Ahead of the April 4 election for Naperville City Council, Republican Mike Strick has taken to social media to rally the troops around his key campaign promises to cut taxes and reduce government spending.
In two separate Facebook posts on March 15, the candidate recognized a small group of campaign volunteers, as well as his personal trip to a local senior citizens center to encourage elderly voters.
Strick, a self-identified small-business owner who favors term limits, has based his campaign on traditional Republican policies, like cutting taxes and reducing government spending.
Last year, he waged an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Democrat Mike Madigan, the Illinois House of Representative’s speaker for three decades, on a similar “lean, mean” platform, as well as calling for term limits for elected officials.
“It’s time to end the reign of King Madigan!” Strick wrote on his campaign website, nomoremadigan.com. “It’s time to usher in a new era for Illinois and clean up the mess in Springfield.”
Now, as a city council candidate, his attentions have turned closer to his home base of Naperville, with the same campaign themes.
Last year, Strick identified cronyism as one of the dangers of having Madigan and others hold office for decades.
In an article in the DuPage Policy Journal, he is quoted as characterizing the appointment of Illinois’ Auditor General Frank Mautino as cronyism.
“A good example of that is the Frank Mautino situation,” Strick said. “He was [House Speaker] Michael Madigan’s right hand man for 21 years and, lo and behold, he gets a job which pays $152,000 a year for the next 10 years. Something has got to change.”
A larger issue tackled by Strick’s campaign is the state budget and the potential impact of a proposed budget compromise reached between the Democrat-controlled state legislature and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, a former executive with two private equity and investment firms.
Although the measure was ultimately shelved, it highlighted issues Strick has made a part of his campaign themes, including alleged waste.
In the DuPage Policy Journal, Strick said “corruption and mismanagement” helped get the state in its current deficit spending position. He cited the fragmented nature of state government as a culprit.
“Illinois has the most units of governments in the nation and each one of those small groups of government entities, whether it is a sanitary department all the way to the Secretary of State … are being implicated," Strick said. "If we can reduce the size of all these different facets of government, even by 10 percent, I think it would be a big saving to the citizens of Illinois.”
Drawing on his business background, Strick described his approach to the state budget in terms of a sales position he once held.
“When you are in sales, people are given a budget," Strick said in an interview with the DuPage Policy Journal. "If they don’t use that budget that year, you know what happens to that money? They lose it. If they have the money, they want to spend it. If they don’t spend it, they lose it. So why don’t we, as common sense people in Illinois, look at that problem.”
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