Dem Mike Mahon runs for Sheriff

Yesterday's Northwest Herald carried an article about Mike Mahon's entry into the race for McHenry County Sheriff. Mike filed his petitions as the Democratic candidate for Sheriff and he, as I, will be on the ballot in November 2010.

Mike and his family live in Lake in the Hills. According to the article, Mike is the first Democrat to run for Sheriff since 1998. His website is at www.mikemahon.org You can read the article online at www.nwherald.com/articles/2009/11/19/r_bo_tdsrpqkyqvzp5hv1jfw/index.xml If your computer is like mine, you won't be able to find it by searching on the NWH website.

Several people have been wondering how many votes it will take to beat Keith Nygren out of his job. According to the article, in 1998 Nygren beat Arlie Page 47,904-14,619. That equates to 76.6% of the vote.

The next General Election will be a different story. I forecast that the Republic candidate in November 2010 will not get 76% of the vote and that the backlash against Republican control of the sheriff's office in McHenry County will result in a very close race.

Too much money is being wasted on lawsuits by the sheriff's department. Many of those lawsuits have occurred because of decisions made by the sheriff that are being challenged, such as unreasonable terminations and refusals to accept court and arbitrator decisions to put fired employees back to work.

It's interesting that Mahon would refer to "Nygren's reputation as a 'cell phone sheriff '." I first heard that one over a year ago.

The article said that "Nygren dismissed innuendo that he was excessively away from the sheriff's office as meaningless political grandstanding."

I say, let's see travel records (airline ticket records, political campaign expense receipts in Florida restaurants and liquor stores, etc.) and mileage logs for his Tahoe and any other County vehicles at his disposal and his personal vehicle. Maybe his secretary has a log of days when Nygren was out of the office, not directly on County business. The whole issue of time-in-the-office will be explored in detail in January.

On the gang issue, I recall that there used to be a McHenry County Anti-Gang Task Force. When I tried to get information from the sheriff's department about it 2-3 years ago, nobody knew anything about it. It was like it had never existed. I knew that people knew about it, but they weren't talking.

Yet the sheriff told the reporter that his office participated in a "longstanding" countywide task force.