By DOUG IBENDAHL • November 22, 2014
Democracy will not be Tom Double Crossed.
For years Tom Cross told Republican voters they couldn’t have a vote for the members of the State Central Committee, the Illinois Republican Party’s senior governing board.
Every Illinois Democrat enjoys that right in their party, but Cross has always maintained the Republican rank-and-file can’t be trusted to pick their own party’s top leadership in Illinois. By hook and by crook he viciously opposed and railroaded the direct election reform every time it came up.
Tom Cross has been sitting around in Springfield for over two decades where his total lack of leadership and complete disrespect for Republican principles drove the State House Republican caucus into its current super-irrelevancy status.
But this year was the first time Cross ran statewide, so it was the first opportunity I and most other Illinoisans had to give Cross what he wanted.
Cross repeatedly said he hated the idea of Republicans voting for Republican leaders, so on November 4 I raced over to my polling place to comply with his wishes.
Obviously I wasn’t alone. It took a couple of weeks after Election Day for all of the absentee and provisional ballots to be counted around the state, but now we know Cross lost the Treasurer’s race to Democrat Mike Frerichs by over 9.000 votes.
Cross penned a gracious concession statement on Wednesday. I’m sure Cross hoped to persuade the rubes to forget that just 72 hours prior to his concession the attack dogs in his employ were still hurling reckless and completely baseless accusations against the election officials whose duty it was to count the legal votes.
His bitter hostility towards real and open democracy remained on display until the very end.
This time Tom Double Cross gave himself the old Tom Double Cross. It’s a great day indeed when it removes a pointless politician from the field.
Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.
TWITTER
