Attorney and community activist Jeff Smith says he’s planning to run for the 17th Distict state house seat that has opened up with the decision by Daniel Biss to run for the state senate seat being vacated by Jeff Schoenberg.
Attorney and community activist Jeff Smith says he’s planning to run for the 17th Distict state house seat that has opened up with the decision by Daniel Biss to run for the state senate seat being vacated by Jeff Schoenberg.
Smith, who finished 4th in a five-way Democratic primary race for the 18th District state house seat in 2010 that was won by Robyn Gabel, saw his home at 2724 Harrison St. redistricted into the 17th District this year, along with much of the rest of northwest Evanston.
Smith told Evanston Now this evening that, because of changes in petition requirements recently adopted by the state legislature, it will take a door-to-door petition effort to get on the ballot, and he believes he has the support to organize that drive in the short period available to gather the petition signatures.
Smith is a former president of the Central Street Neighbors Association and has been active in efforts to keep the north branch library open. He’s also known for speaking out on a wide range of other issues during citizen comment periods at City Council meetings.
The people have spoken
Smith came in 4th in a 5-way race, I believe…barely beating Moran, who wasn't really trying.
Maybe he'll do better in the district up north…he can run in support of restrictive zoning, big houses, and against people who live in condos in downtown Evanston. There might be some dummies in Wilmette who like that kind of talk.
Off election year
The consensus in 2010 was that there was a surplus of good candidates in the 18th. The people didn't "speak" very loudly because most didn't vote. It was a low-turnout off-year primary, and the spread between top and bottom candidates was less than 3,000 in a district with over 45,000 voters. Jeff Smith ran a highly-respected campaign but had his north Evanston base split by Eb Moran's candidacy on the one hand and his Rogers Park strongholds by Gabel's on the other. Some large unions put over $150,000 into the race, and it wasn't for Jeff. If a few chips fell a different way either Jeff Smith or a couple of the other candidates might have won. Any district would be lucky to have a state represenative like Jeff Smith, so I for one am really glad that he is running. It is, afterall, the people who continually put themselves out there again and again that make a real difference.
“eyeing” v. “planning”
Headline of article is correct. "Planning" in body maybe too strong a word since neither I nor anyone else (as far as I know) had penciled into their calendar for this week, "drop everything else and start running for office." 🙂 It's an unusual situation because "seriously considering" requires more than pondering. With the first date for filing scarcely more than two weeks away, anyone who doesn't jump into action has decided not to run, by default. So we've started the process of gauging and gathering support.
Obviously no final decision has been made because I haven't possibly had time to speak directly with all those whose opinions I deeply value, including, primarily, a lot more voters. It is a decision not made lightly.
Thank you to Evanston Now and other media for helping to get this late-breaking political news out to the public. This area counts on having legislators who will provide thoughtfulness and reason in Springfield, and that can't happen without attention to the process.
Jeff Smith and Central Street Planning
His work on the plan in itself is enough to show he is not the person for the job.
All that planning wasted a lot of time and money and produced nothing—unless you count frustrating business from seeing Central [and Evanston] as a place to do business. Any plan that propsed putting a hotel on NU Ryan Field parking lot shows a lack of grasp of reality and willingness to toss money at hair-brained ideas.