Race is on for board chair
Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay will face at least two challengers in her bid for re-election.
Community activist Jim MacRunnels said Monday he will challenge McConnaughay in the GOP primary Feb. 5. MacRunnels, a 50-year-old Elburn resident, has been a vocal critic of the county board over the past year. He has blasted the board's reliance on consultants as a waste of taxpayer money.
This is his first run for political office, although he ran the 2006 campaign of Kevin Williams, the Republican sheriff's candidate who lost to Democrat Pat Perez.
MacRunnels promised to flesh out his campaign platform at a news conference Friday in Geneva.
Democrat Sandy Kaczmarski, a freelance journalist and public relations consultant, will challenge McConnaughay in the November 2008 general election.
Kaczmarski is no stranger to politics. In addition to being a precinct committeeman, she also is the media relations manager for Democrat John Laesch's 2008 congressional campaign. In 2002 she ran unsuccessfully for the DuPage County Forest Preserve Commission.
A former Wheaton resident, the 55-year-old has lived in unincorporated Blackberry Township for four years. Kaczmarski said she's running because "a change is needed."
"I, like a lot of people in the county, are just as dismayed with the way things are going," she said. "There's too much money being spent, too much shuffling of budgets around with no accountability."
Kaczmarski was the DuPage Forest Preserve District's public relations director from 1987 to 1994. She also has worked as a news anchor at AM radio WLS 890-AM, WBBM 780-AM and WGN 720-AM. She was an editor of The Farmside, a newspaper serving the communities of Huntley, Marengo and Union.
McConnaughay a 50-year-old St. Charles Republican, announced in June she would seek a second 4-year term. She was elected in 2004 over St. Charles Democrat Tom Meadath by a nearly 2-1 ratio, replacing Aurora Democrat Mike McCoy. McCoy did not seek re-election.
The board, which has 26 members plus the chairman, is dominated by Republicans. But one GOP member, John Noverini of Carpentersville, resigned from the Republican Party last week to run as a Democrat for judge. That shifted the balance of power to 16 Republicans and 10 Democrats.