From the Daily Herald:

GOP feud lands in court

Lake Republican chairman accused of breaking law when picking committeeman

By Bob Susnjara
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006
Feuding between two Republican factions in Lake County has spilled into court.

Lake County GOP Chairman Daniel Venturi is accused in a lawsuit of violating Illinois election law in the way he voted for a statewide party leader in April. The civil suit was filed Friday in Cook County circuit court against Venturi and the Illinois Republican Party.

Raymond True of Libertyville, head of the conservative Republican Assembly of Lake County, initiated the suit against Venturi. True has criticized Lake County’s Republican Party, contending Venturi was a “master of disaster” because several GOP-controlled seats in local government and the state legislature were lost to Democrats in November.

Venturi denied any wrongdoing Wednesday. He said the suit was another example of True’s displeasure with him.

“It goes from a long history of Raymond True believing he should be in control of the party,” Venturi said. “That would be a disaster. There is no support for that.”

True said the suit has nothing to do with Venturi. He said he just wants the law to be followed by whoever is chairman of Lake County’s Republicans.

“If I was interested in hurting him and the party, I would have done it before the (November) elections,” True said.

At issue in the lawsuit is what occurred at the Lake County Republican Party convention in April.

T. Tolbert Chisum of Kenilworth was elected Republican state central committeeman for the 10th Congressional District, topping the runner-up, Wheeling Township Trustee Ruth O’Connell of Arlington Heights. The 10th District covers eastern Lake and northwest Cook counties.

Local precinct committeemen selected from among Chisum, O’Connell and True for the 10th Congressional District statewide post in Cook and Lake counties. O’Connell received the most votes in Cook County.

But the suit contends Venturi, as Lake County’s GOP chairman, used his position to improperly cast weighted votes at the April convention for Chisum on behalf of absent local committeemen and precincts without representation.

A weighted vote means if a precinct had 100 primary votes in March, then that’s how many tallies a committeeman could have put toward O’Connell, Chisum or True at the April convention.

Venturi’s improper votes pushed Chisum over O’Connell when Lake and Cook counties were added together, according to the lawsuit. The suit asks a judge to declare O’Connell the winner.

O’Connell wasn’t listed with True as one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs and said she never encouraged the litigation. She said she’s caught in the middle of a Republican Party squabble between True and Venturi that shouldn’t be in court.

“I’d like to see people work it out within the party,” O’Connell said.

True said Venturi should not have been allowed to cast 8,765 votes on behalf of precinct committeemen who didn’t attend the Republican convention in April. He said the only votes that should be counted, as prescribed by state law, were the 6,637 cast by committeemen who attended the party gathering. That would have made O’Connell the winner.

Venturi said there is nothing in state law barring him from casting votes on behalf of areas without representation or for absent precinct committeemen.

Illinois Republican Party Executive Director John Tsarpalas said he’s confident all proper procedures were followed at the convention to elect the state central committeemen. He said the rules Venturi followed have been in place since 1998.