out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement
ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
By John A. Ostenburg
Sometimes one recollection of something that once occurred many years ago will come popping back without any provocation.
Such a situation for me comes from an incident that took place during my brief tenure as a member of the Illinois General Assembly. I was elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 and served a two-year term from January 1993 to January 1995. For the most part, it was not a period of service marked with any significant accomplishment. I’ve often said that I’ve never worked so hard to accomplish so little; in fact, I sincerely believe it was the least productive two years of my working life. By contrast, my time in municipal office has been much more rewarding, especially my 20 years as mayor of Park Forest.
I had run for the Illinois House a total of five times, the first an unsuccessful attempt to get one of the two Democratic nominations from the Springfield region in 1970 when legislators still were elected from three-member districts. I was only 25 at the time and the two Democrats who defeated me, one an incumbent and the other a former House staffer, subsequently served in the legislature for some time.
The three-member districts guaranteed minority representation in the House, as each political party – Democratic and Republican – would only nominate two candidates, which meant that each district had two representatives from one party and one representative from the other. If the district leaned Democratic, it would be two Democrats and one Republican; if the district were Republican leaning, two Republicans and one Democrat. In addition, a policy of cumulative voting was in place for House elections at that time, meaning that if a voter cast a vote for only one of the candidates, he/she would receive three votes, if cast for two candidates, each would receive one and one-half votes, and if voting for three then each received one vote.
Three-member House districts and cumulative voting both were abandoned as a result of a constitutional amendment that was approved by the electorate in 1980. The change reduced the House to 118 members and the Senate to 59 with each Senate district split into two House districts, each with one representative. The policy that voters approved was called the “Cutback Amendment” because it “cut” the overall size of the legislature by 27 members; that came in reducing the House from a previous number of 153 members but increasing the Senate from only 51 members previously.
By the time of my second run for the House in 1988, I was living in Park Forest and had served as a trustee in the Village for three years. On the encouragement of a few associates, I decided to seek the 80th District seat. In advance of making my decision, I reached out to several persons I thought could be candidates for the Democratic nomination in order to learn their intentions. One was former Representative Jim Marzuki, who had held the seat for one term; he said he did not intend to run again. Another was Park Forest Trustee Pat Kelly, subsequently my predecessor as mayor, who told me he always considered a possible run for the House but did not see that as a possibility at that time. The third was attorney Kevin Conlon who then was serving as Rich Township Democratic Committeeman, but he also said he had no interest. Fortunately, I was able to gain the support of all three and then secure the nomination unopposed.
It was an exciting race, with hundreds of volunteers engaged in my campaign. The tenor of political campaigns was much different from what it has become in years since, with much more emphasis on door-to-door campaigning by both the candidate and teams of volunteers and far less of a practice of spending hours on the telephone calling lobbyists and other special interest folks seeking monstrous dollar contributions.
Not that I didn’t have support from some special interest groups, especially from organized labor. I had been an educator and my stance on various issues was very progressive; my Republican opponent by contrast was very conservative and not viewed as a friend by either union folks or teachers. Labor gave me dollars but was even more generous in giving me workers. That especially was true of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), the two powerful teacher unions in the state. I lost that contest too, but my appetite for politics was so whetted that I began immediately after the election to plan for another run in 1990.
Even though I had lost the 1988 race, I had learned a lot and I gained much loyal support from those who worked with me and who now joined me in building up to the 1990 campaign. I was running against the same opponent, who was strongly anti-choice on reproductive rights, and as a result many pro-choice and women’s rights groups eagerly jumped on my bandwagon. Additionally, mostly because of the hard work of two now deceased close friends – Bob Furnace and Velton Lacefield – I had made significant inroads in the local African American community. Bob and Velton brought hundreds of Black workers into the campaign and taught me the issues that were important to the African American community in the south suburbs. I still benefit from the forthright learning that they imparted to me. Of course, the teachers and members of the two major public employee unions – the American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – provided both money and workers, as did some other units of organized labor.
It was an interesting election season. A third party, the Harold Washington Party, had emerged and was running candidates for various offices in Cook County. The Harold Washington Party was on the ballot when absentee voting began but then was thrown off by a court order. As a result, absentee ballots that had been cast before the court ruling were sequestered and would not be counted in the final election tally. As it turned out, on election night I was the winner in my race by a very slim margin. But then, three days later, the Cook County Clerk decided that the Harold Washington absentee ballots would be counted only in my race because the final decision was so close and no Washington Party candidate was running for the post. The result of that decision was that I lost the election by almost the same slim margin by which I had been victorious three days earlier.
The Democrats won a veto-proof margin in the House during the 1990 election, so it was somewhat surprising that House Speaker Michael J. Madigan made the decision to contest the outcome in my race, since the seat really wasn't necessary for his complete control of the chamber. A discovery recount was ordered, out of which seemed to be a clear indication that I had won. The process for the recount itself was very enlightening and I learned – a full ten years earlier than the rest of the nation did as a result of the Bush-Gore battle – all about things such as “hanging chads” and what type of markings on ballots were acceptable and which ones not. A unique aspect of House races in Illinois is that any contesting of them is decided by the House itself and not by the courts as is the usual process for election disputes. As a result of that policy, a special committee of the House was created to decide the outcome. The committee, the membership of which was majority Democratic, met for a full two years without ever reaching a decision, the whole time during which my opponent remained in office. I always suspected that Speaker Madigan had decided to pursue the challenge only as a threat to the Republican leadership and not with any sincere intent to change things, since another Democratic vote wasn't necessary because of the veto-proof status House Dems had at the time.
After all that I had experienced with the 1990 outcome, I was uncertain about running again in 1992 but eventually made up my mind to do so after the decennial redistricting, based on the 1990 census figures, significantly changed the composition of the 80th District. I was late coming to that decision and did not begin to circulate petitions to be on the ballot until the final days before the filing period opened. I had reached my decision to run while attending a breakfast gathering of the Bloom Township Democratic Organization. At that breakfast, I was seated next to an acquaintance who told me that he intended to seek the Democratic nomination for the post and already had all the needed signatures to file. Hearing that was all I needed to force my decision and I told him that I was going to run also. It only took about five minutes of our conversation before he decided to drop out without even filing. Once again I would have no opposition for the Democratic nomination.
The 1992 election was a good one for Democrats with Bill Clinton at the top of the ticket in a three-person contest for president, opposing both incumbent President George H.W. Bush and Texas businessman Ross Perot. The Clinton coattails, plus the fact that the re-constructed 80th District leaned more heavily to the Democrats, gave me a good win that November and I subsequently was sworn in the following January as a member of the Illinois 88th General Assembly. My tenure was short-lived, however, since two years later the "Gingrich Revolution" led to massive Republican wins at various levels across the U.S. I was not alone in losing my seat to a Republican, as the Illinois House went to the GOP for the only two-year period of the last nearly forty years.
As one whose experience was in education – I had been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels – I was fortunate during my time in the legislature to gain assignment to three education-related committees: Elementary & Secondary Education, Higher Education, and Education Appropriations. I think it was because of those assignments that the incident I mention in the opening paragraph above, the one the memory of which often comes back to me, occurred.
You see, sitting in my district office one day, my legislative aide indicated that I had a telephone call from a local pastor, a person with whom I was well acquainted, who led a large long-standing congregation in my district, and who was highly respected in the region. I took the call, thinking he must have some parishioner in need of assistance or that he had some type of social project on which he wanted help. Because of his respected status, I was eager to be of assistance to him.
Well, he indeed wanted my help, but it wasn’t for a needy member of his congregation or for any type of social service. Instead it was for some type of financial project in which his brother was involved and which, according to the pastor, could be the solution of Illinois’ continuing need to fund public education adequately. The pastor said he was so impressed by what his brother had developed that he himself had become an investor in it. I listened intently but gradually came more and more to the realization that I was being asked to use by elected position to gain insider assistance for the pastor’s brother in what, for lack of a better description, was some kind of scheme, one that would bring great financial benefit to both the pastor and his brother.
Perhaps my hesitancy became obvious to the respected clergyman, so he must have felt the need to sweeten things to get me on board. “Of course, there’s a little something in it for you too,” he said.
Hearing those words, I brought closure to the conversation quickly and I never again heard from the pastor. He since has passed away, so I feel no reluctance in relaying this story, albeit I never would provide any details that might give away his identity. It is, however, an incident that just pops into my memory every so often, especially when I hear about politicians who are on the take. My recollection of the respected pastor and his offer of “a little something in it” for me always gives me the feeling that I need a good shower!
I once relayed this story to an acquaintance and was startled by his automatic presumption that the pastor was African American. Not sure whether he thought that because the district I represented at the time now is heavily Black, or just because of his own prejudicial leanings, although I'm inclined to think the latter rather than the former. In any event, his presumption was totally incorrect: the pastor was White and an ordained minister of a very traditional Protestant sect.
John A. Ostenburg retired in 2019 after 20 years as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois. He previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives, and before becoming mayor, served seven years as a member of the Park Forest municipal council. While mayor, he was an active member of the National League of Cities and served during 2017-18 as co-chair of the NLC Race, Equity And Leadership (REAL) Council. He was chair of the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, a group of more than 270 Chicago-region municipalities, for 2018-19 and was a member of the MMC Executive Board for several years. He also was chair of the MMC Environment Committee for five years. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. Presently he is a Senior fellow at the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council and also serves as president of the Board of Directors of the Chicago region's South Suburban Housing Center. E-mail him at [email protected].