Whitney visits Woodstock

Green Party candidate for Governor Rich Whitney stepped off the Metra train at the Woodstock depot this morning and was greeted by Scott Summers and Frank Wedig, Green Party candidates for Illinois Treasurer and McHenry County Board District 5.

Bill Scheurer, Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress (Illinois - 8th District), was also present, although not in bicycle gear. Neither Frank nor I showed up in bicycling gear, either. The weather had improved from the near-mist at 7:00AM, and I was wishing for my bicycle by 9:30AM.

Rich, who is from Carbondale, is on a 600+ mile bicycle and public transportation tour of Illinois and was in Woodstock to visit Other World Computing (OWC), home of the large wind turbine, off U.S. 14 just southeast of Woodstock.

I rode the Metra in to Barrington and rode back with Rich, and we had a great 1/2-hour visit. When I mentioned to Rich that one of the selling points in my campaign for Sheriff here is that I am a "citizen first, cop second", he liked that. I hadn't known that he is an attorney handling civil rights and police abuse cases.

Rich was interviewed today by Stew Cohen, Cal Skinner and a Northwest Herald reporter, Sarah Sutschek.

Rich's answers to the media questions rang true. When asked about increased taxes on alcohol and gambling, he said you can't drink and gamble your way out of the State's budget crisis. Such taxes harm the people least able to pay them.

Please see the McHenry County Blog, Northwest Herald and Daily Herald for full stories about Rich's visit to Woodstock. Rich and Scott bicycled to OWC, and Bill and Scott may have joined them there.