The Village Manager Association, the only group in Oak Park that vets and slates groups of candidates for local public office, has released its picks for the municipal election in April, with two glaring omissions: village president and one of three open seats on the board of trustees.
It is the first time in the organization’s history that the group — made up of citizens who volunteer to interview Oak Park candidates for village president, trustee and village clerk — has failed to run a full slate of candidates.
The group named trustee incumbents Glenn Brewer and Peter Barber for two of the three open seats on the village board — Trustee Colette Lueck has said she will not run for re-election, leaving her seat open for a new trustee. The VMA also endorsed Lori Malinski, director of development at Oak-Leyden Developmental Services, for the village clerk position.
Six candidates have announced their intention to run for village trustee, several of whom said they appeared before the VMA’s selection committee: Barber and Brewer, realtor Dan Moroney, restaurateur Deno Andrews, attorney Simone Boutet, and Oak Park Township Trustee James Taglia.
Both Moroney and Andrews issued similar press releases shortly after the VMA slate announcement, both announcing they appeared before the group’s selection committee and were offered positions on the slate.
Andrews said in the press release and a telephone interview that although he was a candidate for trustee, the VMA urged him to run for the village president seat against Anan Abu-Taleb, who has said he will run for a second term.
Andrews declined the president spot, as well as the trustee spot. The VMA then offered that spot to Moroney, who also declined to participate.
Moroney told Wednesday Journal in a telephone interview that he and Andrews, while not establishing a slate of their own, decided to run together in the election.
“They offered the spot to me, but they couldn’t figure out a slate that would include both Deno and myself,” Moroney said, calling the proposition a deal breaker.
“Deno and I are extremely close,” Moroney said, adding, “I will vocally encourage anyone voting for me to vote for Deno.”
Moroney said he was initially reluctant to appear before the VMA selection committee, preferring to run as an independent.
“There needs to be new independent voices on the board not tied to any existing agenda or new agenda or any political organization,” he said. “I want to be able to work with the existing board, but I want to be able to challenge that board.”
Running with a slate of incumbents would run counter to his message of bringing fresh voices and ideas to village government, Moroney said.
Andrews said in a telephone interview that he considered running for president but noted, “I’d rather be a trustee and get a term under my belt and run for president later.”
He said he was later offered the chance to run on the slate as trustee, but said, “I didn’t think it was fair for anybody to be on a slate with two incumbents when my message is that of change.
“This isn’t a comment on [Barber and Brewer] as people; I have the utmost respect for both of them,” he said. “I just really want a clear conscience that the message of change isn’t muted if I’m running on an incumbent slate.”
He echoed Moroney’s comments that the two would run together but not as part of an official slate. “A vote for one of us is a vote for both of us, hopefully,” he said.
Andrews, owner of the Felony Frank fast-food restaurant on North Avenue, said the existing village board has four lawyers and that he and Moroney would like to strike a better balance between business and law.
Moroney, also a local businessman, has worked as a real estate developer, flipping homes and building small developments in the area.
Asked about the details surrounding the attempts to slate Moroney and Andrews, VMA President Lynn Kamenitsa said she could neither confirm nor deny the two candidates’ accounts of the offers from VMA Selection Committee due to the group’s confidentiality agreement with prospective candidates.
She did acknowledge that some candidates who appeared before the selection committee later changed their minds on whether to participate in the slate.
Although the VMA was unable to put together a complete slate, she added, that did not mean the organization is becoming irrelevant.
“The VMA is not dead,” she said.
The VMA suffered a major loss four years ago when Anan Abu-Taleb defeated VMA-backed candidate John Hedges for the village president spot.
Abu-Taleb has been a vocal critic of the VMA, recently calling it an outdated model for selecting candidates for public office.
“I think it is important that the village not have a one-party system,” Abu-Taleb said in August. “It has been that way for a long time, and I think the outcome of that philosophy has reflected on the village in a negative way, at least economically.”
He does not plan to run a slate of his own because, he said, he is philosophically opposed to the idea of slates.
Trustee candidates Boutet and Taglia have also voiced their opposition to slates and chose not to seek the VMA’s endorsement. Boutet, who did appear before the VMA selection committee, announced in mid-November that people she has spoken with in Oak Park say they want independent candidates who are not part of a slate.
Boutet, a former assistant village attorney, said her experience with the village makes her a good choice for the job. “I look forward to advancing those ideas in collaboration with whomever else gets elected, but as a candidate, it is important to me that I maintain my independence,” she said.
Kamenitsa said she believes candidates simply saw other opportunities, and a “rush to get their names in the newspaper shaped people’s views.”
“I’m never opposed to competition,” she said. “By saying, ‘[VMA-slated candidates] are qualified candidates is not saying there aren’t other qualified candidates out there. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not the line of the VMA.”
She noted that five of the six candidates at some point publicly stated their intent to seek the VMA’s endorsement.
That validates the VMA process, she said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be seeking our endorsement.”
* This article was updated to clarify the positions offered to Andrews and Moroney by the VMA and noting that Abu-Taleb’s election as president was not the VMA’s first major defeat in more than a decade.
CONTACT: tim@oakpark.com
