Sandy Wegman didn’t have the big endorsements or the mantle of incumbency. She lacked her opponent’s organizational clout, and her campaign brochure didn’t include pictures of her with U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and state Rep. Patricia Reid Lindner (R-Aurora), as her opponent’s did.
When all was said and done Tuesday, however, what Wegman did have that incumbent Kane County Recorder Lynda Rivers didn’t, was more Republican primary votes.
On a day that saw record or near-record lows in voter turnouts throughout the Chicago region, a factor that seemed to have benefited most incumbents, Wegman joined a short list of GOP challengers to pull an upset.
In defeating Rivers, Wegman was one of only three candidates to upset an incumbent in west suburban primaries, all of them in Kane County. She won with 56 percent of the vote.
The other GOP incumbents who were defeated were Kane County State’s Atty. David Akemann and County Board member Tom Hartwell of Elgin.
Akemann, like Rivers a two-term incumbent, was bested by attorney Meg Gorecki of Geneva.
Hartwell ran second to Dan Walter of South Elgin in a five-way primary for the GOP nomination in County Board District 16.
There was nothing mysterious or mystical about Wegman’s win, she said.
“We just ran a good campaign. We worked very hard and had a lot of people supporting us and who believed in what we were doing,” Wegman said.
Wegman said she ran “a people-to-people campaign” that began last August, shortly after she was elected to a second term as trustee of Elgin’s Borden Public Library.
In one way, Rivers said, she felt “kind of liberated” by the outcome.
“I really won’t have to worry quite as much about what I say or what I do, although that hasn’t been stopping me lately and maybe that’s why (the defeat),” she said.
All the other GOP board incumbents were renominated. There were no contested Democratic primaries Tuesday for county posts.
Although not an entrenched incumbent, chief Deputy Coroner C. Stephen O’Brien, who ran with strong GOP organizational support, lost to former deputy coroner Charles West, 52 percent to 48 percent, in the race for Kane County coroner.
Hartwell, an attorney, ran second to insurance executive Walter, 39 percent to 33 percent, in the County Board race. Votes for the balance of the GOP candidates accounted for the other 28 percent.
A lifelong resident of Kane County, Walter, 47, was making his first bid for political office, though he has been active in community and church organizations over the last 20 years and founded the South Elgin Economic Development commission.
“For too long there has been an absence of a strong relationship between this area and the Kane County Board,” Walter said. “I hope to change that.”
Despite having been beaten convincingly by incumbent state Sen. Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora), 68 percent to 29 percent, GOP challenger Sunny Abello, of Batavia, said she was encouraged by the response of 21st Senate District voters.
“I’ve never felt so wonderful in my life,” Abello assured her supporters. “I’m surrounded by my children, my family, my good friends–and I didn’t even have to die to get that. We still have a lot to celebrate tonight,” Abello told a crowd late Tuesday.
