A Mostly Good Election Night for Illinois Public Libraries
The results from April 1’s Illinois Consolidated Election are in, and most of the outcomes are positive when it comes to elections for public library board trustee. I’ve gone through the entire list of those contested elections. You can take a peek at the results here, with the following notes:
Winning candidates are highlighted in magenta and their names are bold
If the winner was one of concern, beside their names and concerns you’ll see *Winner in magenta.
A couple of the elections are either too close to call or, in one case, a complete tie. I noted these edge cases.
Although it appears that library ballot initiatives were a mixed bag–Ella Johnson’s bond initiative failed, while Chatham and White Oak saw their tax increase asks pass by tiny margins–most of the trustee elections did not see extremists win. This was the case in Woodridge and in Lombard, where members running under the Christian nationalist “American Solidarity Party” lost their bids.
Another positive outcome came from Sandwich Public Library. If you’ve attended any recent webinars or in-person events of mine talking about censorship between, say, September and December of last year, you’d have heard about the rise in attacks this library has experienced over a barrage of disinformation perpetrated through local churches and far-right politicians. This slate of new trustees is promising and will hopefully help reaffirm to this staff that they’re doing good, meaningful, and essential work.
Other libraries saw a mix of library advocates and extremists win spots on the board. These are institutions to pay particular attention to in the coming years, as some have been under attack for months and as long as years.
Elmwood Park Public Library will see the three incumbents who’ve been part of the library’s internal strife return once again. The three trustees, none of whom showed up to a local candidate forum, were not the ideal picks, and throughout the campaign, at least one of the strongest picks for board, librarian Jack Bower, experienced harassment from the Elmwood Park Public Library director.
One candidate of concern in the Mississippi Valley Library District 2-year position won her bid, continuing the board’s lean to the right (and while library elections are nonpartisan in Illinois, that has not stopped the local news in this area from casting candidates as one thing or another). Murphy has been against LGBTQ+ materials in the library and has also been outspoken against the library staff’s desire to unionize.
Perhaps of deepest concern is the future of Talcott Public Library in Rockton, Illinois, a Rockford suburb. This library has been beleaguered for years by groups targeting the library’s inclusive programming and collections. An far-right state politician from the region drummed up enthusiasm for a slate of extremists vying for a position on the board by riling up Facebook followers with disinformation related to the types of books being made available in public schools and libraries locally:
Chesney endorsed three candidates for Talcott’s trustee election, including Lindt and Kelley, who each won their campaigns.
For what it’s worth, nothing in Chesney’s post is remotely true and thanks to the good efforts of a local librarian, it was made clear that the book showcased didn’t reside in any of the regional public libraries.
I have not and will not be going through the guide to Illinois public school board elections the same way I’ve gone through the public library elections above. I welcome anyone who wishes to take that task on to have at it. You can access the document of all those contested elections here. It might be easiest to copy the whole document and paste it into a new spreadsheet to make editing and adjusting easier.
If you’ve been following the Illinois elections series in this newsletter but aren’t in Illinois, I cannot recommend enough considering where and how you can do something similar in your down ballot elections. I was inspired by the work being done by Frank Strong with his guide to Texas local elections and adjusted to make it work for Illinois.
A big thanks goes out to every person who provided insight, links, and help through the process. While we will never know the full impact of these election guides, if they were helpful to one person, it was worth it.
And here’s the thing: we also know where our attention should be focused in Illinois when it comes to libraries who may see themselves targeted from the inside and out.