what I saw at the Lake County League of Women Voters Candidate Forum for GOP Candidates (videos & pictures)

Whew. Long headline. In my capacity as the Campaign Manager (or really, deputy) for Paul Mitchell, I attended the GOP portion of the candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Lake County, the Daily Herald, etc., with my Canon Rebel and videocam at-the-ready, hoping to pick up something delicious.

Facilitating the Candidate Forum

The Forum, as detailed at the League of Women Voters Lake County website:

On Sunday, January 10, 2010, the League of Women Voters of Lake County, the Daily Herald, and Grayslake Community High School District 127 will hold a debate with both Republican and Democratic candidates running for the 8th Congressional District and for the 62nd State Representative. All 6 Republican candidates: Dirk Beveridge, John Dawson, Christopher Geissler, Maria Rodriguez, Gregory Jacobs, and Joe Walsh, will participate. Democratic write-in candidate, Jonathan Farnick, also will attend. Melissa Bean, the Democratic incumbent, has not responded yet.

Melissa Bean wasn’t there; probably a very good thing because the people are very unhappy with her posing as one thing and discovering she was another, once she took office.

An engaged and interested audience at the candidate forum

For the 62nd State Representative race, both Republican candidates, Sandy Cole, incumbent, and Paul Mitchell, will attend. The Democratic candidate, Rich Voltair, will be unopposed in the primary for the 62nd State race and will not be invited for this forum.

The forum will start promptly at 2:00 p.m. in the auditorium at Grayslake Central High School, 400 N. Lake St., Grayslake. Doors will open at 1:30pm. The forum should end by 4:30 p.m.

Grayslake Honors and Advanced Placement Government students will play an active role in the forum. Social Studies Department teachers are pleased with this opportunity for students, after thoroughly researching pertinent topics at both the federal and state levels, to question candidates in person.

First came the questions put to the six people running for Congress in the 8th District.

The candidates for Congress up in Lake County are Dirk Beverage, John Dawson, Christopher Geissler, Maria Rodriguez, Gregory Jacobs, and Joe Walsh. The students posing questions to them were seated at a skirted table on the opposite end of the stage from the podium, at stage left.

Students on the stage at the Candidate Forum

The podium that the facilitator was using was at an odd angle for me to take photos or video with.

Facilitating the forum from the podium

Instead of facing the audience directly, she was facing the auditorium at an angle.

I absorbed quite a bit about those candidates while I was waiting for Paul Mitchell and Sandy Cole to seize their opportunity to share the stage together, and here are some pictures and thoughts.

Chris Geissler, John Dawson and Maria Rodriguez

Chris Geissler, John Dawson and Maria Rodriguez were sitting at one skirted table immediately to the right of the facilitator at the podium.

Dirk Beverage, Gregory Jacobs & Joe Walsh

Dirk Beverage, Gregory Jacobs and Joe Walsh were seated at the middle table. They were, according to the facilitator, seated on the stage in the exact order they will appear no the ballot, so I’m assuming that Chris Geissler will be first on the ballot, and Joe Walsh will appear last – but it could possibly be the other way around; the facilitator did not clarify that point.

Geissler,Dawson and Rodriguez are all consulting types. Geissler was the most impressive to me of the three seated at Maria’s table; Maria seems to believe that her experience as Mayor of Long Grove is going to carry her on angel’s wings to Washington as she is the only one with ‘qualifications’; Dawson is a consultant who claims to have worked with million-dollar budgets and he’s not particularly interested in social issues; he’s interested in fixing the economy, and says he has the skills to help do that in Washington. Geissler was probably the most convincing at this table, he also has consulting experience, and a refreshing modesty that evidenced itself every time he closed a statement.

Beverage, Jacobs and Walsh were sitting at the middle table. I’ve seen Beverage before, but hadn’t connected him to the 8th Congressional District race in my mind, just that he was attempting a run at some political race.

Jacobs struck me as an old-time cop and military guy, although his 18 years’ service makes one wonder what happened with his military service; if you stick out your 20, you retire, with bennies. And it’s not 15 or 18-it’s 20. This guy has 18 years with no explanation. Jacobs strikes me as an introvert; he was somewhat halting in his speech patterns while he was searching for the right words to say, and consistently went overtime because he wasn’t watching the kids in the front who were holding the timecards. Jacobs said some funny things that had the audience laughing, comparing playing rock music to torture when the question was raised; mentioned the Iron Butterfly’s Inagoddadavida, that it seems like torture to him, even after all these years, and he can still hear it playing over in his head.

Walsh seemed the most eloquent, well-spoken and most passionate of them all, and says what the American people are thinking and feeling. He kept returning to his tag line “I feel like I’m losing my country”, which resonates with everyone-even democrats now.

I drove quite a ways to get to this event, and Walsh’s signs were EVERYWHERE.

One thing that was somewhat disturbing was that Walsh said he supports torture against the enemies of America to get intelligence.

But what he didn’t say, Jacobs did; if torture is playing rock-and-roll music, you can be all for it and not feel any bit of guilt about it.

Geissler, Dawson and Rodriguez were all a little bit disturbing for me. Rodriguez says she has a track record of being able to work with people from across the aisle. But…excuse me, that’s one of the problems voters have with politicians now…is that they’re willing to ‘go along to get along’ and compromise on principles, and that’s how a lot of people have concluded we have wound up in this mess.

Rodriguez is a RINO, from what I gather; somewhat dithers on issues, people say-but it was the consulting approach to politics that seemed rather irritating to me. Dawson seems to have no clue that social issues precede policy issues, and they are inextricably linked. Every time someone goes into that soliloquy about how ‘my personal belief is that life begins at conception’ but isn’t willing to go far enough to extend that into public policy prescriptions, that is a real problem and a huge disconnect. Either life begins at conception, or it doesn’t. It’s not even a moral issue; it’s a statement of scientific fact…it’s not about separation of church and state, the life of the mother, victims of incest; it’s about an innocent life and whether or not government should be involved in the genocide of unborn children.

So that consultant’s table wasn’t making any points with me as the question/answer period wore on.

They all talked about upholding the Geneva Convention at the table, when it is apparent they don’t even know what’s in it. Since terrorists don’t qualify under the Geneva conventions because a) they don’t wear a uniform of a country b) they don’t hold their weapons in full view and c) they don’t recognize and/or abide by the Geneva conventions themselves; it strikes me as odd that they would all say the same thing about upholding the Geneva Conventions.

That aside, I was more impressed with the three candidates sitting at Walsh’s table; and Walsh was the most impassioned.

Rodriguez made a few slams in Walsh’s direction about how yelling and screaming once you get to Washington isn’t going to ‘win hearts and minds’, or something to that effect.

But Walsh was saying that we have to be standing for and holding to our principles.

Fascinating. When it broke up, Don Castella and I moved from one end of the auditorium to- sitting a few rows away from the front Row, right in the middle of the auditorium for Paul and Sandy’s session.

If you’re interested in hearing what they say, you’ll probably have to turn up the volume on your computer. Sandy’s unedited responses versus Paul’s unedited responses are a priceless contrast and voters in Lake County need to educate themselves on what the choices are. If, as Paul says, you are happy with the way things are going, vote for Sandy. On the other hand, if you are not, Paul is the best choice.

Paul mentioned his online campaign, how he would keep in touch with his constituents, that he is on facebook, twitter, and his website…Sandy had very little to say about how she would keep in touch with her constituents-she says she has an ‘open door policy’ as if she’s talking to a bunch of students instead of voters.