-By Warner Todd Huston
Savor that headline, will you? The Democratic stronghold of Oak Park, home of trendy downtown shops and many Obama signs, is working with its lawyers to keep a homeless man off the ballot for the next village election.
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Oak Park’s village board voted 2-1 to prevent Daniel Fore from running for village trustee on the April 7 ballot because he does not have a residential address. Fore is, however, registered to vote in Cook County using the address of an Oak Park relative and has been a well known citizen of the area since the 1970s.
Mr. Fore never misses a village board meeting and is active in several local community causes such as the Adopt-a-Sailor program, which brings Naval cadets from Great Lakes Naval Training Station to Oak Park for holidays.
The Tribune reports that Fore has a serious blood-clotting disease that has made full-time employment all but impossible.
The village electoral board consisting of President David Pope, Trustee Ray Johnson, and Village Clerk Sandra Sokol voted 2-1 (with President Pope voting in favor of Fore) to deny Fore his spot on the ballot over the address issue. They point to state law as the reason.
State law requires a candidate’s nominating petitions to include their place of residence with “the street and number thereof, if any.”
Fore is claiming, though, that the “if any” clause clearly states that an address is not a requirement.
I don’t believe that candidates in Oak Park run under party banners, however this is a strongly Democratic area. We can see this by the fact that President Pope’s name appears on the list of those endorsing a Democratic candidate for State Senator for the 39th District. One of the first photos that you encounter on that webpage is that of Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), one of the most virulent and partisan, left-wing Democrats in Congress. One also finds Pope’s name nestled in with various union thugs and other left-wing activist groups. A conservative area is isn’t!
So, let’s revisit the main point here. We have a homeless man attempting to run for the village board of a left-wing Chicago suburb and the Democrats in charge of the village are ruling him ineligible.
Now, don’t we always hear how Democrats so love the homeless? Don’t we always hear from the left and its willing Media lap dogs that it is the Republicans that are mean to the homeless?
But, here we have Democrats mistreating a homeless man that wants to run for office?
So… HOW do the lefties explain this one away?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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