Objection filed against Forte-Scott candidacy

Recycling is usually considered virtuous, but not in the way it's being alleged in the Republican primary for the 56th District House seat.

A Rolling Meadows resident has filed an objection to the candidacy petition of repeat hopeful Anita Forte-Scott, accusing her of reusing signatures from two years ago when she first ran for the office.

But Forte-Scott's camp says the issue is simply one of the GOP establishment trying to exploit an innocent paperwork error to keep the party's hand-picked candidate from facing a primary opponent.

Forte-Scott faces the GOP-endorsed Ryan Higgins in the primary for the seat held by Paul Froehlich, who's not running again.

Christina Tobin is representing Forte-Scott in the petition objection. The only error Forte-Scott made, Tobin said, was in accidentally downloading old petition forms for the 2008 primary and using them for the first two or three pages of signatures this year.

"They weren't recycled," Tobin said.

But John Countryman, attorney for objection filer Deborah Perrin, said he's also expecting affidavits from some signers stating they did not sign a petition for Forte-Scott during the 90-day petitioning period for her current race.

"I believe I can prove that these signatures were obtained two years ago," he said.

Tobin counters that the party establishment sometimes plants people to sign an opponent's petition who will later say they didn't in order to demonstrate fraud.

Though only 500 signatures were needed for this year's House races, Forte-Scott collected about 900. Tobin said about 600 were collected door-to-door by Forte-Scott personally.

Countryman said it's not the number of legitimate signatures he's arguing, but the presence of any amount of apparent fraud in the petition.

Forte-Scott and Tobin strongly deny the accusation of fraud.

Tobin hopes the hearing board won't nullify all of Forte-Scott's signatures because of what Tobin called a technical error, but said the system favors political insiders.

"Who created these laws? The two-party system," she said.

An initial hearing is scheduled for today but no final decision is expected.

Forte-Scott, a Schaumburg Township library trustee, was the GOP-endorsed candidate in 2008 for the state House seat, which she lost to Froehlich. He'd earlier defected to the Democratic Party.

Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg, the Democratic candidate for the 56th District, is unopposed in the primary.