Addison Twp. GOP boss facing stiff challenge

April 7 will be Pat Durante's Gettysburg or his Waterloo.

The longtime GOP chief in Addison Township is facing the stiffest challenge of his tenure from Democrats looking to unseat up to six Republican incumbents in the coming election. But he's ready for a fight.

"Four years ago they shoved George Ryan down our throats," he said of rival Democrats. "but now we have Blagojevich and Burris. People are disgusted."

Early voting figures from the Addison Township site is leading all of the county's 12 early polling locations. Durante is hopeful it's GOP voters, but history would indicate otherwise. DuPage County Election Commission officials post early and absentee voting results on the commission's Web site first, and in November Democrats easily outpaced Republicans in early voting.

Conventional campaign wisdom also holds that Democratic voters are more likely to vote early than their Republican brethren, but this is also the first time DuPage voters have been able to go to the polls early for township races.

In the first seven days of early voting 565 votes have been cast in Addison Township, averaging 80 a day. The next busiest polling site is at Elmhurst City Hall with 467 votes, which also caters to some Addison Township voters. Usually, the Naperville Municipal Center and Stratford Square Mall are the busier early voting sites, but each of those sites has racked up less than 300 votes apiece since March 13, election commission officials said.

While county Democratic Party leaders say they aren't picking favorites in the upcoming township races, it's clear they're keeping a keen eye on Addison Township. At a news conference Tuesday in Wheaton, Democratic Party Chairman Bob Peickert introduced candidates from seven of the county's nine townships - no Naperville Township candidates were present and there are no Democratic candidates in Wayne Township. Peickert's remarks focused on Addison Township.

"The Addison Township supervisor gave herself a 100 percent salary increase, but at the same time the food pantry is only open two hours a week," he complained. "We need oversight."

Democrats have also lodged complaints with the election commission about signage and staffing at the Addison voting site.

The Democrats at Tuesday's gathering all complained that the one-party system of township governance that currently exists in DuPage doesn't provide transparency.

"A typical meeting in Bloomingdale Township last eight minutes," argued Democratic trustee candidate Tom Suhrbur. "I could type those minutes up in five minutes, but you can't find them anywhere months after the meeting."

Durante called the Democratic challengers "unqualified" and "unprepared" for office. He complained that candidates recently asked for reams of documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

"They just asked for five years of information so they could go to school," he said. "If they just would have attended some meetings in the last five years they would have had all the information they needed."