Democratic candidates focus on jobs, pension reform
By Hank Beckman Sun-Times Media February 20, 2012 10:24PM
Congressional candidates Juan Thomas (in the middle), and Jim Hickey watch former US Congressman Bill Foster as he introduces himself to the DuPage Democrats in candidate forum for the 11th district Congressional race, at the Naperville Municipal Center on Monday February 20, 2012. | Terence Guider-Shaw~For Sun-Times Media
Updated: March 23, 2012 8:11AM
Jobs and pension reform dominated the Democratic forum for the March 20 primary in the 11th Congressional District.
“I’m running for Congress because we need to have common, working-class people in Congress,” Jim Hickey, currently president of the Orland Park Fire District, told about 100 people at the Naperville Municipal Center.
He and his opponents, former Congressman Bill Foster and attorney Juan Thomas, took questions from local Democratic officials and from the audience.
“I hope to be best known for not being Judy Biggert,” Foster said.
Thomas made no bones about where his political convictions were.
“I am the progressive choice in this race,” he said, noting that he was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Hickey said that his opponents “believed in the trickle-down theory” while he was for investing in people through restructuring student loans and investing in biomass technology.
Thomas spoke about addressing growing income inequality and stressed education, health care and a belief in attaining the American dream, stressing that people everywhere had to ask themselves “do we really believe in these principles. ... Which one are you willing to give up?”
Foster said that his first goal in the race was to get elected, stressing the need to defeat the “right-wing ideologues” and put the Congress back in Democratic hands.
“My goal is to serve in the House of Representatives, but never in the minority,” he said.
Foster said that manufacturing in the nation had remained consistent for most of the last part of the 20th Century, but that a series of bad decisions had caused manufacturing to be moved offshore since the year 2000.
Foster said that a long-term approach to problem solving was needed, decrying the tendency to do whatever was best to win the next election.
Foster slammed Biggert — the likely Republican opponent in the newly created 11th District — as one who signed conservative activist Grover Norquist’s no new tax pledge, which Foster characterized as a “no compromise pledge.”
84th State House District
The candidates for the Illinois House from the 84th District focused on government spending, waste and Illinois’ unfunded pension system.
Attorney Carole Cheney spoke of the tough decisions that would have to be made to straighten out Illinois’ finances and noted her support for the reforms instituted by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
Stephanie Kifowit said that she had a record of working in Aurora’s City Council to put its fiscal house in order, going through its budget “line by line” to come up $1.2 million in waste that nobody thought was there. “We need to do the same with the state,” she said.
Kifowit also said that Assembly and state leaders should stop flying back and forth between Chicago and Springfield and drive like everyone else.
Moreover, she said that legislators might have to take a 10 percent pay cut.
United Airline Employee Alex Arroyo said that regulations need to be streamlined in order to make it easier for small business in Illinois to thrive.
He also called for business roundtables to cope with the problem.
Unfunded state pensions were a hot topic and produced a clear difference in at least two of the candidates.
Cheney said the state had not been funding the pensions correctly for many years and was only responding with piecemeal approaches to the crisis.
Arroyo said that he had been through the pain of losing one pension and stressed the need to keep faith with state employees who had already paid into the system.
“You make a promise, you keep a promise,” he said.
After the session, the three were asked how voters would respond to them talking about pension reform when the last several years had seen Democratic control of the governor’s office and both houses of the General Assembly.
Kifowit said that the redistricting gave the state the chance to contemplate different ideas from different people.
And she and Arroyo both said that a start to pension reform had been made and stressed the importance of bringing all interested parties into the process.
But Cheney drew a line.
“I’m an independent Democrat with grassroots support,” she said. “I’m not the Mike Madigan candidate.”
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