Unopposed candidates look forward to November election
January 28, 2010By William S. Bike
A number of candidates are unopposed in the Feb. 2 primary and therefore already are looking forward to the next election.
1ST CONGRESS
Jeff Adams will be the Green Party candidate for Congress in the First District.
3RD CONGRESS
Michael Bendas will be the Republican nominee for Congress in the 3rd District. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel and business consultant. He wants to reduce the federal deficit, improve education, enact tort reform to protect doctors and hospitals, require Medicare to pay 100% of costs for people eligible, enact government incentives for small businesses to hire, and end oil drilling restrictions on all government lands except parks.
“I have served this great nation for 30 years and I see incompetence, a shortage of leadership, a lack of vision, and total fiscal irresponsibility,” he said. “My West Point foundation makes service a true priority, and it is time to make a difference.”
Laurel Lambert Schmidt will be the Green Party nominee in the 3rd. A Riverside, IL, resident, she is a founder of the Near West Citizens for Peace and the Riverside Brookfield Peace Group.
4TH CONGRESS
He is chair of the Democratic Caucus Immigration Task Force and of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force. He serves on the Judiciary Committee and on the Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Subcommittees.
Rob Burns will be the Green Party nominee in the 4th District. An economist, Burns did PhD studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He also has studied finance, computer science, and constitutional law. He is a former chair of the Grant Park Advisory Council.
“We need to make the United States once again of the people, by the people, for the people,” he said. Burns supports the Green Party’s ten key values of ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy, nonviolence, decentralization of power to local communities, community-based economics, feminism, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and future focus.
7TH CONGRESS
Mark Weiman will be the Republican nominee for Congress in the 7th District. A dentist practicing in the Loop, Weiman is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the U.S. Military. He is a member of the Chicago Dental Society, Illinois State Dental Society, American Dental Association, American Legion, International Press Club of Chicago, Naval War College Foundation, and Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Kip Robbins will be the Green Party nominee for Congress in the 7th District. He is an Oak Park Township Committeeman.
13TH STATE SENATE
Raoul also has worked on legislation that would help reintegrate of ex-offenders into society, allowing good conduct credit to prisoners who earn high school diplomas or general equivalency degrees (GEDs) and who join programs to help them cure substance problems.
Raoul serves as the vice-chairperson on the Pensions and Investments Committee and sits on the Commerce and Economic Development, Health and Human Services, Higher Education, and Judiciary Committees. He also is on the Governor’s Re-entry and Public Safety Committee, which works with community groups to help ex-offenders reintegrate into the community.
6TH STATE REP
Golar has gained more than $500,000 for district programs and organizations, obtaining state funding for needs as varied as hospital equipment and after-school programs. Golar long has advocated legislation to halt predatory lending.
26TH STATE REP
Democrat Will Burns is in his first term as 26th District state representative. His committee assignments are Appropriations-Elementary and Secondary Education, Health Care Availability Access, Health and Health Care Disparities, Infrastructure, State Government Administration, Youth and Family, and the Subcommittee on Minority Procurement, which he chairs.
Burns has expressed his commitment to “new ways to fund education,” he said. Other top issues, he said, are “good schools, safe streets, protecting the environment, cleaning up corruption, and creating economic opportunity.” He also has championed the cause of providing protections for renters living in foreclosed properties.
“With the shortfall in the economic situation, in terms of the educational funding, it is perceived that we cannot do any better, or the educators don’t feel like they can do any better in educating our children without more money,” he said. “And I think we do not only need more funding but we need more accountability and more transparency.”
Hendricks is a veteran of the U.S. Army and later attended Wilson Junior College, now Kennedy-King City College.
1ST COUNTY BOARD
An educator by profession, Ronald Lawless will be the Green Party nominee for Cook County Board in the 1st District. Lawless ran in the Democratic primary for the 4th State Senate District in 1998. He lost to Kimberly Lightford.
“I have been thinking about running ever since the county commissioners, including the commissioner of the First District, voted to raise taxes, giving us the most regressive and unfair sales tax in the nation,” he said. “When county officials were called on to cut back to save taxpayers’ money, the commissioner of the First District decided to increase her office budget” while “many of your neighbors were losing their homes to foreclosure or struggling to pay rising utilities and taxes.”
2ND COUNTY BOARD
Michael Smith will receive the Green Party nomination for the 2nd District Cook County Board seat. A veteran of the military, Smith previously has run for 15th Ward alderman. His top issues are term limits for Cook County Board members; remapping the 2nd District to make it more cohesive — Smith believes that, encompassing more than 20 wards and including both poor and rich areas, the district needs new boundaries; and more cooperation with aldermen, state representatives, and state senators to assure better services to 2nd district residents. Smith also would work to merge the offices of County Clerk and Recorder of Deeds.
7TH COUNTY BOARD
Andrade believes her accounting experience will help her bring “fiscal reasonability to the Cook County Board, where the commissioners and the board president want to put the entire burden on the taxpayers while their friends and family benefit from our sweat and tears,” she said. She also would make sure that county health facilities are “bilingual friendly and accessible to anyone regardless of their legal status in this country.”
11TH COUNTY BOARD
An insurance broker by profession, John Daley has been a County Board commissioner from the 11th district since 1992. He also is the 11th Ward’s Democratic ward committeeman, referring to his precinct captains as “community representatives” and noting that they work and handle service requests year-round, not just at election time.
Daley previously was a state senator, state representative, and schoolteacher. Daley is chairman of the board’s audit and finance committee. He also is a member of the Health and Hospital, Information Technology and Automation, and Rules and Administration committees.
A salesman by profession, Carl Segvich has been 11th Ward Republican Committeeman since 2008. He ran for County Board in 2006 and lost to John Daley. Segvich also has run for 11th Ward alderman twice. He is the Cook County coordinator for the Adam Andrzewjewski for Governor campaign. Segvich is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Starting in the most corrupt state in our United States of America, Illinois, we must take our nation back right away,” Segvich said. He supports the right to bear arms and opposes gay marriage and abortion.
