For you benighted readers not resident in McHenry County, Illinois, a brief introduction of Mr. Skinner is in order.  Cal Skinner, Jr., is the son of one of the county’s most beloved political figures.  Cal senior was a Republican gentleman of the Eisenhower mold.  He was among the founders of McHenry County College, now a community college of national reputation.  He mentored many young men and women, encouraging them to careers in public service.  When he died several years ago, the whole county mourned.

Young Cal (he’s dropped the Jr.) started in politics as something of a wunderkind with his father’s support and blessing.  Barely out of liberal Oberlin College, he was elected to a term as McHenry County Treasurer.  He ran then, and continued to run for office for some time as a moderate in his father’s image with special expertise in financial matters.

But even then, his sometimes abrasive personality put a crimp in his career.  He was not re-elected Treasurer, replaced on the party ticket by another candidate.  But he was resilient and in 1973 was elected to the first of four two year terms in the state House of Representatives.  He did hone credentials as a fiscal watch dog, but was a social moderate and pro-choice.  He left his seat for an unsuccessful stab at a Republican Congressional nomination in 1980.  A couple of years later he made a bid for statewide office, running unsuccessfully against the very popular Democrat Roland Burris for state comptroler.

Out of office, Cal went to work as state bureaucrat.  It was during this period that he absorbed the surging conservatism within the party of the Regan years.  At some point he also began a spiritual transformation to what we would recognize today as “religious right.”  He cultivated the friendship of movement conservatives within the Illinois party, especially those around the Illinois United Republican Fund and various anti-tax groups.

He started a second string of terms in the House 1993.  This time he ran as an outsider, challenging the “country club” Republican machine of County Auditor Al Jourdan. 

Jourdan was not only county chair, but served as chair of the State party as well.  A transplant from Chicago as a young man, he copied the city machines precinct organization style and rebuilt the local Republican Party into an unbeatable monolith.  The McHenry County party under Jourdan was the most effective unit in state party history, dwarfing even the legendary DuPage machine in being able to roll out huge local majorities to offset Democratic dominance in the city of Chicago.

Despite his success, movement conservatives led by Cal Skinner, despised Jourdan for supporting moderate pragmatists to local offices and backing the “Go-along-get-along” king, big spending four term governor Jim Thompson.

Skinner and his allies believed that his return heralded the beginning of the end of the Jourdan machine.  Over the next three terms Cal would work with various anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun advocates in trying to knit together a coalition that the hoped would eventually seize control of the County and State parties.  They almost succeeded, especially when the rebels reached out to disenchanted moderates from the Algonquin Twp organization whose beefs with Jourdan were related to ancient, almost tribal battles over local offices in Fire Districts, Road Commissioner and the sort.  Together the movement conservatives and the Algonquin dissidents almost gained control of the party.  They were able to get one of their number elected as Nunda Twp. Supervisor for one term and made for a lot of local headlines and a few stormy meetings.  But in the end, Jourdan survived and was able to assure that his heirs retained general control of the party after his retirement.

The County party was never again the steamroller it had been, but the old guard remained in the driver’s seat.

It was no surprise to anyone when the party establishment quietly backed Crystal Lake Treasurer, grandmotherly former teacher Rosemary Kurtz.  Kurtz won the 2000 election, infuriating conservatives because she had run as openly pro-choice and supported a broad range of progressive social causes.

In exile Cal only grew closer to the extreme right.  He had his hand in every party controversy, courted the powerful local right to life movement, and advised opponents of school and other referenda county wide.  He anointed himself with the title “Tax Fighter.”

Unable to re-establish himself with the Republicans, he threw himself into the Libertarian Party, although he did not share many traditional libertarian positions.  He ran for governor on that ticket in 2002 hoping not to win, but to demonstrate the power of anti-tax conservatives by drawing enough votes to ensure the election of Rob Blagojevich—the first Democrat to win the job in more than thirty years.  In the end even that failed.  Libertarian Party numbers remained insignificant.  Blagojevich won on the basis of a state tending increasingly Democratic in recent years and because the Republicans were stupid enough to run another Ryan for the job vacated by the scandal plagued George Ryan.

But Cal never goes away.  He is nothing if not persistent.  He has been a part of the county-wide network of anti-school referendum activists financed by the deep pockets of Jack Rosser, long time head of various anti-tax organizations, and fueled by ideologues who essentially want to replace the public education system with private academies funded by vouchers.  Most of these academies would be run by conservative Christians and would thus inoculate the next generation of youth against insidious liberal values.  As a bonus, destroying teacher unions is seen by these folks as an ax at the root  of Democratic Party power.

More about Cal and recent hijinks in my next post.

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