Question: What do three former mayors, twenty-five former aldermen, a former City treasurer, a sham “political party,” the unions who represent City employees, and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky all have in common?
Answer: They all tried to prevent Mayor Dave Schmidt from being re-elected to another four-year term, and lost.
By a veritable landslide of 5,597 (62.06%) for Schmidt to 3,422 (37.94%) for challenger Larry Ryles, the largest margin of victory since Park Ridge resumed contested mayoral elections in 2005.
What brought this rather eclectic collection of people together for such an effort? What bizarre force of nature put the likes of former mayor Howard Frimark and former ald. Don Bach on the same political team as former alds. Jim Radermacher and Jeannie Markech?
Perhaps those ex-City officials were embarrassed by how Schmidt spent his first four-year term fighting, and winning, a number of battles on behalf of that beleaguered and forgotten class of citizens known as “taxpayers” – the folks who pay the bills for City government but who, while governed by those former City officials, always seemed to take a back seat to the money-grubbing special interests, whether they be City employees, their unions, private “community group” corporations, developers, or certain favored businesses.
Or perhaps those former officials were sick of hearing Schmidt talk candidly about the messes left behind in the wake of their mismanagement of the City on their respective watches.
Take the Uptown TIF, for example, in which many of them had a hand. It’s an attractive development, all right, but did we really have to sell off prime City land at what appears to have been a sweetheart price without even having it appraised? Did we have to foolishly mortgage $40+ million and 23 years of the City’s future so that some of those former officials’ buddies – like PRC’s owners, investors and contractors – could profit at the taxpayers’ expense?
In stark contrast, Schmidt and the current Council refused the demands of Whole Foods and developer Lance Chody for in excess of $2.5 million of sales tax revenue sharing. And guess what? Whole Foods and Chody blinked, and that “destination” retailer is scheduled to be open for business at Touhy and Washington by year’s end. Go figure.
Whatever the reasons for that unholy alliance of former City officials, unions and Jan Schak, however, Frimark and some of Park Ridge’s political “usual suspects” – Paul Sheehan, Dick Barton, John & Kate Kerin, Mary Ann Irvine, etc. – banded together in an informal pact to “Beat Schmidt.” And depending on whom you talk to, it sounds as if they actually may have recruited Ryles as a malleable nice guy and political empty-suit with an almost embarrassing lack of knowledge about the history and workings of City government.
The captains of Team Ryles did their best to hide his shortcomings by crafting a campaign strategy emphasizing “government by personality” instead of government by policy and performance. They did their best to turn the mayoral race into a Miss Congeniality competition, and Ryles into a “hug and a handshake” wind-up doll.
Team Ryles found the unions that represent City employees willing accomplices in trying to dump a mayor who was completely unlike the previous Mayor Gumbys who would twist themselves into pretzels to keep the unions happy. Team Ryles got $1,000 out of the Public Works employees’ union, and it also squeezed $10,000 out of Citizens for Non-Partisan Local Elections, a shadowy political “party” fronted by former ald. John English that inherited the balance of the old Homeowner’s Party treasury when the HOs pulled the plug on their own life support a few years ago.
Team Ryles assembled that “100+ years of City Council Experience” contingent to sign onto the Ryles “Clear Voice, Big Heart” campaign. And it even secured a last-minute blitz of e-mail and letter endorsements from Schakowsky, which suggests that the City’s non-partisan politics may be taking on a decidedly partisan edge going forward.
Fortunately, none of it worked. As best as we can tell, Ryles won only one precinct – his home precinct in the Roosevelt School neighborhood. And even that was only by a handful of votes.
What does such a beat-down suggest about City government, or local government generally?
The anti-Schmidt crowd already is spinning the results as a loss by Ryles rather than a win for Schmidt, placing blame on Ryles for being a “weak” candidate who got outworked by Schmidt; on his political gadfly/campaign manager, Sheehan, for being out-strategized; on Frimark for anointing Ryles with his greasy thumb-print early in the campaign; on Kerin and the other former HOs who thought “100+ years” of irresponsible incompetence would impress voters; and on whoever thought that taking $1,000 from the union trying to pickpocket the taxpayers was a good idea.
Not surprisingly, these personality cultists can’t or won’t accept the fact that the outcome may have been based more on Schmidt’s performance than on his personality, or that the political paradigm in Park Ridge is changing, albeit slowly, from the old-style Cult of Personality to a more policy-oriented style where the message is as important, if not more important, than the messenger. It’s a maturation process not unlike what children go through when they move from obeying their parents because they have to, to taking their parents’ advice because they finally can appreciate its wisdom.
But old habits die hard.
There are still way too many voters in this town who cast their ballots for the guy who coached their kid in soccer, or the gal who was in the Field School V-Show with them five years ago, irrespective of what those candidates’ political philosophies and views on the issues may be. And almost 65% of the registered voters didn’t care enough to vote at all, despite two whole weeks of early voting and polls being open 13 hours on election day. The 35% of Park Ridgians who did vote, however, not only beat the 19% county-wide average for this election, but also beat the turnouts in the 2009 and 2005 contested mayoral elections. So at least we’re moving in the right direction in that regard.
It looks like we’re also moving in the right direction on policy over personality.
In 2005, Frimark received 4,889 votes in a winning effort, but the same Frimark “personality” received only 3,801 votes in his losing effort in 2009. And Frimark protégé Ryles – with arguably a better “personality” than his mentor but most of the same discredited policy positions – received only 3,424 votes in 2013. Meanwhile, Schmidt’s vote totals went up from 4,897 in 2009 to 5,601 in 2013, with a “personality” that remained constant.
That might suggest more people are expressing a preference for Schmidt’s policies and the record he built on them than for the policies and the record of Frimark, Ryles and the “usual suspects.” And that would make Tuesday’s mayoral election result an even bigger win for the taxpayers.
If so, let that maturation process continue!
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