|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
News
GOP candidate survives ballot challenge : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisGOP candidate survives ballot challenge
| Court ruling keeps McQuillan on ballot with Hatcher, Wheeler
| by Tony Scott
| 1/7/2010
|
A Kane County man running in the 50th State House District as state representative will remain on the Feb. 2 primary election ballot, a Cook County judge ruled Monday.
Bob McQuillan of Batavia is on the primary ballot as a Republican, running against incumbent State Rep. Kay Hatcher, R-Yorkville, and Oswego resident Keith Wheeler.
After McQuillan filed his candidacy petitions in November, T. John Reeves of Oswego, a frequent donor to local Republican candidates, filed a challenge to those petitions, charging that some of those who signed McQuillan's petitions were not registered voters in the 50th District among other allegations.
The State Board of Elections found in McQuillan's favor last month, but the board's decision allowed for Reeves to appeal the board's decision in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago.
McQuillan said Tuesday that the judge upheld the state board's original ruling allowing him to stay on the ballot. Reeves has an opportunity to appeal the Cook County decision to the Appellate Court, but McQuillan expressed doubt that he would do so. Reeves did not return a message requesting comment.
Asked Tuesday if he thought Reeves's challenge affected his campaign, McQuillan said, "I'm sure that was the plan."
"The plan was to try to slow me down as much as possible, focus on defending myself and spend a lot of money," he said. "Fortunately for me, the only thing I really spent was time and energy; it didn't cost me any money."
McQuillan said he hired an attorney only last week when he had to go to court, and only spent money on attorney fees for the filing of a court brief and an appearance at Monday's hearing.
McQuillan insisted, however, that the process "made me a better candidate."
"It was a lousy thing to go through, but I really, truly think it's made me a better candidate," he said. "I can now talk to it and say I did the right thing from the very beginning. I can also turn it into a positive and say to the people, hey, look how hard I defended myself, I'll do the same thing as a state representative and I'll do it as fiscally responsible as possible."
McQuillan acknowledged, however, that the challenge did "hurt my fundraising efforts."
"Not knowing if I was going to be on the ballot, I didn't really want to ask people for money, and people in their own minds were saying, let's see what's happening with this thing," he said. "So I'm hoping the fundraising picks up a little bit over the next couple weeks."
McQuillan also insisted that he has a "great shot at winning" the primary in February, noting that he hopes to prove that "you can win a primary without spending a lot of money."
"I'm probably going to spend less than a tenth of what my competitors are going to spend on this primary, and I'm probably going to have a great shot of winning," he said.
McQuillan acknowledged also that he "got a lot of press about this" and that "any publicity is good publicity."
"People reading this, it's pretty clear that this was a vendetta against me, and it was just one way of trying to get me off the ballot," he said. "I feel like they underestimated how hard I was going to fight."
McQuillan said he knew all along that he was doing the right thing, as he was sure that the signatures collected were "good signatures."
"We knew that they were good signatures because we checked the voter records and went door to door," he said. "So we had a tight control over our petition process, because it was my wife and I, and a couple of close friends who really helped us (collect signatures)."
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
