Early on Wednesday evening, July 18, Springfield grassroots groups Action Illinois and Indivisible Illinois jointly held a rally in front of 18 th District congressman Darin LaHood’s downtown office at Sixth Street and Monroe.
The gathering, which attracted around 50 people with very little advance publicity and was part of a national vigil to “confront corruption and demand democracy,” doubled as a de facto showcase for Junius Rodriguez, LaHood’s Democratic challenger in the upcoming election. This is the second time Rodriguez, who teaches history at Eureka College and is considered an expert on the history of slavery in the U.S., has challenged LaHood – in 2016 he received 27.9 percent of the vote in the heavily Republican district, despite a shortened campaign schedule for the vacancy left by Aaron Schock’s resignation.
After handing out a list of contact information for various legislators, the first speaker was Sangamon County assistant public defender, Democratic precinct committeeperson and self-described mother of three, Lindsay Evans. “I’m just like you,” she said. “I’m a mom and I’m scared to death. I see everything that this country stands for slipping away.” She went on to describe multiple attempts to speak to Rep. LaHood in his office, each time being sidelined to an assistant. “Did I stop coming? No. Because I try to show up for my country. Patriotism does not belong to the Republicans. I love this country, I love what it’s supposed to be about.”
Evans spoke briefly about the importance of flipping Congress to a majority of Democrats in November’s election. “Darin LaHood and his ilk will not speak truth to power,” she said, “and while the majority of Americans did not vote for Donald Trump, we are, for the time being, stuck with him. So we’ve got to put together a diverse resistance – people from all parties need to come together.”
Evans next introduced Junius Rodriguez, calling him “a self-proclaimed centrist Democratic candidate, a lifelong educator and a dedicated public servant. I can guarantee you that his only allegiance is to the people in the 18 th . He is not beholden to his pocketbook and he is not beholden to the likes of Vladimir Putin.”
Rodriguez began by pointing out that his opponent, LaHood, has held no town hall meetings in the past year. “In that same period of time, I’ve done 11 town hall meetings and in three weeks we’re starting another round of 11 town halls,” he said, mentioning that his office was in the process of sending Congressman LaHood a certified letter inviting him to attend any of these upcoming events.
“We are here today to talk about the problems of corruption in our government and our society and about the need for democracy,” he said, and described how the system of checks and balances between the three branches of government was put in place to help mitigate corruption. “They never imagined the day when two branches of government might be dealing with corruption – and potentially all of them,” he said, “but that is the world we are facing today.” He then listed three kinds of political corruption: one associated with money, another with sex and a third with power. “If you look at the Trump administration, I think you can find pretty good evidence of all three,” he said.
Rodriguez accused the current Congress, and by extension LaHood, of a fourth kind of corruption, which he described as having arisen in the last year and a half – a corruption of the spirit. “It is a corruption in which individuals [practice] political tribalism, a view of politics as a system that is nothing more than a zero-sum game, where for them to win they have to vanquish the rest. This was not how our political system was meant to be and we have to find a way to counter that.”
He said that the way to combat all of these types of corruption is to challenge elected officials. “Say to them, ‘You are the guardian of our democracy, you who have been elected to the House and to the Senate are the guardians of our democracy, you must challenge this administration when it steps out of line – even if it does that on a daily basis,’” he said. “What we are witnessing is an abdication of the most sacred power we grant to elected officials in our constitutional system. This cannot be tolerated, this cannot stand.”
Scott Faingold can be reached at [email protected].