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!
To read or post comments, click on title.
23 comments so far
Must say the turnout was pathetic, even with it beating past numbers. Maybe 65% of the residents here just don’t care?
I’m with you on everything you’re saying, except for the part about City politics becoming more partisan. I wondered why Ryles, supposedly an Independent, had aligned himself so openly with so many Democratic organizations. As a Democrat, it really bothered me, it seemed desperate and insincere, frankly.
I voted for Schmidt and never would have considered voting for Ryles. I think/hope Schakowsky’s endorsement was a temporary lapse in judgement. I can’t imagine she knew the guy or agreed with his platform, since his was non-existent.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If Schakowsky didn’t know him or agree with his platform (whatever it was), there would be no reason to endorse him other than to do someone a political favor. If that someone wasn’t Ryles himself, who was it?
Great post! You are exactly right about the amount of voters who picked their candidates based on extremely superficial issues. There are quite a few people I personally know who I expected to vote in a way that reflected their seemingly (up until this point anyway) conservative or libertarian principals who would only talk about what a “bully” Schmidt is and how Ryles is “such a nice guy”. Some would relate a personal story or anecdote of something they heard him say or some way in which he offended them. What do you tell these people, except to “grow up”?
My answer was to only engage with people over facts and data, which meant a lot of pointing people towards reading the PDFs the city hosts of the “Historical Fund Performance” as well as lots of various council meeting minutes which always clearly proved that everything Don Bach and Paul Sheehan (and Ryles, not that he was writing his own copy) were claiming was completely distorted and fabricated. I’m not sure a single person I engaged with actually followed these leads to learn something concrete about how this city’s government and finances work, but I stand by the premise that being educated on these issues is even more important than the act of voting itself. Because otherwise, just as you point out above, you end up voting for the guy who you know from your kid’s school, which is pathetic.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And then people wonder why we get the government we get – and projects like an Uptown TIF that fill a few people’s pockets at the taxpayers’ expense.
Just 21% of eligible voters cast votes for Schmidt. That is less than a quarter of the eligible voter population. That number of people is no mandate. Voter apathy is alive and well in Park Ridge because bad politicians like Schmidt demoralize people. The last time such an odd group came together to support a candidate the bad candidate won and that was Frimark. Schmidt ran another successful campaign against Frimark, not against Larry Ryles. Don’t kid yourself, Bob. Schmidt is no champion of the taxpayers. He doesn’t understand a thing about finance and neither do you. The only thing either of you know how to do is say no, except when you are trying to work deals for your friends. That is not leadership. That is dishonesty, arrogance and stupidity. Congratulations on fooling most of the people who bothered to vote.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We hate to break it to you, Zippy, but both the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois Constitution effectively label you an idiot, because neither of them requires a winning candidate for public office to receive the votes of at least 50 % of the registered voters in his/her elective district, or for his/her winning margin to be considered a mandate. And it appears that Schmidt got more votes than any Park Ridge mayor in at least two decades.
As for when “such an odd group [last] came together to support a candidate,” you’re wrong again. The likes of Marous, Radermacher and Markech didn’t support Frimark in either 2005 or 2009; Frimark didn’t get any $1,000 contribution from a public employees union; he didn’t get a dime from either the old HOs or the new HOs, much less a $10,000 contribution. And Jan Schak didn’t write Frimark any endorsement e-mails or letters.
We’d be willing to put money on Schmidt’s knowledge of City finances over yours, had you the courage to actually sign your name to your comment. But if you are who we think you are, the fact that you won your one-term Council seat unopposed (which makes your elective office tenure far more illegitimate than Schmidt’s), who endorsed Frimark and now Ryles, and who wrote Ryles a check for $1,000. No wonder you want to comment anonymously!
@5:48, agreed that she probably endorsed him as a favor, but for whom I have no idea. It seems to me she — or someone from her office — could have also have OKd him solely because of his (calculated?) affiliations with various Democratic groups. If PR has a decent base of Democrats maybe he thought he could grab voters based on their party affiliation alone. If that’s the case it was thankfully what my kids call a “major fail.”
A wonderful post, PubDog. You really captured not only Tuesday’s election but provided a nice history lesson along the way.
I too hope that the voters of this community can get past the superficiality of the “who” of personality and focus on the “what” of policy. Schmidt’s landslide over Ryles, after whacking Frimark four years ago, is a positive sign that it can IF it keeps going forward and doesn’t slide back into the old Homeowners’ and post-Homeowners’/Frimark ways.
Seems to me that if Ryles received no endorsements at all, and didn’t receive misinterpreted Op/Eds from Sheehan, Bach, and Kerin things would have been alot closer. All of that were negative impacts to his quiet nice guy campaign and it would have went 55-45 to Schmidt, which is more respectable to a highschool presidency “like me” campaign push. The Schakowsky endorsement is a laughable slap in the face to her Park Ridge constituency, as she knows damn well that this area does/will not bank on her longevity, we are an irrelevant piece to her district, as Evanston will always assure the democratic slate.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On the other hand, without Sheehan, Bach, Kerin, Frimark, et al., would there even have been a Ryles campaign?
By the way Anon 7:14. I am a friend of Dave Schmidt, consider myself an intricate part of his campaign party. The only politics I talk with him throughout my over 5 year friendship w him, consists of a 6 month pre-election campaign effort and it STOPS after that. SO, your comment “The only thing either of you know how to do is say no, except when you are trying to work deals for your friends” is outright FALSE their is no friendship grabbing in the Schmidt headquarters whatsoever, if anyone will even ask Schmidt anything about city governance he will point you to the Park Ridge City website. That is definitive.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Perhaps 7:14 is just confusing Schmidt with previous mayors who worked “deals” for their “friends.”
Like Wietecha, who gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars of City money to enrich Joseph Karaganis and other Suburban O’Hare Commission attorneys in fruitless fights with Chicago against O’Hare. Or like Marous, who sold off the Reservoir Block to his buddies at PRC without so much as getting the property appraised. Or Frimark, who did his best to give away $400K to his buddy Bill Napleton before Cadillac forced Napleton to shut down his dealership.
I’m so tired of this “this win is not a mandate of the entire electorate since only X% voted” lament. How hard it is to get out and vote? Not to mention it is a privilege we should be grateful to have been afforded. As far as I’m concerned the people have spoken. If you didn’t make your voice heard via the ballot box then you have no right to complain. Or to complain that the results would have been different had only more people voted.
Anon 7:14 – You sound a lot like Don Bach, telling everyone who will listen how finance really works. Next you can tell us how the analysts at Moody’s who wrote the January 2012 report don’t “understand a thing about finance” either because they put down on paper that it was the TIF debt drawing on the General Fund that warranted the downgrade to Aa2. But you don’t think the TIF debt is a problem at all, right? Schmidt and the rest of us are just kooks for thinking so, and really the debt problem is all the refinance of the IMRF and the Sewer Fund? Come on then, let’s all have a proper lesson in finance from 7:14…
EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s funny…it sounded like Bach to us, too.
I am an ardent Jan Fan who DOES bank on her “longevity” and I also voted for Mayor Dave. I disagreed with his penny-wise, pound-foolish, ideologically rigid veto of the community groups and I hope they can present their needs in a way that he and the Council will find compelling this year. I also disagree with his on-going trashing of the Uptown redevelopment project, which I happen to enjoy as a customer and am proud of as a raised-here resident. So why would I vote for him? Because he’s not a sneak thief. He has only belatedly learned to make alliances and behave pleasantly, but naughty or nice, with Dave what you see is what you get. He is efficient, intelligent and has a vision, and his tough exterior is probably what makes him able to make the tough calls. I respect the reasoning of many Ryles supporters, including those you denigrate in your above post; but I could never bring myself to vote for a candidate created by and propped up by the likes of Frimark and Sheehan.
EDITOR’S NOTE: You can count on us to, at the very least, “denigrate” – and, hopefully, worse – anybody who uses his/her public office to lie to the taxpayers, waste their money, or steal from them (including when the stolen cash doesn’t necessarily end up in the public official’s own pocket).
I’m with 11:58 a.m. on this. Viewed in light of the customary low turnout in local elections, Schmidt’s 2,000 vote victory is both a landslide and a mandate to continue and even expand what he did his first 4 years, assuming the city council realizes that his mandate applies to them, too. I also would view Schmidt’s mandate as the voter’s indirect repudiation of the Wietecha/Marous/Frimark administrations, which in retrospect may have made their endorsement of Ryles a big plus for Schmidt.
EDITOR’S NOTE: BINGO! That endorsement by the 3 former mayors and those former aldermen was exactly what Schmidt needed to confirm how a vote for Ryles would be a vote to return to the bad old days of mismanagement by those usual suspects. Whoever came up with that idea should identify him/herself so that Schmidt can express his appreciation.
Landslides, mandates, I smell something cooking. I noticed a few losing candidates of other governmental entites at Dave’s campaign party, a few winning candidates, and a few exisiting aldermen. Is power in the making? Does he want power? Is he willing to spread his wings? All were looking at the night with admiration and realization it can indeed be done. Hhmmm, interesting to conjure up these thoughts of him having an interest to be a leading force of something bigger and better for the whole of Park Ridge. It’s late… maybe it’s just wishful thinking of helping to save D64, D207, PRPD but he has the possible capability to put this in motion.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Be careful what you wish for, A9. It should be about the power of policy and ideas, not the power of one individual. And we hope Schmidt realizes it.
Unfortunately, we saw the Cult of Personality triumph once again at D-64 and D-207, with one exception at each. So there’s a long way to go over there. But if the new City Council steps up to the plate and shows what it can do, maybe there’ll be further progress in 2 years.
Who triumphed over the cult of personality at 64 and 207?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Paterno at D-64, Childers at D-207.
Regarding entities someone would like Mayor Schmidt to clean up; if by “PRPD” you mean the police department, I have no opinion. If you mean Park Ridge Park District, they’ve been doing the heavy lifting while being spattered with offal for the past three years (some for six years, but who’s counting?) THAT PRPD is the new self-cleaning model — despite your fuss about Centennial.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We think the mayor and the City Council have more than enough to do in dealing with City matters. The other governmental entities need to fend for themselves.
One quibble with your analysis: I don’t think Schmidt has a personality problem at all. He’s not only thoughtful and intelligent but warm and personable. And most refreshingly, utterly rational. I think that “personality problem” was manufactured by people who people who either just don’t get it or simply haven’t even bothered to speak to Schmidt or watch him in action.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We don’t disagree with you. But sometimes it’s just less annoying to indulge the concerns of the “personality” cultists because those concerns are irrelevant.
Schmidt can be genuinely charming; the “personality problem” alluded to was his decision in his first term to cut loose most of the people who had helped him. He compounded it by not rolling over for the various entities that expected him to do so. He apparently thought that doing a good job, on the job, was all there was to it. This more than anything else proves his basic innocence!
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re not aware of Schmidt “cut[ting] loose” anybody “who had helped him.”
As for thinking doing a good job “was all there was to it,” last Tuesday’s election seems to have proved him right.
Paterno not a beneficiary of the cult of personality? You may as well have said Michelle Bachman’s looks didn’t let her get as far as she did.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Given that personality cultists like former D-64 Board member Jane Curry and current Board president John Heyde specifically encouraged their supporters to vote for everybody but Paterno and Seib, we’re sticking to our guns on this one.
You often provide historical background to your posts, so I’m surprised you did not connnect the dots between what is going on now in Park Ridge government with what went on in 2003 when the Homeowners Party lost 4 of 7 (when the City Council still had 14 members) aldermanic races to candidates who called themselves “Independants.” The beat the Homeowners candidates and then got five more Independents elected in 2005, but by 2007 Mayor Frimark won his referendum to cut the Council in half, and only Ald. Frank Wsol was left out of the nine Independents. Is there any chance that the same burn-out will occur with the Schmidt crowd?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, that 2003 “Independents” uprising is exactly what Schmidt and his supporters need to avoid – by sticking to policy and avoiding the Cult of Personality.
Those first four “Independents” (Mark Anderson, Jeff Cox, Don Crampton and Rex Partner) ended up being more concerned with establishing a Democratic Party presence in City government than in improving how the City is governed. And while their mere presence was enough to cause then-mayor Ron Wietecha to resign on a Friday night in September with almost two years left on his term, by 2005 – even though they expanded to their Gang of Nine throw-weight – they had lost their mojo and were marginalized by newly-elected mayor Howard Frimark, a master of personality cultism who began to outmanuver the G-9 from Day One of his term when he claimed the G-9 was “taking his powers” by re-claiming the right to organize their own Council Committees.
Then Frimark whipped them on his cut-the-Council referendum in November 2006, and only G-9 members/then-alds. Parker and Frank Wsol even tried to run against Frimark-backed candidates. wsol crushed Bob Kristie, but Parker was crushed by Tom Carey. The Cult of Personality represented by the “Independents” disintegrated, leaving Frimark in charge until Schimdt and his policy-oriented campaign made Frimark a one-term mayor.
And so it goes.
OK… can’t let this one pass.
3:56pm… who exactly did Schmidt “cut loose” after his successful first campaign??
This ought to be good.
As someone who is an expert in municipal finance (a masters degree from UofC in Public Finance and a 10+ year career first as a Moody’s municipal analyst and now head of credit research for a $100+ billion municipal bond shop), I can say without a doubt that the mayor has a strong handle on the city’s finances and municipal finance in general. Best of all, when he needs clarification he seeks out advice from multiple parties. We are lucky indeed to have the mayor and much of the council working to improve the city’s financial condition. And, I have the courage of my convictions, “Anonymous.” You should try it sometime….
EDITOR’S NOTE: Aw, c’mon Shawn…if you wrote really dumb stuff like 4/12/13 @ 7:14 after your candidate got landslided, wouldn’t YOU want to remain “anonymous”?
7:14, the only connection between Mayor Dave and anybody with something to gain/sell is Tony S. of AmericanEagle.com, and my understanding is that Tony got the City website contract well prior to Dave running. Unlike Mr. Frimark, who never saw a deal he couldn’t make out of a political connection and sincerely felt he was complying with the spirit of the law by installing a separate phone for his insurance biz in the Mayor’s office at City Hall.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Your understanding is correct.
714… er… 356… er… Don was quite chatty leading up to the election. Why his 1256 word or whatever diatribe on Patch was priceless! That had to sway, what?, a whole lotta voters to cast theirs for Schimidt!!! Go Don!
Better start cultivating your candidate for 2017 Don and the rest of you Ryles puppet masters.
Have a good 4 years. Ha!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Now hold on, folks…we don’t have any hard evidence that the comments at 7:14…or 3:56…were penned by that former 3rd Ward alderman we loved to call the “Air Marshall.”
But even if it was him, there’s no need to woof him: he’s gotta be hurtin’ enough after backing consecutive losers Frimark and Ryles for mayor, the latest one costing him at least a $1,000 contribution made through his company, DB Wireless LLC. Although that Patch endorsement was a real beauty, wasn’t it?
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>