Elgin Township tops its 15 Kane County counterparts for political activity with a third of the County Board primary contests within its boundaries.
The township’s races on March 19 include challenges to Kane County Board incumbents Catherine Schick Hurlbut, Jack Cook and Jackie Tredup, all Republicans from Elgin.
Meanwhile, a new majority Hispanic district that encompasses some of Elgin’s older neighborhoods has first-time GOP candidates Deborah Allan and Gilbert Feliciano vying for their party’s nomination. District 17 is the only one of the 26 newly drawn County Board districts without an incumbent because Dennis Kosinski (R-Elgin) isn’t seeking re-election.
Hispanics account for more than a third of Elgin’s population, but not until last year was a Latino, Juan Figueroa, elected to the City Council.
With the new County Board district drawn to better reflect the city’s ethnic makeup, Feliciano, a Hispanic outreach worker and neighborhood planner, is looking to follow in Figueroa’s path.
Feliciano, 39, was born in Elgin and is running in a district that includes the neighborhood where he was raised. He has degrees in theology and law and worked as a law clerk after returning to the area in 1995. He began working for the city in 1997.
He laments that there is no Latino on the County Board.
“I’m only one guy with one perspective and don’t speak for [all] the Latinos, but to the extent that [the board] is devoid of that, I can add a perspective that hasn’t been there,” said Feliciano, who is of Puerto Rican descent.
Allan, 52, and her husband, Arthur, an attorney, moved to Elgin in 1985 and have lived in one of the city’s older sections ever since.
Like Feliciano, Allan has never run for elective office. She, too, found the configuration of the new, compact district tailor-made to her agenda for Elgin, which centers on what she calls “the peculiarities of an old neighborhood.”
“We have been neighborhood activists since 1985. So we’ve been dealing with the City Council, and we have been dealing with trying to affect policy,” she said. “Running for the County Board is an extension of that. The issues are those of old neighborhoods that are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
Helping install separate sanitary and storm-water sewer lines, for example, is a problem requiring the kind of “multigovernment help” that county representation requires, she said.
Although District 17 “does have a large Hispanic population, our oldest African-American population lives in this area,” she said. “We also have a large Asian population, and we have a subculture of young families who are finding architecturally interesting homes that are affordable.”
Forest district point man
Among County Board incumbents, Cook may be facing the biggest challenges. As point man for the Kane County Forest Preserve District’s strategy of aggressively pursuing the purchase of open space, Cook has been criticized for doing too little to improve public access to the district’s roughly 11,000 acres.
A retired pharmacist, the 77-year-old Cook is in his third four-year term. As forest preserve president since 1994, he was instrumental in garnering support for the $70 million open-space bond issue approved by voters in April 1999. With more than half the proceeds from that sale spent or committed, he favors turning to voters again, possibly in November, to see whether they want to buy more open space.
Challenging Cook is Larry Wegman of Elgin. Wegman, 59, has run for office before, including twice against Cook. He is the husband of Kane County Recorder Sandy Wegman.
Larry Wegman, who has experience in construction and glazing businesses, failed in a bid against former County Clerk Lorraine Sava in the March 1994 GOP primary. He was elected to the Elgin Township Board in 1993 and was a member of the Elgin Planning Commission.
In two previous attempts to defeat Cook for County Board in 1996 and 2000, Wegman was defeated by ratios of about 2-1.
Hurlbut, 44, an attorney from Elgin, was first elected to the County Board in 1994. GOP precinct committeemen in District 19 picked Hurlbut to run for the board seat being vacated by Alex McTavish.
She incurred the wrath of some countywide officeholders when, as chairman of the board’s Finance Committee from 1996 through 2000, she held tenaciously to the austere spending plan set by the board.
She is being challenged by Hugh McGowan, 67, of Elgin, a former mayor and board member in Sleepy Hollow and a longtime friend of County Board veteran Michael DeStefano, a Democrat who died last year.
McGowan is a fiscal conservative who is making an issue of Hurlbut’s vote to raise County Board salaries. With the district boundaries redrawn to include only a part of the one that Hurlbut represents, McGowan thinks he has an even chance of winning.
Weak economy
Tredup, 60, of Elgin was first elected to the board in 1996 when she bested incumbent Mary Taylor. She went unchallenged for re-election in 2000. In addition to being an assistant precinct committeeman, Tredup has raised money and campaigned for various Kane Republicans.
Tredup said a weak economy will challenge the board to address increasing health needs. She is on the board’s Public Service, Public Health and Judiciary Committees.
She is being challenged by Elgin Township Clerk Tim J. Holloway, a lifelong resident of Elgin. Holloway, 44, was elected clerk last year following his appointment in 1997. He was unsuccessful in a run for the Township Board in 1993 but was appointed to it in 1996. He has been Streamwood’s superintendent of public works for 19 years.
A self-described political conservative, Holloway is state political director for U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.). He also managed the state Supreme Court campaign of Justice Bob Thomas in 2000.
