Apolitical suburbans

I’ve been a registered voter in Skokie for thirty years, yet I’ve never been visited by anybody from the Niles Township Democratic Organization (which is just fine with me). I simply receive a mailer before each election that lists the slated candidates. I routinely throw it in the garbage.

Over the years, I’ve met canvassers for several state legislative candidates and even a couple of aspirants, themselves.

A school board candidate once knocked on my door and asked me to sign his nominating petition. That was unusual. People running for the school board rarely canvass or knock on doors for anything. They don’t want to look political. They merely carry their petitions around with them and ask people they already know to sign when they run into them in the store, at the park, or somwhere else.

The President and Vice-President of the high school board were thrown off the ballot one year for submitting improper petition documents. They felt they were being treated unfairly. They said they were just volunteers helping the community, when they were actually elected officials collecting and spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Political attitudes are different in the suburbs than they were when I lived in Chicago.