I live in DuPage County, just west of Chicago. When we moved here 35 years ago, the county was solidly red. Over time, it has become pretty blue - or at least bluish-purple - in state and national elections. There are still areas of Republican strength at the county and more local level. Heck, the Dems don’t even run candidates for some local offices. But blatant ideological confrontation has been pretty low.
Today is Election Day in the Chicago area (and I’m not sure how widely elsewhere.) The local elections in our town - especially for the school board - impress me as quite heated. I am quite liberal Dem, so my perspective is likely skewed, but I perceive more extreme language coming from the right. The Dem candidates’ literature impresses me as primarily stressing the candidates education and experience, and stressing maintaining good schools. We have gotten numerous door hangers and such from the right urging votes against critical race theory and the like.
In the recent past there has been somewhat of a kerfuffle regarding the library acknowledging certain diversity issues such as Pride week. There is a very strong religiously conservative segment of the local population, as well as “old money”, tho many younger (wealthy) families from Chicago have been moving to town. It is curious to see the conflicting ideologies, and wonder in what direction the local community/government will head.
It is really interesting, as I wonder what the outcome will be. Which slate/approach will garner more votes? Like I said, there have always been Repub and Dem candidates, but I have never perceived such ideological fervor before.
Anyone else facing similar election dynamics at the local level? I know one poster reported on the conservative takeover of their school board in SW Michigan.
Sorry if this is not the appropriate forum, but I thought it concerned politics and elections…
My town still seems fairly calm. Though the Republican Primary did seem to divide between Pro-Trump and not-Trump with the Not Trump winning and then beating the Democratic candidate. My town is pretty evenly split on the Dem/Rep side but seems to not be Trumpish. He lost in 2016 & 2020.
Thx for the Reply (and glad I FINALLY chose the correct forum!) If folk wouldn’t mind, would you consider giving just general descriptions of your location - maybe just which portion of which state? I promise not to creep you!
I’m in the burbs in Cook County, IL and both school board races are contentious, but they have been for a number it years. The main issues have been taxes and locker room policies, but this year there seem to be a bunch of other issues like books in the school libraries.
I live outside of the school board district in question, but my city is having a special election for a school board seat, at city taxpayer (including myself) expense, because (a) nobody applied to run for the vacant seat for last November’s election, (b) the school board voted to fill the seat with what they considered to be the most qualified candidate, (c) a handful of parents complained that the selected person is the daughter of one of the school district superintendent’s assistants, (d) it only takes something like 35 signatures on a petition to call for a special election - which is paid for by the city (i.e. the taxpayers).
Coincidentally, today’s Chicago Trib has an OpEd titled “Culture wars have infected school, library board elections.” Discusses the recently passed House Resolution 5 - Parents’ Bill of Rights, which seems to advance culturally conservative causes.
I’m in Wisconsin. Our supreme court race is being referred to by such sources as the NYT as “the most important state election of the 21st century so far”. It’s set a spending record for state races (for any state, or so I’m told).
If the liberal candidate wins, we have a majority liberal supreme court, if not then the majority continues to be held by conservatives. It will basically let the voters of Wisconsin choose whether or not we’re a pro-choice state and whether we want to correct the extreme gerrymandering that’s resulted in a conservative lock on the legislative branch despite the fact that in overall state election voter totals Wisconsin voters favor more moderate to liberal policies.
Our last school board election (suburban NE Ohio) in 2021 was ridiculous. SUPER contentious. I am so relieved that the “good” candidates won and our community didn’t fall for the scary whackos. A school levy that followed, in 2022, was also contentious. But it was a HUGE ask, for a lot of money, at the very worst time. So while I’m disappointed it failed I’m not shocked nor am I disappointed that people didn’t feel the cost was right for them to bear.
We don’t have anything exciting in primaries right now. I think there’s another school board election in November so it’s going to be a long autumn.
We practically never have contentious local elections. About the closest I can think of was for school board a few years ago. There had just been a teacher strike the previous year and people were still upset about it. As a result, a couple of the fairly liberal members were ousted — they were replaced by much more liberal candidates. That’s who live around here — liberals and ultra liberals. Of course, everyone is a Democrat. I don’t know a single Republican who lives around here. This is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Our old mayor stepped down in a sex scandal about 6 weeks ago, so nominations opened yesterday for a special election to replace him. So far, a dozen high profile candidates have registered including city councillors, our old chief of police, and a member of Provincial Parliament.
As the largest city in the country, this has the largest number of voters for a single job in Canada.
Results are not all in, and I haven’t studied them, but looking good for sanity in my neck of the woods. The 2 Dem aldermen have sizable leads over some pretty extreme opponents, and th e4 sane school board candidates currently have 2x as many votes as the nearest opponents.
Here’s hoping there really are more decent folk in our town, and the crazies are just loud - but losing.
I’m in rural area in Wisconsin just North of QtM. Our local elections don’t appear to be partisan – candidates on the ballot don’t specify party affiliation and the ballots don’t offer a straight ticket option.
This year – at the local level – we had no serious, major political fights. Most posts had only one candidate, often the incumbent.
I did notice quite a few write-ins, however. One of the flaws in the county’s election tally software is the lack of reporting on the write-in votes. They are lumped in one category with no names given. I’m sure the software was written in “The Big City” where write-ins are merely a nuisance, but around here, sometimes a write-in wins. It may be a lazy man’s way of expressing displeasure with the “establishment” choices.
We did have two interesting outcomes. In Sister Bay, there is now a tie for Village Chairman, at 256 votes each. I’m not sure how that will be resolved. The last time that happened, they flipped a coin.
Another race was won by 2 votes. So don’t ever let someone tell you that your vote doesn’t count; it might actually decide the election. I imagine there are some non-voters in Sister Bay right now who wished they hadn’t stayed at home watching TV yesterday.
On good thing about our county is the efficiency which the results are reported. We have some very good clerks and the process is streamlined. ALL the results from ALL the local polls were posted on the internet last night less than an hour after poll closing.
Interesting – Sister Bay was my permanent address for most of my college years – I spent 3 summers there and some time after graduation. I voted once in Sister Bay. My mom was a poll worker for a few elections.(after I left) Looks like there were 4 write-in votes.
To break the tie, two of the canvassers, one standing in for Bell and the other for Zoschke, rolled dice with the high number being declared the winner. That turned out to be Bell, who is in line to be sworn in at the next Village Board meeting, scheduled for April 18. Zoschke can request a recount of the votes and has until 5 p.m. Monday to do so.
Local paper - Chicago Trib - reported that conservative groups were very unsuccessful in their efforts in the Chicago region, with success in only 2 small districts. I’m probably giving too much credit to these results, but this sort of thing does help me be more optimistic about my fellow man and hopeful about trends for the future.
