Shopping day

[altivo]

Judging by those stupid little signs people stick in their lawns, the election is heating up. Not much around here though, where nine out of ten candidates is a Republican. Since I refuse to vote for anyone who is running unopposed, it generally simplifies my ballot considerably. It does appear that I will be voting for two members of that party this year, though. The incumbent county clerk, who does her job well as far as I can tell, and one candidate for the county board who probably should really be a Green party member but that would be suicide here.

I will most emphatically NOT be voting for any of the three "leading" candidates for Illinois governor. The Democrat incumbent is utterly lamebrained, the Republican candidate is a right wingnut, and the independent is just a nut. Well a nut with a single issue and nothing else. I will vote for that office, but for the Green Party candidate, Rich Whitney. For Congress I'll once again be voting AGAINST the incumbent, who seems to have so much support that it won't matter but I can't see that he's worth a plugged nickel. The same is true for county sheriff.

Anyway, spent much of the day shopping for groceries, odd as that may sound. We went three places and spent nearly double what I intended, but it was stocking up on things that were on sale and that we use regularly. There's a limit to how much we can store, though, so now we have to stop shopping and eat this stuff.

Comments

[moonhare]

We spent nearly triple today buying groceries; I seem more impulsive when shopping with someone than when alone.

[altivo]

Yes, and that was a factor here as well. I'm much more conservative when shopping alone.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I don't get it, how can someone run unopposed? I don't think that's ever happened here...but I could be wrong. I wish the Greens had some moderate members, most of them here seem to be raving hippies that noone in their right mind would vote for.

[altivo]

I'd actually prefer raving hippies over the morons and pedants that the Republicrats put up for office.

We get lots of unopposed candidates here. The Republican party "owns" the county. Because it costs a fortune to run for office in the US, and the Democrats are so weak here, they can't afford to launch or support a campaign for everything. Besides that, who wants to waste a year on a campaign that can't be won? Even where there actually are multiple candidates you can see it. The Republican has fancy campaign literature and signs all over the place, while the Democrat has hand-lettered or stenciled signs in a few places and no printed literature at all.

Take the county sheriff, for instance. He's a fat cat Republican who has been in that office forever, at least 20 years I think. Those few of us who aren't total brainless lockstep Republicans would definitely like to see him off, but we're a very tiny minority. The rest are happy that he doesn't enforce traffic laws and spends all his time on "big drama" items like gangs and drugs. The Democrats do nominate someone to run against him every time, but they never get more than about 30% of the vote. I've voted for myself for some offices rather than cast a pointless vote for the only name on the ballot, but that's futile too. No one ever even knows about it.

In other places, Cook County for instance (which is mostly the city of Chicago,) the only name on the ballot for many offices will be a Democrat. When I lived there, I never voted for those either.