For first time, this Reagan conservative can't vote for a major party

This will be the 13th U.S. presidential election I have participated in since I turned 21 in 1965. It will be the first one in which I did not vote for one of the two major party candidates.

I have voted for candidates from both parties since that first time in 1968. Admittedly, Republicans have been my candidates of choice since 1972, but I did cast a Democrat ballot the first time I voted in a presidential race, in 1968.

I grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago - not too far from Midway Airport and not very far from the ward solidly controlled by Michael Madigan. My father was a Democratic precinct captain, and I remember fondly helping him distribute campaign fliers, even holding a ladder steady when he was attaching campaign posters to telephone or utility poles.

By the time it became my duty to vote in a presidential election, in 1968, I had been prepared pretty well. I knew how the "system" was supposed to work after graduating from college with a double major in journalism and political science.

And after two years as a reporter at Paddock Publications, including six months on the political beat and the opportunity for - or challenge of - covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, I felt fully prepared to cast my first vote for President of the United States.

The convention itself is a different story. It was the first - and only - time in which I experienced tear gas, a common experience for anyone who had braved the crowds of demonstrators to enter the DNC Headquarters at the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

But we all survived, and when it was time to write something intelligently in the week prior to the actual election, I wrote my first editorial endorsement and commentary and in the pages of the Herald, I wrote that I supported Hubert Humphrey for president.

Of course, Humphrey lost and by the time of the next presidential election, I had been lured to Washington. After completing a Congressional Fellowship, I accepted a position on the staff of Congressman Philip Crane, a staunch conservative and Republican.

He was also a good teacher, and it was not difficult to absorb, and grasp, the lessons he taught. I fully embraced the conservative Republican philosophy he preached.

His election in a special election in 1969 was a good indication that many, if not most, of the voters in Northwest Cook County shared his philosophy, at least major aspects of it, if not in its entirety.

My five Crane years led to contact and involvement in the Ronald Reagan movement and I have since been viewed (accurately) as Republican-thinking, although probably not as far to the right as Phil Crane was.

I spent most of the 12 years of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations heavily involved in travel and advance work for the two presidents, and I played significant roles in their campaigns, primarily in Illinois. I am probably too quick to point out to anyone listening that I managed the Bush campaign in Illinois in 1988, the last time a Republican carried Illinois in a presidential election.

This year is not going to restore Illinois to the Republican column. Not only is Hillary Clinton a "local girl," Illinois has shifted substantially to the left and is one of the "bluest" states on national election projection maps.

But despite having met her several times, I can't vote for her. As many others, I do question her honesty and integrity, but even if she were as straight an narrow as anyone before her, she is quite a bit too far to the left for me.

But I cannot, and will not, vote for Donald Trump.

I have always considered candidates for president to be looking out for the best interests of the nation, regardless of party, but I do not see that in Trump.

So for the first time in my voting life, I will write in a name. I'm not yet sure what that will be, but I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton will win Illinois and I personally cannot support her or Donald Trump.

Ed Murnane, edmurnane@gmail.com, of Arlington Heights, is a former communications staff member for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He served in the early 1990s as regional administrator for the Small Business Administration. In 2015, he retired as president of the Illinois Civil Justice League.