Kane County GOP Parading for Trump plan hits parking snafu
The Kane County Republican Party’s planned Parading for Trump caravan on Sunday, Aug. 18, has run into a hitch in its giddyap.
The Kane GOP advertised that Donald Trump supporters should meet at 9 a.m. at the Campton Township Highway Department parking lot to line up and drive on Route 47 to the McHenry County Fairgrounds in Woodstock for a Save the American Dream Rally that starts at 12:30 p.m.
But after reading about the Kane GOP’s plan, Campton Township Highway Commissioner Sam Gallucci said the Parading for Trump caravan can’t be there on government-owned property.
Gallucci called Kane GOP Chairman Andro Lerario to tell him so.
“I did not give permission, and he cannot be here,” Gallucci said. “I’m going to have barricades and traffic cones, workmen and police to keep them out.”
Gallucci said Lerario agreed not to have the parade participants at the highway district parking lot.
Instead, Plan B was to move them to the nearby Lily Lake Elementary School parking lot and line up to leave from there.
But Lerario didn’t ask Central Unit District 301 for permission, either, because when a reporter called, it was the first time a district official heard about it.
Lerario’s Plan C was to have the Trump parade caravan line up in a parking lot between the Lily Lake school and some ball fields near the highway department.
However, the school district owns the ball fields and possibly the parking lot.
A spokesman for District 301 said they are looking into it.
Lerario said whoever owns a parking lot is irrelevant to their intent.
“Who cares? It’s a meeting place to get together and meet and go up (Illinois Route) 47,” Lerario said. “It’s 30 minutes, and then we leave. If this was Parading for Kamala, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You know it, and I know it.”
Plan D is for the Parading for Trump participants to line up on the shoulders of the road, Lerario said.
“Unless Kane County police or Campton Hills police comes and tells us we can’t,” Lerario said.