According to St. Clair County Democratic Party Chairman Bob Sprague, state Rep. Eddie Lee Jackson will not run for re-election in 2016.
Sprague made the announcement in a letter to precinct captains, while also announcing that the party’s Central Committee leaders are endorsing East St. Louis City Council member Latoya Greenwood for the seat. Sprague went on to direct precinct captains to circulate nominating petitions for Greenwood.
Neither Jackson nor Greenwood had commented at press time, in keeping with the manner in which Sprague runs the political plantation of East St. Louis and St. Clair County.
Curiously, not even Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, was aware of Jackson’s “decision” not to seek re-election, according to Madigan spokesman, Steve Brown.
That could be problematic, given that Jackson was a loyal Democrat who consistently voted along party lines.
Latoya Greenwood is the daughter of Lonzo Greenwood, who is the ESL school board chairman and chairman of the ESL Democratic Club. In addition to her city council job, Latoya also holds a $91,000 position as the director of Human Resources for ESLSchool District 189.
But Latoya is most notoriously known for her rowdy behavior at a Fairview Heights Best Buy, in which she and her male companion verbally and physically assaulted an elderly employee who had the audacity to ask her to show her receipt during the Christmas shopping season of 2012.
Greenwood was eventually charged with disorderly conduct and her male companion, Hickey Thompson, was convicted of battery and served eight days in jail.
Nevertheless, Sprague has mandated that Latoya “Cuss Em Out” Greenwood will be the next state representative candidate for the 114th legislative district. Who cares about “Rowdy” Latoya Greenwood’s brush with the law?
Bob “The Grim Reaper of Radio” Romanik has thrown his hat in the ring to run against first Jackson, now Greenwood, as the Republican candidate for state representative, seeking to put an end to what he describes as “the culture of corruption” in St. Clair County. Anyone who has heard Romanik’s radio shows knows that his campaign will be a no-holds-barred political slugfest, with unsavory language and unconventional tactics, which might be just what the doctor ordered to combat the revolving door of cronyism and nepotism in East Boogie.
Plus, Romanik has promised not to accept a salary, if elected; a major switch from the politics of greed that has inundated St. Clair County and ESL in recent years. And I, for one, welcome it.
At some point the greed and corruption in ESL politics will become its undoing if something drastic is not done.
The “poli-tricks” and nepotism between the Jackson, Greenwood, Parks and other ESL political families have become self-serving, nauseating and treasonous to the community of East Boogie and must be disrupted.
Whether that disruption comes in the form of a third party, unconventional candidates and tactics, or voters simply throwing out all candidates who don’t operate in their best interest is open for debate. But it must be done before the political vultures have completely picked the skeleton of ESL clean.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com; Twitter@JamesTIngram.
