A Day of Election Work

I had a busy day yesterday, Sunday, January 11, 2009. I worked on three different electoral campaigns. In the morning I collected signatures for Thomas Geoghegan for Congress, in the afternoon I collected signatures for Ben Mullenbach for Oswego Town Trustee, and in the evening I made phone calls for Jennifer Laesch for Aurora Township Clerk.

The Geoghegan campaign was pretty interesting. I was collecting signatures to get Geoghegan's name on the ballot in the special election for the 5^th Illinois congressional district. It was pretty wild because there are a lot of people running in this election. My friend and I had staked out a block between the Belmont el stop and the Clark and Belmont intersection. There must have been canvassers for three other candidates on the same block. We didn't have a whole lot of success. We each got a little over half a page of signatures before we had to take off.

I also found a great blog with great coverage of the Geoghegan campaign at http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog

Ben Mullenbach is a young activist who worked on the John Laesch for Congress campaign. He decided to run for Oswego Town Trustee. It's an weird election system they have in Oswego. There are three seats on the town board of trustees, and the top three vote getters in the election on April 7, 2009 are declared the winners. Mullenbach wants to work on environmental issues, bringing the Metra train to Oswego and creating good union jobs. Mullenbach's website is http://www.benforoswego.com. I walked door to door in a suburban subdivision collecting a page of signatures before we wrapped up.

Some of the literature the Mullenbach for Oswego Town Trustee campaign was handing out.

We met back up at John and Jennifer Laesch's house. After eating some pizza, a group of us began to make phone calls to support Jennifer Laesch's campaign for Aurora Township Clerk. Jennifer is a great progressive, who is really dedicated to liberal change and as Township Clerk she wants to make the Township Trustee meetings more open, transparent and accessible to the public by using the internet to post information about the meetings.

The process for Jennifer Laesch to run is complicated. First she has to win the nomination of the Aurora Democratic Party. However, it is not like a primary where the voters will be able to decide. Rather it will be a caucus in the Aurora Democratic Party. This caucus will be taking place tomorrow night, January 13, 2009 at 7:00 pm at the Plumbers and Pipefitters hall Local 501 at 1295 Butterfield Rd. in Aurora, Il. Then if she wins the Caucus, the primary election will be April 7, 2009.

I will be there caucusing for Jennifer Laesch, on January 13 and I encourage any other citizens of Aurora Township who pulled a Democratic primary ballot in 2008 to do the same.

Correction 1/13/09-- Unfortunately, after checking with the Aurora Township Clerks office, Jennifer Laesch will not be eligible for the Aurora Township Clerk position due to the requirement of one year of residency in Aurora.