Four new members of the Oak Park Public Library Board will be sworn in next month after both incumbents running for reelection lost April 1, according to unofficial election results, a little more than a year after the Library Board voted to fire former executive director Joslyn Bowling Dixon.
Library Board President Matt Furth, who has been on the Library Board for 20 years, following in the footsteps of his father, finished last in a field of eight candidates, a stunning rebuke. Fruth received only 2,654 votes, lagging far behind first place finisher Annie Wilkinson who led the field with 5,169 votes.
“I’m proud and delighted to have been elected and to have received a vote of confidence from our community in support of my values and candidacy and for my vision for our library,” Wilkinson said in an email. “I’m looking forward to governing in collaboration with everyone else elected to and sitting on our Library Board to lead our library into an exciting future.”
Incumbent Maya Ganguly, who was seeking a second term, finished in sixth place and currently has 3,260 votes. Neither Fruth nor Ganguly responded to a request for comment.
The other six candidates were divided into two rival slates. All the members of the A Library for All, for Always slate were elected including Wilkinson, Colin Bird-Martinez, who is in third place with 4,554 votes, and fourth place finisher Mika Yamamoto who has 4,416 votes. Megan Butman who ran on another slate is in second with 5,022 votes, running far ahead of slate mates Bruce Brigell, who is in 5th place with 3,476 votes and Dan Suber, at seventh with 3,180 votes.
“I don’t know how I got through but I did,” Butman said.
The Wilkinson, Bird-Martinez, and Yamamoto slate has decidedly left of center views and were backed by the progressive activists active in the Activate Oak Park group.
“They have a whole group behind them and we were running sort of independently,” Butman said.
Wilkinson, Bird-Martinez and Yamamoto all supported firing Dixon but did not seem to emphasize that in their campaign and they did not pay a political price for the firing that the incumbents apparently did. They emphasized continued antiracism work at the library and reaching out to youth and marginalized communities.
All three members of the slate went door to door ringing doorbells and talking to potential voters during the last three weeks of the campaign.
“We ran a nuts and bolts campaign, especially in the last weeks we were canvassing,” Bird-Martinez said, noting “family members and friends joined us especially on the weekend ones.”
While he was going door to door, Bird-Martinez said, some voters told him that it was the first time a Library Board candidate had ever knocked on their door.
Butman, Brigell and Suber did no door knocking. Butman, a professional law librarian, said she had qualms about door knocking because she doesn’t think of being on the Library Board as a political position.
“I don’t know about the others but for me personally there was a big internal conflict with that,” Butman said.
Brigell, a retired librarian, and Suber, a recently retired lawyer, said that they doubted that door knocking would have made a difference for them in the race.
“I think we gave it a good effort,” Brigell said. “I can’t say for sure what that traditional door to door, standing by the train station or the polling places would have done.”
Wilkinson, Bird-Martinez, and Yamamoto were all on the list of endorsed or suggested candidates that Activate Oak Park, a local progressive group that had won up and down the ballot in this election. Volunteers connected with Activate Oak Park and others were passing out the cards of endorsed candidates at every polling place on Election Day while the Butman, Brigell and Suber slate had no one passing out palm cards on Election Day.
“We thought that most people walking in (to vote) had already made a decision,” Brigell said.
Butman had mixed feelings the day after Election Day: happy that she was elected but disappointed that her slate mates were not.
“It’s bittersweet,” Butman said. “I’m disappointed. I am not aligned with the others (who were elected). They were all aligned with the firing of Joslyn and pro the way it was handled.”
Butman wasn’t sure why she was successful while her slate mates were not. Butman and others offered a variety of theories why Butman ran so far ahead of her slate mates when they campaigned as a group and espoused generally the same views. Butman has an active social media presence, while her older slate mates did not. Another factor was that Butman was the first name listed on a ballot which political scientists say can give a candidate as much at least a four to five percent boost over candidates whose names are lower on the ballot. And Butman is a woman and women often have an advantage in lower profile races. Finally Butman is 20 years younger than her slate mates.
“I think it’s woman, I think it’s first (on the ballot), I think it’s I’m a professional librarian who has lived here for 22 years,” Butman said.
Bird-Martinez said that he thought Butman had more of a social network in Oak Park than her slate mates.
“She has a lot of connections in the community and she’s been more involved,” Bird-Martinez said.
Two days before the election the West Cook Branch of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America inserted themselves in the library race and the Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 school board race. An email sent by the DSA group endorsed Wilkinson, Bird-Martinez and Yamamoto and attacked Butman, Brigell and Super as “reactionaries”.
Butman, Brigell and Suber shook their heads at the description of them as “reactionaries.”
“They painted us in the worst possible light with half-truths and lies,” said Brigell, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union who has been active in his younger days in Democratic Party politics.
Butman decried the attacks.
The DSA email praised Wilkinson, Bird-Martinez and Yamamoto, but Bird-Martinez said his slate had nothing to do with the email.
“We found out after the election, so we weren’t, like, notified or anything like that and we didn’t seek that endorsement,” Bird-Martinez said.
Butman said she hopes, once seated, the new Library Board can work together, but she has concerns about what she fears will be attempts to politicize the library.
“I think it’s going to be difficult,” she said.
Bird-Martinez said that he plans to reach out soon to Butman.
“We have to all work together,” Bird-Martinez said. “I want to reach out to her soon and make sure we all have good relationships together. I really hope that we’re not going to have acrimony on the board and I don’t think we will.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
