Electoral Referendums Take Aim At Skokie Caucus Party's One-Party Rule

SKOKIE, IL — A group of Skokie residents wants to present a trio of referendum questions to voters this fall that could bring the most significant changes to the village's electoral system in more than 60 years.

Citing low turnout among voters and candidates, the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform group plans next week to begin collecting signatures to change the village's system of voting for mayor, clerk and village trustees every four years in partisan, at-large elections.

Instead, the proposed referendums ask voters whether they wish to shift to nonpartisan, staggered elections with a hybrid of district-level and at-large trustees.

Representatives of the recently formed alliance, which claims 120 members so far, presented their pitch at a news conference Wednesday. The alliance is nonpartisan and does not endorse any candidates.

"A lot of voters really don't see any point in voting, and candidates don't feel the need to campaign or transparently share who they are or what they're about," said Carrie Bradean. "And that means that there is very little ability for residents to engage our elected officials and to hold them accountable for their decisions."

Skokie switched to a council-manager form of government in 1957, and Skokie Caucus Party candidates have won every local election since 1965, usually without opposition.

A party committee interviews people interested in being candidates — there were more than 20 applicants for last year's slate — and those chosen at the caucus' convention run together as a slate, sharing resources and appearing on the ballot beside the party's name.

Ahead of the April 2021 election, the party withdrew its endorsement of one member of its slate, Billy Haido, airbrushing him out of its official candidate photo, though the party's name still appeared on the ballot beside him. Two of the four outgoing trustees endorsed the lone other candidate, James Johnson, who defeated Haido by more than 600 votes and became the board's first-ever independent trustee.

Johnson is now one of the organizers of the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform group, which was formed in December. He said the current system is not fair or equitable and naturally gravitates toward one-party rule and low turnout. According to the alliance, only 9 percent of eligible voters cast ballots for village board.

"The root problem with Skokie's political disengagement is not Skokie residents, the root problem is our electoral system itself," Johnson said. "There is no municipality in Cook County that has an electoral system quite like this. There is no comparable municipality in all of Illinois that has a system like this."

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Changing to nonpartisan elections would get rid of the party name on the ballot and encourage voters to vote based on individual candidates and their policies rather than simply voting based on party name, he said.

Johnson described a shift to staggered terms, with candidates for trustee on the ballot every two years, rather than electing the entire board at once, as a common-sense idea.

"This will mean literally twice the opportunities for folks to run for office in Skokie," he said. "Philosophically, staggered elections are a lot better, they provide a really nice balance of stability and change — because no one really likes the idea of overturning an entire board at the same time."

Skokie's trustees are currently elected at-large, meaning each board member is elected by the entire village, rather than by a district or ward like in Evanston, Lake Forest or Chicago.

Running a villagewide race is more expensive than running for office in a quadrant of the city, and Johnson said dividing elections into districts would be more manageable and make becoming a candidate more accessible.

Plus, over the past two decades, 11 of 17 trustees have come from the northeast quadrant of the village, according to a map produced by the alliance.

Under the third of the alliance's referendum proposals, the village board would shift to a hybrid of at-large and ward-level positions. One trustee would represent each quadrant of the city, and the other two would be elected citywide.

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Emi Yamauchi, a member of the alliance who has lived in Skokie off-and-on since high school, spent years working overseas in U.S. embassies in countries that were living under oppressive regimes, including apartheid, communism and military juntas. Now retired and returned to the village, she said her first experience attending a village board came ahead of the approval of the controversial Carvana development on Woods Drive.

"I was shocked at the arrogant, condescending attitude of the board, especially toward the residents who spoke to the topic of Carvana. I saw all the signs of entrenched power that I saw overseas in these other countries," Yamauchi said.

That got her motivated to look into Skokie's history, she said. She learned that the village has had single party rule for more than a half-century, and the mayor, George Van Dusen, has served on the village board since 1984 and as mayor for the past 23 years.

"They've had more than enough time to fix the disaster of our downtown. They've had more than enough time to figure out how to increase tax revenue without capitulating to a giant car vending machine," Yamauchi said. "And they've had more than enough time to do their homework on why designating Old Orchard as a blighted economic zone might be setting a bad precedent for bailing out a large corporation that owns 22 other malls throughout the country."

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Jasmine Sebeggala, another member of the alliance, pointed out that there has never been a Black woman slated as a candidate for trustee by the Caucus Party and described the village's present system as outdated and exclusive.

"We deserve an electoral system that will allow us to choose the candidates that will consider our interests and needs instead of having candidates chosen for us," Sebeggala said. "The current electoral process reminds me of the fact that there was a time when rules and systems barred Black people from living in Skokie"

So far, the alliance's referendum proposals have been endorsed by the League of Women Voters of Evanston/Skokie, Independent Voters of Illinois, the north/northwest suburban chapter of the National Organization for Women, former Skokie Trustee Ilonka Ulrich, Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation Rabbi Rachel Weiss and former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, among others, according to its website.

Representatives of the Skokie Caucus Party did not respond Thursday to a request for comment and questions about whether it supports the proposals. Any response received will be added here.

To get a citizen-initiated referendum on the ballot in the village, backers must submit at least 1,800 valid signatures by Aug. 8.

The Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform will kick off its signature-gathering campaign Tuesday with an event at Devonshire Park featuring Quinn and other speakers.