Gee it's cold out here as I stood on the Kane County Republican depot platform watching the Republican machine express roll thru at full throttle with Mike Kenyon at the controls. The voting at the Kane Country Republican Convention Wednesday night scored a big blow against conservative reform minded precinct committeemen. In the race for County Chairman, Kenyon won handily with a total of 14,600 votes to the challenger Drew Frasz who managed 9,500 votes.

Keep in mind these were weighted votes. Each precinct committeeman went into the convention with votes equaling the number of republican ballots that were pulled in their precinct. In my case, in the Elgin 54th out of 178 possible Republican voters 98 people pulled a Republican ballot in the primary election. This equated to 98 "weighted" votes I had to cast at the convention. Weighted votes are a good indicator of how efficiently a precinct committeeman turns out the Republican vote in his or her precinct. Keep this in mind as it will come in handy to better explain something later. That being said, Mike Kenyon recently won chairman of the Elgin Township Republicans but on a much narrower margin. When the vote last night got to Elgin Township, Kenyon's home turf, all elected committeemen voted for Kenyon with 3 exceptions, yours truly being one of them.

When I stood to cast my weighted votes, all 98 for Frasz, I received cold stares from the Kenyon faithful, so cold in fact I had to scrape the ice off my glasses! The coldest stars came from precinct committeemen who went in with miniscule weighted votes, in two cases, literally the teens. What does that tell you when, yours truly, the outsider, can deliver over 50% of his precinct while the machine faithful are lucky to get a small fraction?

I am a Reagan conservative but in the Kane County Republican scene I'm considered an outsider. How strange given the traditional Republican platform? I received an email recently from a Kenyon supporter who said, "...these outsiders recruited you to run for precinct committeeman in the first place so my advice your way, is to stick with the people that brought you to the dance. This is a loyalty election tonight." I ran for the position of precinct committeeman with NO provocation or encouragement and guidance. In fact I had to seek out other novices running for the position to compare notes. That being said I ask you...who brought me to the dance? It looks like I went stag to me!

In his nomination and victory speech Mike Kenyon made many claims about a big tent and stating "it's hard to find precinct committeeman" and "that they don't come out of the woodwork begging to be appointed." On these two statements my comments are, does the big tent include "outsiders" or do we all have to play the game? On precinct committeeman not coming out of the woodwork, I know a person who came out of her wainscot and asked Mike to be appointed to a vacant precinct. After Mike found out she was not only a conservative but also a tea party organizer he appeared to loose interest in having her appointed to a vacant post. I guess we can conclude then that outsiders are not welcome in the "big tent," and precinct committeeman who "come out of the woodwork and beg for a precinct" are only considered if they adhere to Kenyon's Republican philosophy.

In the race for the Republican State Central Committee, Jim Oberweis pulled in about 19,600 votes, and Jack Cunningham got 16,500 votes. Mike Kenyon then performed the "coup de gras" by voting the vacant precincts dividing those votes giving roughly 7,000 vacant precinct votes to Jim Oberweis and about 5,000 vacant precinct votes to Jack Cunningham. I ask, what does this prove except a blatant violation of an Illinois statute?

As I said before, more of the same old, same old!

Al Schroeder is a conservative activist from Elgin, Illinois.

[Editor's note: We thank Al Schroeder for sharing his experience from the field. We encourage you to share your story. Send us your stories to talk@championnews.net.]