MAYAN CALENDAR NEWS: CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist - "Discontented voters could go Green "
Carlos Perez
Discontented voters could go Green
Happy Valentine's Day to the Illinois Green Party. Their Valentine arrived early in the form of the Feb. 2 primary.
Why? Because the dreadfully low turnout coupled with extremely tight races on both the Democratic and Republican sides suggest that voters might actually be in search of a candidate called "None of the Above."
You might think that sounds ridiculous but hang on.
Illinois has had only a short courtship with the Greens since they fielded their first slate of statewide candidates in 2006. And their candidate for governor that year (and this year), Rich Whitney, did well enough against Rod Blagojevich and Judy Baar Topinka to pick up 10.4 percent of the total vote.
That was more than double the 5 percent minimum vote threshold to become a legally established political party in Illinois. That's why, if you were one of the precious few who voted two weeks ago, you could request not only a Republican or Democratic ballot -- you could have pulled a Green one instead.
As many as 5,000 voters did so, according to the Green Party, even though their candidates, unlike the Dems and the GOP, were in uncontested races.
"Those voters were more interested in an outright protest vote," Huckelberry said.
He grew up in Rockford, which had been battered by high unemployment way before the current recession. In 2006, Winnebago County, home to Rockford, gave Whitney his highest vote margin -- 24 percent against Blagojevich and Topinka.
"Rockford has always been at the cutting edge of being willing to support candidates outside the political mainstream, like John Anderson for Congress," Huckelberry said by phone Friday.
"It's just not unemployment that's the issue," he went on. "Between Chicago and Downstate, it has felt like the ugly stepchild of Illinois politics."
Now the whole state is feeling what Rockford has been feeling.
And they're not happy with the choices offered by the mainstream political establishment.
Could that explain why, even though there are 300,000 more registered voters in 2010 than in 2006, there was no increase in ballots in the governor's race this time over last?
In Chicago, according to Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen, fully 5 percent of those who bothered to vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries didn't check off any candidate for governor. Not even after the voting machine spit their ballot back out alerting them that they had left the office blank.
"Even with this alert system and even with this lively heated contest, more people took a pass on it than they did four years ago when it was Blagojevich vs. Edwin Eisendrath, a functional unknown," Allen said.
Interestingly, that alert system was only triggered for statewide offices. So further on down the ballot, when it came to voting for president of the Cook County Board, voters received no electronic reminder to vote but seemed determined to do so anyway.
"The one office that got more voter participation than any other was Cook County Board president," Allen said. "Only 3.9 percent of the voters did not make a choice."
And the resounding choice was to throw Todd Stroger out and bring Toni Preckwinkle in.
So what does any of this say about the Greens for 2010?
That, like the beleaguered Scott Lee Cohen of momentary lieutenant governor fame, if they can hone their message and capitalize on the raging discontent in the electorate, they might be hosting a Green tea party of their own.