One more rant on the subject of straight party voting and I'm done with it, because the mandate for national change did not translate well to Lake County.
Despite all the professed widespread discontent with the status quo in the county, none of the incumbents was rejected and in fact was re-elected by margins so large it made the presidential election look like a squeaker.
And it goes right back to straight party voting.
Incumbent County Surveyor George Van Til polled 121,757 votes to Republican Peter Papageorgakis' 63,410.
County Clerk Tom Philpot, running for coroner, racked up 123,529 votes to Republican Andy Koultourides' 62,777.
Where the straight party thing factors in is that Democrats pulled a straight ticket 75,968 times in this election. Check those against the numbers for Papageorgakis or Koultourides, and you'll see the straight ticket votes alone would have sunk the two Republicans.
The outcome can't be blamed on voter apathy this time, not when 70 percent of the county's 304,000 registered voters came out.
There's an outcry for change at the local level, but when it comes to putting our finger on the button to transform the situation, we fail to do it over and over again.
The only place where reform actually took place was in North Township, of all places, where voters opted 59 percent to 41 percent to get rid of the redundant and wasteful job of township assessor and turn those duties over to the county assessor.
Given the same opportunity, voters in five other townships from Gary to St. John, from Crown Point to Merrillville, opted to keep the useless offices with their staff, budgets and benefits.
Who'd have thought the township of East Chicago, Hammond, Whiting, Highland and Munster would have voted for reform? I don't think it was a personal reaction against Assessor John Matonovich, I think the voters there realized that being in a totally urban environment they did not need a redundant layer of government and its cost.
In Griffith, which shares Calumet Township with Gary, the decision to keep the assessor's office and keep it in Gary is likely to add fuel to the move to secede from the township, and they may look to neighboring North.
Sometime Republican, sometime Democrat political operative Bob Cantrell is awaiting sentencing on federal corruption charges, and once famously said that people in Lake County get the type of government they deserve.
And you know, truer words were never spoken.
The opinions are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at markk@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-4170.
