Maher: A campaign strategy "Out of touch with reality"

Maher: A campaign strategy "Out of touch with reality"

A lot of political flyers have been landing in our mail boxes these past few weeks. The race between 17th District Cook County Board member Liz Gorman and challenger Patrick Maher president of the Orland Fire Protection District is by far the hottest race out there.

Gorman and Maher have been duking it out accusing each other of distorting the facts. Gorman's campaign benefited from the mother of the young man who Pat Maher brutally beat up while he was a student at Illinois State University. She did a telephone audio robo-call to every voters in the huge county wide district.

Maher has been telling everyone the charges are false, which is the most outrageous response. Maher was charged with felony assault and then after a deadlocked jury, he plead guilty to misdemeanor battery. The mother of the student he and one of his friends pummeled is the voice behind the robo-calls.

But the biggest lie came out when Maher sent out a mailer to voters alleging, again falsely, that Gorman has supported Todd Stroger's tax increases.

Are you kidding me? I don't know who is advising Maher but he has run one of the worst campaigns I have ever seen. The best strategy they can come up with to respond to the disclosures of Maher's past conviction (and his lying about those convictions) is to lie about Gorman.

The latest flyer falsely claims:

"Two times, we elected Liz Gorman to the County Board on her promise to cut taxes. Two times, she's let us down by voting YES on Todd STroger's bloated budgets. Gorman supported almost $3 billion in Stroger spending in 2007 and another $2.9 billion last year."

What Maher is saying is that he would reject any budget adopted by the county and bring the county to a standstill?

Gorman fought EVERY tax increase Stroger has proposed and led the fight to repeal the one percent sales tax hike and is leading the fight to repeal the second half, a sales tax she voted against.

The ridiculous assertion that Gorman is an ally of Stroger is so stupid, it makes Maher look like a neophyte, inexperienced leader. It's just dumb.

The flyer is intended to target voters who are out of touch with reality. And those voters rarely vote anyway. So why did they waste their money on a lie like that? Well, first, they have few issues. Second Maher's consultants are in fact the big shot Machine form the 19th Ward which has turned Orland Park in to one of their satellite machine territories.

The only people out of touch with reality are Maher and his political consultants.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com