Naperville’s Campaign Election 2015

A week from today, we should know the results of this year’s municipal election. With 23 candidates running, four for mayor and 19 for city council, there could be some narrow margins for those who get elected and those who don’t, and for those council members elected to four year terms, and those elected to two year terms.

Just about all the candidates have said this is a very important election, since every council position is up for grabs. Unfortunately most of the questions that were asked to candidates, were softball questions, which resulted in canned, typical, scripted, politically correct responses; no Shark Tank questions.

Fortunately enough candidate information was available to separate the top candidates, from the bottom candidates, but nobody, other than mayoral candidate Steve Chirico really separated himself from the crowd. Chirico did this by starting his campaign very early, and once started, his campaign never took the foot off the accelerator. It was a very well-run, efficient campaign with a definite purpose at each step. There didn’t appear to be any mis-steps.

Candidate campaign signs seemed to blend in together. At first there were just a few campaign signs on a street corner, and now there seems to be a forest of signs at many street corners. Enough of them, that none of them stand out, until today, when I saw a sign that really stood out.

It was at the northwest corner of Bailey and Oxford, between Naper and Washington. I did a double take when I saw it, and I thought ‘did I really just see that’. I turned around to make sure what I saw was correct, and sure enough it was. It was a professionally-done campaign sign with the name ‘Krause’ on it, and a diagonal line from lower-left to upper right was professionally drawn through the name ‘Krause’. Much like any other sign where the diagonal line means ‘no’.

I decided to park and take a picture of it for this posting, but by the time I parked and walked back to get a good picture, the sign was gone. Just like that, it had disappeared. The sign worked. It caught my attention, and obviously the attention of the person who removed it. Finally a sign that separated itself from all the others, not because it had Krause’s name on it, but because it was ‘original’, at least to my eyes.

As I drove to my destination, I tried to remember other signs or slogans that were original, and I thought of two, “I Like Ike” (President Dwight Eisenhower), and “My man Mitch” (Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, 2005 – 2013).

I thought if I ever ran for office, the first thing I would do is change my name to Ike or Mitch and plaster signs all over the place. Then after getting elected, I would change my name back to Bob.

There’s nothing catchy about ‘Bob’ other than the movie “What About Bob”, or the fact that ‘Bob’ can be spelled forward or backward and still be the same. However, if I ran against a guy named ‘Otto’, my advantage would be erased. I then reached my destination which wasn’t a sign or printing shop.