Lindsay Parkhurst of Kankakee, the Republican candidate in House District 79, pledged to override professional politics, overcome House Speaker Michael Madigan’s block against term limits and campaign unassumingly for the position via a recent post to her Facebook page.
Polling conducted at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University (SIU) in Carbondale has revealed that approximately 4 out of 5 Illinois residents support term limits, yet for the past 33 years, Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, has been a state representative, serving as Illinois House speaker for all but two of those years.
“Public servants are supposed to be citizens who represent their communities for a short period of time then return home to continue their normal lives,” Parkhurst said. “The broken system we have today only allows for the self-serving, self-aggrandizing politicians we see in Springfield.”
A citizens group had sought to place redistricting amendment on the November ballot in an effort to remove remapping from politicians’ domains and make the process nonpartisan. The group collected nearly twice the required 300,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot, but a lawsuit filed by a longtime Madigan associate prevented voters from being heard on the matter.
“I will fight for term limits in Illinois and be the public servant the 79th District rightly deserves instead of another professional politician,” Parkhurst said.
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