By Aaron Halliday
On Monday night the City Council of Bloomington met for their “Committee of the Whole” meeting. During the public comment portion of the meeting, a lady named Angela Scott, whom I have never personally met spoke to the Council pointing out that she and her family were struggling to make ends meet. This lady spoke about one of the Alderwoman taking her children to a show at the Grossinger Motors Arena and how she wanted to take her own children to the same show but is unable to do so because of financial reasons.
The speaker was passionate told the Council about her family life and how they often had to make hard choices because they lived on a strict budget. She was brave to stand up for her family and to single out an example of the repercussions of the sometimes-insane expenditure’s this Council makes.
Did the Council listen and feel her passion? I doubt it. I have attended many Council meetings and rarely do the council members pay attention to the speakers during the public comment portion of the meeting, let alone even acknowledge their presence. But this time I sincerely hope the voice of this speaker will resonate with the Council because while she was a single voice in the room, she spoke what many of us are thinking.
Nonetheless, I am glad she spoke her mind because I have no issue speaking my mind. That is why I would like to address the inept leadership of the McLean County Republican Party.
Last April, the citizens of Bloomington and Normal went to the polls to vote in the local elections. As a resident of Bloomington, I was very active in the Bloomington election cycle supporting candidates that were conservative with both my time and my money. I was the most active in the Mayoral race, but I also helped with a couple of the Aldermanic races too. I did this because my core beliefs are that government should be small and conservative in nature because their source of income is based on the money they take from the citizens via taxes and fees to the government.
The candidates that I supported lost the election and now the City Council for the City of Bloomington consists of eight liberal Aldermen, one hardcore liberal Mayor and one Alderman who is wishy-washy at best. The voters and more importantly the citizens who did not vote are now on the receiving end of results of these elections meaning we will likely continue to see higher fees and taxes with no end in sight for at least two years.
I believe that these losses can be blamed on the lack of support and leadership of the McLean County Republican Party. While the local elections are non-partisan, the reality is that the candidates are most likely identified as Republicans or Democrats. In my case, my candidates were more closely affiliated with the Republican Party than they were the Democrat Party.
During the campaign season, I went to a few of the McLean County Republican monthly breakfasts at the Doubletree Hotel in Bloomington. This is the first time that I had been to one of the meetings since about 2006. Since then, the leadership has changed, but while there has been a change, it is not for the better. The first thing that I noticed is that there were very few people in attendance. Basically, very few were there unless they were an elected official, vying to be an elected official, or part of a campaign team. The attendance was dismal.
I was greeted by a few of the elected officials that I know. Besides that, I might as well have been invisible, because no one in the leadership greeted me, welcomed me or even came to thank me for attending. Why is this? I mean I am a rotund person, I stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd and yet, I was invisible to most of the people there.
And then the leader spoke. He was as enthusiastic as a glass of water. He spoke with no excitement, and tried to keep the meeting in order as the candidates could take a few moments to speak about their races and any upcoming events those who were already in office had planned. The leader made no attempt whatsoever to bring any excitement to this meeting at all. It was a real shame.
After the breakfasts, I would say goodbye to those I knew and walkout again without any recognition from the leadership.
As part of the campaign team I was associated with, I found myself reaching out to those I knew that are elected in hopes of getting an endorsement for my three candidates that I supported. I was even more shocked of the responses that I would get when I would ask one of them for their support for my candidate. I was told “I have to support (insert name here), because they supported me”. Or, “Sorry, I don’t get involved in local elections”.
Are you kidding me? If we are supposedly “like minded”, then you should be supporting the person your party is bringing to the table, not the old “I will do you a favor if you do me a favor” brand of politics. It is actions like this that get us stuck in the rut we are currently in!
In my opinion, the leadership of the McLean County Republican Party needs to change if there is ever going to be a movement of conservative values in the local political arena.
How do we change the leadership of the Party? I have no idea. But I would think that I am not alone in my disgust. There is a dire need for help with the Party. The Republican Party needs people get involved. They need people to step up to be Precinct Committeemen, they need to start with school board members and City Council members.
People need to attend the City Council meetings and they need to speak their mind when it comes to the local government and the continuous raising of taxes and fees. There needs to be more people active in the community and the direction in which it seems to be heading. These are all things the local Republican Party leadership should be involved in. Yet they are nowhere to be found. Why? Again, because they are inept.
In 2019 the people of Bloomington will elect Aldermen for the four Wards (Wards 2, 4, 6 and 8). Now is the time to start recruiting and seeking the people with strong conservative values to run in these races. Four strong conservative candidates can make a difference in Bloomington! Will the current McLean County Republican Party leadership work on this? I doubt it.
Until they do, the City of Bloomington will continue to bleed us of our money because I truly believe that they think they need our money more than we do! We need more people to stand up to the Council like Angela Scott did and we need to continue to hold this Council accountable for the actions, because it is obvious that the McLean County Republican Party leadership is clueless and spineless.
Aaron Halliday is the owner of Checker Cab and Yellow Cab of Bloomington. We are soon celebrating our 12th year in business. He’s been a lifelong resident of the Bloomington-Normal area with the exception of four years. He’s lived in Belize and Tijuana, Mexico. He’s married to Sheila Halliday, whom he met in the Philippines. Sheila is an administrative assistant in the home healthcare industry.
The opinions expressed in WJBC’s Voices entries are solely those of the author in their own words, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media Inc.
