on the Illinois ballot for governor who is an African-American Vietnam War veteran with a Purple Heart, grew up in public housing and always signs "political prisoner" following his name. If you guessed "Marisellis Brown, of Danville" you know how to read between the lines of the official press, which has effectively buried any news of the independent's candidacy.
Brown is one of four ballot-listed candidates for Illinois governor. How he got there is a real fluke. Illinois has some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country, thanks to laws passed by the Republicans and Democrats in the statehouse. Anyone who wants to run for a state or local office in the general election as an Independent has to file at the same time as major-party hopefuls do for their primaries - and to meet the same high signature requirements as third-party candidates.
In other words, the filing deadline for Mr. Brown was last December, and according to law he had to collect at least 25,000 registered voters' signatures on his petitions before that time. So how many did he turn in? One. His own. According to news accounts published over the summer, Brown's single sheet contained his own signature on the first line, "people of color" on the second, and "poor whites" on the third. The rest of the page was described as being filled with doodles and short phrases like "look mother - anyone can run for governor under a corrupt system."
For whatever reason, no one challenged Mr. Brown's petitions during the one-week period for filing objections with the state board of elections - even though a numerous primary candidates from both of the major parties had their own petitions challenged during the same period. Whether due to an oversight on the part of either or both major parties, or through a conscious decision that it would be more trouble to force him off than to leave him on, as of December 2001, it was a certainty that his name would appear on the ballot - months ahead of the primary elections of Republican Jim Ryan and Democrat Rod Blagojevich, and the Libertarian candidate Cal Skinner, whose third-party petitions were due in late June 2002.
In a photocopied set of pages that Brown uses as his campaign literature, he has hand-written several issues he says are the basis for his unorthodox campaign. They are:
* Debt Reduction - recoup money by negotiation, Justice investigation
* Stop State Sponsored Terrorism Against Citizens
* Re-do Public Housing
* Legal Representation for Poor
* Campaign Reform
* Look for War Criminals Here
* Investigate Vice President of State Board of Education
* Reparations - No Justice, No Peace
Brown, 52, claims a long history as a community activist in his native Danville, where he grew up in public housing. Unfortunately, his claims are generally difficult to verify. He says he previously ran as a candidate for lieutenant governor, as Lenora Fulani's running mate; however, Fulani has evidently never run for office in Illinois, although she has been a third-party candidate for governor in New York several times.
In the photocopies he gives to interested people, he also includes several years' worth of news clippings that have caught his eye, including articles about Al Sharpton's and Jesse Jackson's forays into presidential politics. Next to one of these he has written, "Rev. Sharpton can run for president as independent. As Democrat is step backwards!" The material also includes official correspondence concerning one or more lawsuits he has attempted to bring against Danville officials, and his Purple Heart commendation.
A check with the office of the local newspaper in Danville also turned up little. A phone conversation with a newsroom employee there went like this:
caller: I'm looking for information about a candidate for governor from Danville in this election.
employee: Who's that?
caller: Marisellis Brown.
employee: Oh, him.
caller: Have you had any stories about him, either recently or in the past?
employee: We haven't run much about him.
caller: So you have had stories in the past?
employee: We haven't run much about him.
caller: So you have run stories in the past? What would those have been about?
employee: Well, I think he was in jail for a couple of days.
caller: Is there any chance to see any of your back stories? Is your news morgue open to the public by any chance?
employee: Sorry, it's not. We really don't have much about him.
Web searches also turn up almost no references to Brown. His name and address are given at the state board of elections website, and a family member has a listed telephone at that address, so it is not as if he is difficult to find. Yet vanishingly few journalists seem to have made the attempt, and so the story of his candidacy is practically untold. |
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Me |
by Keanu Hugh
shadoworks1 (nospam) cs.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 2
01 Nov 2002
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Mr. Marsellis Brown, a maverick that is depreciated because of his intrepidness and lack of positive exposure. I like him. |
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Brown Is A Convicted Criminal |
by Leroy Phipps
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 2
04 Nov 2002
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Why we wanna make a convicted criminal governor of Illinois? You silly greenies! |
