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Kirchner & Bell narrowly lose to Wysocki & Beckett - 4 More Years of a Conservative County Board |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ida
(No verified email address) |
21 Mar 2006
Modified: 11:47:02 PM |
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With all precincts reporting, progressives Bob Kirchner and Lisa Bell lost to conservatives Barb Wysocki and Steve Beckett in the Democractic primary for County Board District 9 (covering Historic East & SE Urbana). Lisa Bell lost by a slim 6 vote margin. |
The vote totals were:
Beckett - 800 votes
Wysocki - 789 votes
Bell - 783 votes
Kirchner - 753 votes
As someone who has followed this race closely, in my opinion, the reasons Kirchner and Bell lost are:
1) Republicans raided the Democratic primary (again). Wysocki and Beckett (along with Brendan McGinty) have a history of voting with the Republicans for personal gain. In return for their vote to oust board chair Trisha Avery, Wysocki was given the chair, Beckett Vice Chair, and newcower McGinty got a key committee chair position. These three were also loyal Republicans in voting against a racial disparity study of county contracts and against cooperative funding for important county roads on the fringe of the cities (sounds like a boring issue, but it will cost you city dwellers dearly). My guess is that they will vote Republican on the jail issue too.
2) The Green party ran Nick Mann as a candidate in County Board 9. 15 people pulled Green Ballots in District 9. If 7 of those 15 had pulled Democratic ballots, Lisa Bell would have unseated Wysocki, the chair of the County Board. This would have been a major coup.
Ironically, a recent Green party mailer calling for people to pull Green ballots eschewed the extreme "partisanship" of Democrats in this race. The biggest show of partisanship was done today by those Greens in County Board 9 who voted symbolically for an uncontested candidate (Nick Mann) thus aiding conservatives over progressives in the Democratic primary.
That said, I think all hands should be on deck to elect Green party candidate Joe Futrelle in County Board 8 (West Urbana) this November. Joe will kick butt over Democratic encumbent Ralph Langenheim, known for his racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks.
3) Although Lisa and Bob ran a very strong race door to door, in their media coverage, there was a lot of nit picking over petty issues - such as whether Wysocki used a stamp and stationary from the county office for her election.
We wanted to hear more about the *important issues* which are:
- What are strategies for preventing the need to build another jail?
- Whether a racial disparity study of county contracts happens or not (it won't now that Bell and Kirchner lost), what are the strategies for changing the well know fact (study or no study) that county contracts are rarely if ever going to African-American owned businesses?
- Health care - Champaign County Health Care Consumers have made it abundantly clear the shortfalls in health care in this county. I expected the candidates to speak about what they would do to further access to health care. I understand why Lisa Bell would be shy of speaking about increasing any funding for dental access, but she and Bob could have talked about other kinds of care.
These issues: criminal justice, racial equity, and access to health care do not end with today's race.
Now that we know Wysocki and Beckett are 99% likely to stay, its time we vote with our feet.
For example ...
Today, Tuesday, March 21st is a peaceful/persistent demonstration calling for equal justice in front of the courthouse. It is organized by Communty Court Watch which has been mobilized by recent examples of flagrantly unequal application of justice. See:
http://cucpj.freeshell.org/flyer.pdf.
Meet at 12:45 at the IMC in the downtown Urbana post office and go over to the court house at 1 PM.
PROSECUTE HJORT! DISBAR SILVERMAN! DROP THE BOGUS NO EVIDENCE CHARGES AGAINST THOMPSON! EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL! NO NEW JAIL! |
See also:
http://www.champaigncountyclerk.com/elections/results/2006/docs/mar/03_21_2006_summary.pdf
http://www,countyboard9.org
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This work is in the public domain |
