Brown: Playing the Trump card in Bolingbrook mayoral race

Follow @MarkBrownCSTLongtime Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar hosted a big fundraiser for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump last fall at the fancy village-owned golf clubhouse known locally as the “Rog Mahal.”

Barely a month later, residents of the southwest suburban village voted 66 percent for Hillary Clinton to 27 percent for Trump.

Will County board member Jackie Traynere, a Democrat, hopes to use that apparent political disconnect between Claar and his constituents to bring an end to his sometimes controversial 30 years in office.

Since announcing her intention to run against Claar in the April 4 municipal elections, Traynere has sought to make the race in part a referendum on Claar’s support for the new president.

Follow @MarkBrownCST“Trump isn’t the reason Roger should go. It really is his management of the village,” Traynere, 54, told me recently in a phone interview from Leavenworth, Kansas, where she was travelling on business in her role as a union organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees.

But she adds: “The Trump support really pushed people over the edge.”

Claar, just back from Trump’s inauguration, argued Tuesday that traditional party politics don’t belong in municipal elections and that he will gladly run on the record that has made him one of the longest serving mayors in the Chicago area.

“I think people are generally pretty happy with what’s going on in Bolingbrook,” said the 71-year-old Claar, who aggressively steered the village’s growth from a population of about 33,000 when he took over to more than 75,000 today.

Indeed, it’s a tricky business to inject national politics into a municipal election. Candidates don’t even run under party labels. And voter turnout is usually only a small fraction of what it is in a presidential election.

But the fact is that Bolingbrook, an increasingly diverse community in every sense of the word, has been trending Democratic in statewide and national elections for the past decade.

That suggests an opening for a Democrat mounting a serious campaign, and Traynere seems to be doing just that. She has hired a professional campaign manager and claims the endorsements of Sen. Dick Durbin and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle among others.

Traynere was just re-elected to her third term on the Will County Board and served last year as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Claar starts the election season with a campaign fund of more than $500,000, barely half of what he once kept on hand, but says he has what he needs.

“This whole thing is about power. They see this as an opportunity to take over. They want to be in charge of Bolingbrook,” said Claar, who vowed that he will not seek endorsements from any Republicans, including Trump.

That doesn’t mean Claar is backing down from his support for Trump, whom he describes as a “breath of fresh air” on the political scene.

“He called it like it is. That’s kind of the way I operate,” said Claar.

Claar operates as a full-time mayor and pays himself commensurately with a salary of $140,102, not including a $6,000 car allowance. He emphasizes that’s less than Bolingbrook paid the village administrator whose job he eliminated.

Claar also is collecting two public pensions: $55,757 from his previous life as a school administrator and $4,532 from his tenure on the Illinois Tollway Authority. His total annual taxpayer compensation of $200,000 looms as a potential campaign issue.

Claar resigned from the tollway board in 2000 after the Sun-Times reported he was raising campaign funds from tollway vendors.

That was just one of many minor scandals that have dogged Claar through the years, but nothing that has turned the voters of Bolingbrook against him.

“I have been vetted on numerous occasions over false accusations,” Claar declared.

He predicts Traynere’s emphasis on Trump could backfire.

I predict it will make for a more interesting than usual municipal election season.

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