Sarto sees past as plus in Kane Co. chairman race
Bill Sarto's race for Kane County Board chairman began when he took off running after Sen. John F. Kennedy's convertible as it rolled down the streets of Elgin during the 1960 presidential campaign.
Sarto was a 12-year-old wearing a Catholic schoolboy's blue clip-on tie that day.
His efforts resulted in two things: a handshake from a future president and the inspiration to become a lifelong Democrat.
Fifty-one years later, a depiction of the “Last Supper” hangs in Sarto's Carpentersville kitchen as he prepares the final seven weeks of strategy to beat his opponent, Sue Klinkhamer, in the Democratic primary. Doing so will give him a shot at becoming the first Democrat to be Kane County Board chairman in the memory of anyone alive today.
It's been almost three years since Sarto lost his bid for re-election as Carpentersville village president. He's spent most of that time caring for a close friend who suffered a stroke.
But when both Kane County Auditor Bill Keck and Kane County Board member Hollie Lindgren announced they would not seek re-election, Sarto felt the political itch again. Then, when Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay decided she'd take a shot at a state Senate seat and local Democrats announced they couldn't find anyone to run to replace her, Sarto aimed his sights a bit higher.
“I just thought I was probably better suited to be the chairman because of my experience,” Sarto said. “I believe Democrats can win in Kane County. You have to have the right message. You have to have a campaign that's open to Republicans because you need some crossover votes and independents.”
Sarto's strategy is not unlike the one employed by fellow Democrat Pat Perez in two successful campaigns for sheriff. Win big in Aurora. Compete hard in Carpentersville and Elgin. Stay close enough in the rest of the county to win.
Staying close in the heavily Republican parts of the county will be the most difficult. Sarto believes he can do it because he has worked with Republicans in the past. That includes one of his possible future Republican opponents, Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns.
Sarto was chairman of the Kane County Democratic Party in the late 1980s when he first met Burns.
“He was just a young kid starting out, and he asked me if he could get involved,” Sarto said. “I appointed him as a Democratic committeeman a couple of times. I like Kevin. He's a nice guy. I don't think he's highly qualified to be the chairman, but he's a good guy. I'm not adverse to working with Republicans. I'll take good ideas no matter where they come from. I don't play partisan politics. It's hard to oppose a good idea and not look foolish doing so.”
That doesn't mean Sarto won't put up a fight, bang a gavel or even walk out of a meeting if he thinks the conduct of his fellow elected officials is out of bounds. There are plenty YouTube videos of old Carpentersville Village Board meetings that attest to that.
“Bill didn't find much room for compromise,” said Ed Ritter, Sarto's successor as village president. “Bill usually had a very specific thing that he thought ought to happen, and if he had such a topic, he wouldn't let go of it. He always thought that if he talked long enough he would change our minds. He also tried to get people to resign if that didn't work.”
Sarto sees that perception of a hairy mole on his political career as more of a Cindy Crawford beauty mark.
“I don't think I was intimidating,” Sarto said. “Yeah, when people were shouting from the audience I had them removed. And sometimes I tried to embarrass people. I used whatever techniques I thought were suitable for the situation. I was using whatever I could to get them to do the right thing.”
Sarto takes credit for achieving a number of right things during his term as Carpentersville village president. Those include starting a street program, creating both an economic development and an engineering department for the village, and paving the way for a new public works facility.
But there are two events Sarto wishes didn't happen while he was village president.
At the top of the list is the lengthy debate about illegal immigrants in the village. Sarto said that debate both harmed the village and painted him as a fan of illegal immigration.
“I'm not for anything illegal, but I also did not want to put a target on the back of 40 percent of our population,” Sarto said. “But that was twisted and used for political gain against me. And all the talk killed any hopes of Hispanics ever looking at living in Carpentersville again. I've talked to Realtors in the area, and the Hispanic market in Carpentersville is dead.”
Sarto would also like a do-over on his short career as a blogger. While village president, Sarto kept a blog that served as a running personal commentary on village business.
One of his final posts is titled “Sometimes Being Right is Not Good Enough.” Sarto bemoaned the inability of the public to understand the village couldn't do anything to crack down on illegal immigration and how the news media covered his attempt to get Trustee Paul Humpfer removed from the village board after a domestic battery conviction.
“The media, instead of presenting the facts and the truth, they seemed to be working from their own agenda,” Sarto wrote. “I was the one person who was doing the right things on all of these matters.”
Today, Sarto said he has a better understanding of the media.
“The blog is probably something that I shouldn't have done,” Sarto said. “I thought I could set the record straight in the blog. It really didn't turn out that way. It was a bad idea. I'm done blogging.”
But he's not done trying to position himself as a self-described “lone wolf.” Sarto is the only candidate of either party in the race to say he'll cut taxes if elected. But he hasn't identified specific budget areas to create that tax cut. Because of that, he won't call his tax-cut platform a hard and fast promise. It's possible he could open the books and find the county is as lean as can be.
“But I strongly doubt that's going to be the case,” Sarto said.
There are ways to save by moving more services in-house rather than contracting them out, he said. He also plans to call for an end to health insurance and pension benefits for part-time county board members. As a retired 31-year employee of the state, Sarto already has a government pension and health insurance. He won't take the added benefits that come with the chairman job.
He's also a believer that Kane County has a pay-to-play system in place as alleged by state Sen. Chris Lauzen last week. Lauzen is a Republican candidate for county board chairman. McConnaughay has repeatedly denied the allegations.
“It's very costly to taxpayers when you have a pay-to-play system in place,” Sarto said. “You have to reward contractors beyond what you would give them in a normal competitive bidding process to get favors back from them. And we have to stop these lawsuits where county officials are suing other county officials, costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even with all the problems we had in Carpentersville, nobody ever sued me.”