After spending Friday searching for him, we met with Mayor Roger Claar
of Bolingbrook, Ill., at City Hall. He had been a bit difficult for us
to locate since a fund-raiser he helped organize for Donald J. Trump became an issue in the village’s mayoral race.
Continue reading the main story
BOLINGBROOK,
Ill. —It was supposed to be an easy glide to yet another term for the
longtime mayor of this suburb of Chicago. But then Mayor Claar helped
throw the fund-raiser and things got complicated. Jackie Traynere, 54, a
labor organizer, is mounting an ambitious challenge against him. Here’s
the story of one village election on Tuesday that has become as much
about Mr. Trump as the candidates on the ballot.
•
Ms. Traynere was so mad about the fund-raising event last fall that she
decided to run against Mr. Claar. The Democratic apparatus in Illinois —
senators, members of Congress, you name it — is lining up behind her.
• Mayor Claar hadn’t answered our interview requests, so we had been hoping to catch up with him Friday.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
•
Finally, we talked with him at City Hall — he does not regret the
fund-raiser, though he has been disappointed by the reaction.
Here’s how the search unfolded.
First up: visiting the “Rog Mahal.”
A little about Bolingbrook, 30 miles southwest of Chicago: About 74,000
people live here and it’s fairly diverse. The mayor’s race is
officially nonpartisan, and usually only several thousand people show up
to vote. But with a challenger to Mr. Claar and all the attention on
the race, this year could be different.
The
“Rog Mahal” — also known as the Bolingbrook Golf Club — was the scene
of the fund-raiser for Mr. Trump. It was built by the city for $36
million in 2002, according to The Chicago Tribune, and many people in
Bolingbrook see it as a sign of lavish excess.
ADVERTISEMENT
Next stop: Campaign headquarters.
Mayor
Claar’s election HQ is along a stretch of strip shopping centers,
tucked between an optometrist’s office and a cellphone store. Campaign
signs are plastered on the glass doors, and little wooden Uncle Sams
decorate the entry. Three workers are milling around. One of them: the
mayor’s wife.
Ms.
Claar was polite but said she had nothing to add about how the campaign
was going or why Mayor Claar might not want to meet. Onward.
It’s lunchtime in Bolingbrook.
Around
here, Mayor Claar has plenty of fans. Everyone seems to know him. He’s
been around through this village’s expansion. Subdivisions have replaced
cornfields. The population has almost doubled since 1990, and Mayor
Claar has been there through it all.
The mayor’s challenger says Trump’s rhetoric ‘doesn’t jibe with our town.’
At
Sophia’s House of Pancakes, Ms. Traynere is meeting with supporters
over club sandwiches and bowls of soup. She seems energetic and talks
fast, but she also says she’s starting to come down with a cold as her
campaign reaches the homestretch. Her complaints about her competitor,
the mayor? She says the village’s debt
is too high. She says he runs the whole village – top to bottom – and
that he can be a “bully.” But most of all, she says the Trump event
turned her stomach.
“Trump’s
own words,” she says are what threw some residents here for a loop.
Bolingbrook is 20 percent black, 25 percent Hispanic and 11 percent
Asian — a big change, she says, from when she was growing up here. “The
way he talks about minorities,” she says, “that’s not what we experience
in our community. That just doesn’t jibe with our town.”
She
goes on: “When people realize that that was the mayor who brought him
here, that definitely turned their head to think, ‘hmm, maybe I ought to
look at a few other things.’”
But
why is such an array of prominent Democrats lining up behind her for a
little municipal race? Critics say it seems a bit much.
Her
supporters don’t seem the least bit troubled by all the backing,
though. They’re thinking more about the mayor and the fund-raiser.
Off to City Hall — we need to find Mayor Claar.
ADVERTISEMENT
Finally, the mayor speaks.
After a wait in the lobby of Bolingbrook’s municipal building, Mr. Claar suddenly appears in the doorway.
Continue reading the main story
Mayor
Claar has gotten word of our search for him, and is actually clutching a
printout of the story we have been writing today. For the record, he
acknowledges that he has gotten our earlier phone messages and email
requests for interviews, but says that he simply had not wished to talk
to us. That said, he shows us to a conference room and patiently takes
more than half an hour of questions.
The
mayor says that the fund-raiser he helped throw for Mr. Trump is the
essential reason that he finds himself with such a hard-fought race. He
doesn’t regret the fund-raiser. Not at all, he says. But he adds: “I’m
disappointed that some people will take that one thing over 31 years and
that’s it.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment