Pekin City Councilman Bill Maddox set up his own candidate forum at the Knights of Columbus hall on Wednesday. He was not able to attend the April 3rd forum and wanted this opportunity to address concerned voters.
The Journal Star article states that Maddox was unable to attend either the March 27 SBA forum or the April 3 Daily Times / Friends of the Public Library forum. However, I’m pretty sure that the JS has their facts wrong again since Bill Maddox was quoted in the March 28 Daily Times article about the SBA forum (I still had the March 28 dead tree edition lying around, but the online edition is locked away in their archive … so I can’t provide a link).
Anyway, Maddox, John Abel and Chad Schmidgall attended as candidates, and only 11 other people showed up. That doesn’t bode well for Maddox, although he should be able to count on greater name recognition as a sitting council member.
Based on a large ad running in the dead tree edition of the Times, Maddox also has the endorsement of the Pekin Firefighters PAC. Rusty Dunn and (surprise) John Abel also received their endorsement.
The local firefighters have a PAC all their own??? That’s … wild. You hear a lot about PAC-driven lobbying efforts on the state and federal level, but I wouldn’t think that a group of firefighters in a small city like Pekin would need their own PAC.
Interesting.
UPDATE (4/13/07): Edgar Sandoval has a rundown of those in attendence at the Wednesday forum. Dave Tebben was also in attendance … something the JS failed to mention.
4 responses so far ↓
1
Brian A. Graham
// Apr 13, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I believe the journal Star article is referring to the two events at the library sponsored by the Pekin Times. Mr. Maddox did not attend the Feb. forum at the library.
2
knightindragonland
// Apr 13, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Hmmmm, maybe. I didn’t consider that forum since it was before the primary. Maddox has attended one of the two major forums held SINCE the primary.
3
T.V.
// Apr 14, 2007 at 10:46 am
“Based on a large ad running in the dead tree edition of the Times, Maddox also has the endorsement of the Pekin Firefighters PAC. Rusty Dunn and (surprise) John Abel also received their endorsement.
The local firefighters have a PAC all their own??? That’s … wild. You hear a lot about PAC-driven lobbying efforts on the state and federal level, but I wouldn’t think that a group of firefighters in a small city like Pekin would need their own PAC.”
Maybe the firefighters care who gets into office. How is this … wild?
4
knightindragonland
// Apr 14, 2007 at 4:28 pm
It’s just not something I would expect to see at the local level in a small city like Pekin.
Many people in this country have concerns regarding the political influence of PACs, their ability to drown out the voices of everyday citizens and their potential contribution to corruption.
The firefighters in Pekin seem to wield a great deal of political influence, and some of the candidates they’ve STRONGLY supported in the past didn’t turn out so well. Does the name Lyn Howard sound familiar?
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