Posted on 07/14/2003 11:14:42 AM PDT by freepatriot32
About a year after a high-ranking Republican officeholder in Illinois illegally used state workers to try to keep LP candidates off the ballot, a federal grand jury is investigating the incident.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a federal grand jury is looking into charges that Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka used state employees to challenge a slate of Libertarian candidates before the 2002 election. The employees were on the state clock at the time.
Topinka, who was first elected state treasurer in 1994, is currently serving her third term in office. She also serves as the state chair of the Republican Party.
The investigation, which is being run by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, was reportedly triggered by an affidavit from Cathy Lynn Santos, a former contract employee who worked in the treasurer's office in 2002.
Santos, who helped found a grassroots political organization called Republican Young Professionals, said she went to work on June 28, 2002 and discovered that a majority of the treasurer's office staff was gone.
According to a copy of the affidavit obtained by the Illinois Leader, Santos said she was told the missing staff members were at the Illinois Board of Elections' office, reviewing petitions filed by LP gubernatorial candidate Cal Skinner and other Libertarian candidates. The state employees were looking for discrepancies or missing information on the petitions that would allow them to disqualify the petitions.
"Late that same afternoon, several employees that were absent all day came back to the Treasurer's office," wrote Santos. "I asked more than one individual where they had been. [I] was told that specific employees had been directed by Nancy Kimme to go to the Board of Elections and assist with the petition challenge to get the Libertarian candidate off the ballot for the General Election."
At the time, Nancy Kimme was Topinka's campaign manager for her re-election campaign.
Because it is illegal in Illinois for state employees to engage in partisan political activity while being paid by taxpayers, Santos said she tried to warn the Republican Party about what she had seen. She was told to put her comments in writing.
On November 23, Santos submitted to the Republican Party's state central committee a "testimonial affidavit" detailing Topinka's illegal use of state workers. The committee ignored her signed statement, and later elected Topinka as state chair.
Illinois Libertarians -- who have charged that state employees illegally worked to keep LP candidates off the ballot in both 1998 and 2002 -- said they are not surprised at the new charges, only at the scope of the cover-up.
"Boy, if this is true, that evidence is horrendous for the entire Republican Party," said Illinois LP Executive Director Jeff Trigg. "To have the entire Republican state central committee possibly involved in covering up this information would make them a criminal enterprise the likes of which has never been seen in U.S. history.
"I'd say this is unbelievable, but I've learned better when it comes to the two old parties in Illinois."
In July 2002, Republican officials had filed a challenge against Skinner in a effort to kick him off the ballot. Even though the LP had filed over 52,000 signatures -- more than double the 25,000 required by law -- Republicans claimed that more than 28,000 of those signatures were invalid.
It was during this challenge that Topinka used state employees to check the validity of LP petitions.
Later that month, Republicans withdrew the challenge after it became obvious that the LP had filed more then enough valid signatures.
In August 2002, the Illinois LP filed a $1 million class action lawsuit against then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan, the Illinois Republican Party, two local Republican officials, and "unknown co-conspirators." The lawsuit charged that the GOP had improperly tried to keep LP candidates off the ballot. The suit is still pending.
Five years earlier, in 1998, the Illinois Board of Elections invalidated 36,000 of the 61,000 signatures the LP had collected to qualify eight candidates for the ballot, and then used state employees to fight the LP's challenge to that ruling. As a result, LP gubernatorial candidate Jim Tobin was kept off the ballot.
According to a later Chicago Tribune article, state employees visited the Board of Elections' offices to monitor the 1998 petition challenge on more than 180 occasions, and at least 19 state employees worked on the taxpayers' clock while engaged in partisan political activity.
Despite those newspaper revelations, no charges were filed against any state employees for those illegal activities.
The pattern of illegal behavior shows that Republicans are willing to repeatedly break the law to "oppress their political opposition," said Trigg.
"They just can't be trusted not to abuse their power, even when they've been caught before," he said. "It's bad enough we have to overcome their discriminatory ballot access laws, let alone having to deal with them using the citizen's tax money and state employees against us."
Based on the new evidence, Trigg said it is time for Topinka to resign.
"Since [Democratic Governor Rod] Blagojevich or any of the party hacks in Springfield don't have the guts to call for immediate resignations, we will. Judy Baar Topinka needs to resign immediately, along with the others under investigation."
The grand jury's investigation into allegations against Topinka isn't the only political scandal going on in Illinois.
In June, Republican Scott Fawell, campaign manager for the Friends of George Ryan campaign fund, was sentenced to more than six years in prison and fined $750,000 for racketeering, mail fraud, and stealing state property.
Citizens for Ryan was also found guilty under federal racketeering statutes of using state employees to work on political campaigns. The charges involved illegal activity when Ryan served as Illinois secretary of state, before being elected governor in 1998. It was the first campaign committee in U.S. history convicted under the RICO statutes.
U.S. attorneys are also reportedly investigating former Illinois Republican Party state chair Lee Daniels, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (a Democrat), and Illinois Senate President Emil Jones (also a Democrat) for various illegal activities.
Ultimately, there is only one way to end the political corruption in Illinois, said Trigg.
"It just isn't going to happen until the voters wake up and start electing honest and ethical Libertarians," he said.
Of course, looking back I realize they were all liberals hoping the Libertarian vote would sap the Republican Party.
None that get elected
You cant be clean & still get the dead vote from chicago
4 years as an elected Republican in Illinois is what turned me into a libertarian.
L
I was unaware that the dead voted much for the GOP in Chicago.
Thats why conservatives and / or downstaters from either party very rarely make it thru the primaries
Forget the dead. The way it actually works is that if there's a Democrat on the ballot that Daley doesn't want to live with, there's no push for him or her from the precinct captains and the palm cards (the cards that get handed out that tell prospective voters who the local Democratic organization supports). But they never tell the voters that they want them to vote for a Republican. It's a sin of omission, not comission.
Thats why conservatives and / or downstaters from either party very rarely make it thru the primaries.
Blaming Mayor Daley for the inability of conservatives and downstaters to elect statewide candidates is a great conspiracy theory, but it ducks the real reason this happens and keeps people from taking effective action to counter the effect.
Divvy up the Illinois electorate into 3 parts: the City of Chicago, the suburbs (the part of Cook County that isn't Chicago, plus all the contiguous counties), and Downstate (the rest of the state, farm country for the most part). Chicago votes Democratic and liberal. Downstate votes Republican and conservative. The suburbs are the swing vote. They used to vote Republican and conservative as well, but now it's tending to vote Democratic and liberal. The voters there are generally oversimply symbolized by the image of the SUV- or minivan-driving soccer mom. It's the failure of the conservatives and Downstaters to carry their weight in the suburbs that's killing them, not Daley.
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