“I am very grateful for the process,” current Illinois State House District 106 Representative Tom Bennett told Cities 92.9 after being appointed to fill the Illinois State Senate 53rd District seat.
“It was a great process,” Bennett said. “The county chairmen had a chance to talk to a number of candidates and asked them some really good questions. They really care abut the district and so I am very grateful. I am very appreciative of being able to win the (appointment) today.”
David Rice, Livingston County Republican Party Chair, served as Chair for the (Illinois State Senate) 53rd Legislative District Committee which was formed to fill a vacancy created when Jason Barickman resigned his senate seat for the district.
The committee was made up of Republican county chairs for each county that is part of the district. Since Barickman is a Republican, the party was able to appoint his successor.
Rice explained the process the committee went through, “We sent the candidates a packet of information once they let us know they were interested in (the seat). It included a number of questions that we asked them to respond back to us in writing on so they would have time to reflect and we would have time to review.”
“Then we followed up on those questions today in an in person interview,” Rice said.
After the interviews the chairs met to deliberate and elect the nominee in a public meeting.
Rice also described that process for us saying, “The chairmen then convened as a legislative district. We gave our pros and cons, our thoughts about what we were looking for in our respective counties in a candidate. We shared our thoughts. Eventually we moved to a voting process. Senator elect Tom Bennett was overwhelmingly elected.”
Bennett won the nomination with a vote tally of 62,114 votes to 9,583 over Normal Town Council member Stan Nord who finished second. Each county chair had a weighted vote based on the 2022 election season and the number of voters the county had in the district.
Nord carried McLean County while Bennett won all other counties including Grundy, Iroquois, Livingston and Woodford each of which have about as many voters in the district as McLean.
Other candidates were: Mike Kirkton of Gridley, a former candidate for state representative in the 105th District who impressed several of the county chairs; Washington Mayor Gary Manier; and Mike Levin of Normal, a former member of ex-Illinois State Sen. Bill Brady’s staff.
Barry Welbers, of Bureau County spoke eloquently in support of Bennett at the meeting and related a story regarding when Welbers first met Bennett outside a McDonald’s in Bennett’s home town of Gibson City.
“We walk in together,” Welbers said. “And when we walked in everyone who was seated inside at McDonald’s knew him and they all wanted to talk to him. I thought, ahh, this man is popular here. Of course it is his home town. And I sat down in a corner waiting for him to interact with all these people and one man came over to start to talk to me about how wonderful of a man (Bennett) is.”
Welbers feels Bennett “is the best choice today to preserve the seat, to keep it off the table, so the Democrats don’t look at it, hopefully, because I don’t think they can defeat Tom Bennett. He’s already solid on his side in the 106th representative district. He now has to get acquainted with everyone in the 105th representative district. And I believe he will successfully do that.”
The 105th and 106th representative districts make up the 53rd senate district.
After today’s meeting a candidate emerged for the 106th state house district seat Bennett will be vacating. Thomas Lynch, a former candidate for U. S. House in Illinois District 2 has expressed interest in the 106th district state house seat.
Tom Bennett Wants The Seat, Scott Preston Throws Support Behind Him
Lynch has served as an Iroquois County board member. He is a meat and poultry inspector for the Illinois Department of Agriculture and USDA. He has been in that field for the past 10 years. Lynch has also served as a volunteer firefighter/EMT in his community and is a member of Son’s of the American Legion.
Lynch is realistic about Republican House Representatives being part of a super minority in Springfield and the difficulty of accomplishing much in Springfield.
Conversely he believes, “House Reps do a lot more work in their community working with their county boards and the local governments within their district. And in doing that you can kind of build a coalition. Local government is always the best government. So that’s something I pride myself on.”
