At the end of primary election day on February 25, Mark Mahoney got some good news. He not only finished first among four candidates for alderman of Springfield City Council Ward 6, he got more votes than the other three candidates combined. Mahoney says his success was due to his simple promise to be a “door-to-door” alderman. It’s likely more complicated than that.
David Kelm and Lori Schisler, the second- and third-place candidates, are Republicans, and both are leaders in neighborhood associations. Together, they received 1,209 votes, 78 shy of Mahoney’s 1,287 (the fourth candidate, Marc Sanson, received 54 votes).
Kelm says he was sure he had enough votes to get him to the general election on April 1, so he did no get-out-the-vote campaigning on election day. Had he done so, he says, he probably would have received more votes than the 665 he got. Assuming Kelm absorbs most of Schliser’s votes, plus “several hundred more” that he says have been pledged to him since February 25, the general election should be a squeaker.
To listen to both Kelm and Mahoney, you’d think they were drawing on supporters who are crossing party lines. It could be one reason the best-matched race in Springfield is for Ward 6.
Kelm, 34, directs government affairs for the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. Mahoney, 35, heads government relations for the Illinois Department of Corrections. Kelm learned politics working for former Governor Jim Edgar. Mahoney worked for a few Democratic congressmen in Washington, D.C., before landing on Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s staff. Both agree that City Hall is too partisan. The issues are not political, they say, and must be approached with common sense. Both seem so earnest you want to believe them.
Most of Ward 6 lies within the borders of Ninth and MacArthur, Canedy and just before Highland. Parts of it reach north to Capitol, south to Recreation Drive, east to 13th, and west to Lincoln. Ward 6 has its share of problems, such as drugs, robbery, and delapidated housing. But it also has a lot of history and fine old homes, including those located in the Hawthorne Place and Old Aristocracy Hill neighborhoods. Its current alderman, Roderick Nunn, is not seeking re-election.
Mahoney lived in Washington, D.C., from 1991 to ’95, working as an aide to Democratic representative John Cox of Galena and Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. In 1995, he wanted to move back to downstate Illinois–he was raised in Ashland–and considered teaching, so he pursued a master’s in history at Southern Illinois University. He still has a thesis to write (perhaps on the differences between rural Irish and German immigrants) and a Spanish equivalency test to take.
But politics lured him away. After finishing his classes, Mahoney got a job with Michael Madigan, working on downstate issues. In February, he made the jump to the Department of Corrections. He and his wife, Grainne, are expecting their first child in May. They don’t know whether it’s a girl or a boy and they don’t have a name yet. Mahoney is a board member for Big Brothers/Big Sisters. He and Grainne, who live on Whittier Street, are matched with a little brother of their own. Mahoney also volunteers with the Department of Aging, visiting nursing home residents and informing them of their rights.
Mahoney’s campaign platform isn’t very detailed, but he has a consistent theme: making city government more accessible and efficient. He’s proposing a 90-day time limit for responding to any resident’s request for service. He’s promising to spend his aldermanic salary of $12,147 a year to rent office space in his ward, where he’ll keep regular hours for constituent visits. He plans on walking the entire ward “two to three times a year” so people can get to know their City Council representative. He says he doesn’t want to be the kind of alderman who only gives a concerned resident a phone number. “The best approach is to handle requests yourself,” he says, “even if it doesn’t pertain to city government.”
Mahoney, like many other candidates, supports starting fresh with the Springfield Police Department by finding another chief. He’d like to create each year’s budget from scratch. And he’d like to track city services to learn how requests get to the right hands or are lost along the way. He tells stories of people requesting services who are told they’ve been put on a waiting list only to learn later that no such waiting list exists.
“There’s a lot of this lack of responsiveness in city government,” Mahoney says. “My feeling is that it’s the responsibility of an alderman to help out with those requests.”
Three years ago, Dave Kelm learned the president of the Historic Westside Neighborhood Association was stepping down. He sought the office and got it. He’s held the position for the past three years. As a result of his work with the association, which has 200 dues-paying members, he played a key role during the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team’s visit in Springfield last winter. The R/UDAT city planning experts suggested a number of ways to improve the city, such as downtown and east-side beautification, and Kelm wants to see these ideas implemented.
He, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters live in an old house on State Street, which they’ve worked on extensively, “from the plumbing to the wiring,” Kelm says. He holds a master’s in public administration from the University of Montana, and his work with the Department of Nuclear Safety has made him a member of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force and the Attorney General’s Safe to Learn Steering Committee. He also trains law enforcement officials in the proper ways to respond “to weapons of mass destruction.”
Kelm and Mahoney share many of the same ideas. Like Mahoney, Kelm supports a change in the leadership of the police department. He’s for tracking city service requests and making himself accessible to Ward 6 residents. Kelm’s specific ideas include proposing a 311 phone number people can call for city services. He’s not satisfied with the current police beat map and wants to “at least” review it; most people in his neighborhood, he says, “have never or hardly ever” seen a police car drive down their street. As in a couple of other neighborhoods in Springfield, he’d like a Ward 6 business to donate office space for a neighborhood police officer. He’s proposing the formation of a South Grand Development Commission, which would do for South Grand Avenue what Downtown Springfield, Inc., has done for downtown.
When he’s got time, Kelm likes to read–especially biographies. “I’d also like to start working out again,” he says. Turns out, that’s a somewhat modest statement. A couple of years ago, Kelm entered a triathlon in Bloomington. He swam a half-mile in 50-degree waters, rode his bike for 13 miles, and jogged another 5 kilometers. “The water was cold as hell,” he says. But he finished and had a great time. “Eventually my skin turned back from blue to pinkish.”
This article appears in May 8-14, 2003.
