In today’s paper, a letter I wrote several weeks ago appears. A friend and schoolmate of mine, Bob Dow, was recently appointed a U.S. federal court judge by President Bush. The appointment is quite a coup for Bob and for the Joliet community. Unfortunately, the Herald News has still–a month later–failed to devote any space to publicizing Bob’s good fortune. I was annoyed enough by that failure to put pen to paper and fire off a letter. Here’s the link:

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/news/opinions/letters/729967,4_4_JO08_LETTERS_S1.article

For more information on my campaign, please visit: www.timforjudge.com

  With the holidays now over and people settling back into their regular work routines, the campaign pretty much begins in earnest for a brief one-month period leading up to February 5. There’s a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.  But frankly, I work best under those circumstances.

I’m hoping some of you are reading this after clicking on my link on the Herald News Web site. I’m all for bringing local politics and business into the 20th century and using the electronic media that’s at our fingertips. In fact, you might be interested to learn I didn’t rely on some outside consultant to design my Web site. Instead, I built it myself. I’d be surprised if I’m not the first to do it on the local level. Like most things I do, I figured if I wanted to get my message out, and my name was going on the final product, I needed to put the work in myself. Eight weeks ago, I had no clue how to do Web design. But I sat down for more hours than I care to remember and taught myself how to do it. I hope you agree the effort was successful.

Many of you will be hearing from me in the coming weeks. If you’d like some direct e-mail contact, please send a brief note to jodi@timforjudge.com. My campaign committee will take care of sending you important information preceding the election. Be sure to forward my Web link (http://www.timforjudge.com/) to your friends and family in Joliet, Shorewood and Rockdale. At the very least, you’ll provide them with some entertaining reading material!

Yesterday, I talked to my friend Vicki Perella. Many of you will remember her from her years as a teacher in Joliet Public Schools. She is, without a doubt, the most dynamic teacher I’ve ever known. She gained a lot of notariety for Joliet schools several years ago with her public service projects and student trips to the Salt Lake City Olympic games and, also, to the Millennium Dome in London. These days, Vicki runs the Aspire.Inspire Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to changing the world, one small act at a time. For the past couple of months, she has been trying to change the world by working for Barack Obama in Iowa. When we spoke yesterday, she had just returned from the Hawkeye state and was giddy with satisfaction and pride at Obama’s victory there. Her enthusisam for the future of America is palpable. I feel that same sort of enthusiasm for the future of the Joliet area community. I’d like nothing better than to use my talents in a way that makes it a better, stronger, more forward-thinking place to live. There’s only a month left. It’s time to make hay!

For more information on Tim’s campaign, go to http://www.timforjudge.com/

A few months ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas released his autobiography. In it, he took the opportunity to lambaste Anita Hill, his former clerk and, now, law professor, for her accusations of sexual harrassment against him when he was nominated for the Supreme Court more than a decade ago. Talk about a guy who holds a grudge.

Thomas’s statements against her got a lot of media play, including a segment on 60 Minutes. The next day, Hill published an op-ed piece in the New York Times that was also widely-publicized. I was among the many people who read her piece and came away impressed with her composure and resolve in the face of a new round of attacks against her by both Thomas and many media types. I was so impressed, in fact, I looked up her current e-mail address at Brandeis University and sent her a note.

Undoubtedly, she received a voluminous amount of letters and e-mails in the wake of Thomas’s book and her N.Y. Times piece. Yet, yesterday, she still was gracious enough to send me a short return note. To say finding Anita Hill’s name in my e-mail inbox was a surprise would be a bit of an understatement. I thought you might be interested to read her note and my initial correspondence.

Dear Mr. Placher,

Thank you so much for sharing your story and for your thoughtful and supportive message.  May we both continue to grow in understanding and personal resolve.

Best wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous new year!

Sincerely,
Anita Hill

Tim Placher wrote:

Dear Ms. Hill,

My name is Tim Placher. I’m an attorney, but now work as a teacher, in Joliet, Illinois.  I read your fine piece in the NY Times regarding Clarence Thomas’ book and its attacks on you. I’m writing to share my personal exerience with coming forward about a high-ranking person’s inappropriate behavior (although in my case, the behavior was more on the criminal end of the spectrum).

When I was a kid, I was a victim of priest abuse. My experience was not as bad as many boys, but it certainly affected my life in a negative way. Just last year, I came forward and told my story after my local bishop made some statements claiming ignorance of my abuser and discounting the story of another man who had sued this priest over the abuse done to him.

What compels me to write is my amazement at the way you find yourself still under attack all these years after those Senate hearings. My experience was completely different, and I think I know why. 

When I told my story, I did so in the context of a first-person column in the newspaper. For the preceding 5 years, I had worked a side job as a columnist for two Chicago-area papers. When my story hit print, I expected to have to endure the slings and arrows of those who believed I had an axe to grind or was looking to make some cash off my diocese. To my surprise, though, I was inundated with postive feedback–hundreds of messages, notes and phone calls. There were never more than a handful of negative comments made in the paper or in the local braodcast media.

I realized that my time as a columnist had created a public persona for me that people trusted. So when I made bold assertions about a priest and strongly criticized the local bishop, people believed they knew me well enough to trust my words. In our diocese, we had one of the worst priest-abuse problems per capita in the country. Yet, I was one of the few people who came forward who wasn’t assailed by critics and the local church heirarchy.

I came to understand how people in authority become vested with an air of credibility that has its roots more in how we project our own desire to respect them than in any real credibility they have earned. For most priest abuser situations, people want so badly to believe in the men who work in their own parishes, they shun people who accuse them. I think the same type of thing was at work in your charges against Thomas. For too many people, the balance of credibility automatically shifts in favor of the person with the loftier societal position. You, although an attorney and graduate of a fine law school, lost out in this balancing of societal station. People want to believe a Supreme Court nominee is a good person, so they discount anyone who would question them.

At the time of your initial appearance in the national spotlight, I know how this type of thinking worked to erode my own inclination to take you at your word. As I’ve grown a bit older and wiser about the foibles of all people, both great and small, I understand how difficult it would be to take on a person with the built in credibility of a high office (or in your case, a nominee to high office). When I took a stand regarding my personal situation, the balance of credibilities leaned in my direction. Consequently, I was spared the difficulties you and other people experience.

In sum, Ms. Hill, I admire what you did back then. After reading your op-ed piece, I have even greater admiration for the even-keeled way in which you continue to stand up for what you know was right, despite your continuing relative disadvantage in this credibility game.

Tim Placher

Joliet, IL

One thing I learned knocking on a thousand front doors while getting my signatures for the February primary was the incredible frustration many area residents feel about their local newspaper. A sizable percentage of voters recognized me from my columns in the Herald News over the last 5 years. Of that number, I’d estimate 90 percent took the opportunity to express a great deal of anger and frustration about the state of “their” newspaper. The word “their” is an apt choice. A lot of people in this area have been reading the Herald News for so long, they feel like they have a relationship with it. And let me tell you, a lot of them feel like that relationship is strained to the point of writing the paper off as bland, light on content and, worst of all, unessential reading.

Without going into my own litany of things I think are wrong with the paper, let me say I share much of the frustration expressed to me at so many local front doors. A case in point came to my attention in the last couple of weeks. While the main page section has been full of daily stories about Drew Peterson and his apparent penchant for eliminating marital problems in a very permanent way, an important piece of local legal news has been completely ignored for several weeks:Joliet resident and native Bob Dow was recently appointed a U.S. federal court judge by President Bush. The lifetime appointment is a huge accomplishment, not least of all because Bob is still in his early 40s.

As a lifelong reader of the Herald News, it disappoints me that such a major accomplishment by a Jolieten hasn’t been publicized to our community. Interestingly enough, Bob’s wife is running for the same office I am, albeit on the Republican ticket. But so what? Bob is a younger classmate of mine at St. Ray’s and Joliet Catholic, and he is also a friend. I happy and proud when anyone from my school and city community makes good. The Herald News has got real problems if it can’t see the value in bringing a story like Bob’s to the community in a timely fashion.

Last week, I sent the following letter to the Herald News. Whether it will be published is anyone’s guess. But I offer it to you in this forum:

 This last week before the Christmas break is always one of my favorite times of the school year. At my building, I started a tradition 2 years ago of sending the choir kids out into the school to sing carols and holiday songs. Maybe 2 years only qualifies as a “trend,” though. But with this being the 3rd year we’ve done it, it’s probably safe to dub it a tradition!

After the winter choir concert is completed, the kids spend a few days breaking into small groups and practicing the songs they’re going to sing for their classmates and teachers. I just sort of kick back and listen as the kids plan their lists and practice the seasonal songs they first learned when they were little kids. 

I can hear in their voices and their big plans how excited they are. When they sing, I’m just overwhelmed sometimes by my good fortune to be in a position to help them do this thing they love so much. This year, I’m teaching my first batch of choir students who’ve been with me for 3 years, since they were in 6th grade. The banter between us is so easy and familiar. They know me well (one of them delights in mocking one of my favorite sayings: “I am a very tolerant person!”), and I know them, too. Getting them to be the best singers they can be can be challenging at times, but it never lacks entertainment value or sincere effort.  

There are so many great things happening in a school on a regular basis. If you read the paper regularly, you usually find an assortment of bad, or even worse, bland news about schools. But school is such a dynamic place. Every day, we parents send of our young people–people with myriad talents and personalities–to spend the day with hundreds of other young people. The result is unique experience every day for them, and for us teachers. It never fails to surprise or amaze. A school is a great place to spend your day. As I watched my choir kids happily skip out the classroom door, heading off to entertain their classmates, I was reminded how great it is all over again.

    I keep using the same analogy when describing the experience of running for office. “It’s like spinning plates,” I say.

I have a vivid recollection from the Bozo’s Circus shows that aired during the lunchtimes of my grade school years. They always had some vaudeville-ish entertainer who must have been on his way back south after appearing on the bill at Tommy Bartlett’s Water Show at the Dells. And the ones I remember the best were the plate-spinners. It was always a couple, the woman in some sparkly dress holding a stack of glass plates, the man waving them around all flamboyantly as he took them from the stack and set them spinning on a series of thin, wiggly poles. The whole object was to keep as many as possible spinning without letting any of them crash to the ground.

Running for office is a lot like that. There are a lot of plates and you can’t let any of them crash during the really short window of time between the petition filing deadline and the primary election a mere 90 days after. The amount of paperwork and the voluminous rules that go into running are incredible. Heck, they were almost enough to dissuade me from pulling the trigger on entering the race in the first place. When you think about it, that’s probably the intention. One thing I’ve learned is that politics is set up for politicians. The more rules and regs they can create, the more intimidating it is for a regular Joe to make a run for office. Take, for example, the requirements for getting on the ballot. You have to decide what party to run under, or even, whether to run in a party at all. Now that wasn’t a huge decision for me because I’ve been a leaner in the Democratic direction most of my life. Blame it on my Kennedy-loving parents. To run as a Democratic candidate, I needed a minimum of 500 valid signatures. I eventually collected more than a 1,000, just to be safe. But if I had wanted to run as an independent candidate, I would have needed several thousand signatures. Apparently, the only thing the Democratic and Republican lawmakers agree on is their desire to to keep outsiders off the ballot.

But I digress!, My main point is that there are so many things to take care of in a short period of time, you get the feeling that, at any given moment, one of them could crash to the ground and shatter into a mess that gets you beat, or worse, beat and fined by the state electoral board. Maybe you don’t feel that way if you have the entire party apparatus behind you. But I’m not getting any of that help. I’m just little old me, trying to win a race as the outsider. But you know what? That’s the way I prefer it. Then, when I win, there won’t be any favors to repay to any politicians.

And Lord knows, I don’t consider myself a politician. You know how I can tell? I’m still getting a queasy feeling thinking about all the friends who gave money to my campaign last week. A politician would be plotting his next foray into their pockets!

Visit www.timforjudge.com for more information on Tim’s candidacy.

     ”Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it.”

I must have said those words 100 times on Saturday night at Thirty Buck, the Joliet tavern that graciously hosted a fundraiser for my campaign last weekend. But the words “thank you” and “appreciate” don’t even begin to do justice to the depth of gratitude I feel toward the friends who gave of their time and money to try and help me get elected. It’s very humbling to learn how many people care about you enough, and believe in you enough, to toss their money away for the sole purpose of helping you win an election. It’s especially humbling because none of them is a political type. They’re not scratching my back and expecting a little something in return. They are simply making a gesture of support to one of their friends.

And I do have some great friends made over the course of a lifetime spent in this town. Those friendships are my life’s greatest blessing. But despite the bond I share with so many of them, asking them for money still stinks. Sure, there’s a campaign committee that does the dirty work on my behalf, but the end result is the same. It takes a friendship to a place you seldom want to go. But these friends know I am not a wealthy man and would not be able to compete on equal footing with better-financed candidates in the coming election without their help. The fact they seem so eager to help me is very encouraging to me. But that feeling finishes a distant second to my primary emotion: a sense of gratitude so deep, I can only fail to capture it by trying to commit it to words.

So thank you to all of you who stopped by the Buck to offer your support, both financial and, more importantly, personal. I truly appreciate it. More than I can say, or have said here.

So, now that the mushy stuff is out of the way, how about some individual thanks. To Kathe Malinowski and Peggy Christensen, who worked the check-in table with a smile all night. 

To Jodi Wartenberg, my campaign chairwoman, for making up the keen posters and taking care of all the paperwork. To Eric Beltzhoover, for the hospitality. To Laci and Natalie O’Connell, who gave up their Saturday night (well, sort of!) to work behind the bar. To Patty for helping me print out cards at the last minute touting my Web site and taking care of distributing them all night. To John Grivetti, who dropped off some sort of delicious pastry item with an ethnic name I can’t for the life of me remember. To Mrs. Thayer and Rick for all your help with dinner. To Mary Beth and Tim Rohe for all your assistance on the front end. To all my friends who braved an icy, dreary night to come out to support me. And last but not least, to Kevin Codo, who’s helping me out despite the fact I’m running in the “wrong” party!  

If it’s true the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then where does the journey of a thousand signatures begin?

For me, it started in late September at a house on

in Joliet. I rapped my knuckles on the door, then spoke with a nice woman who listened patiently while I told her I was going to run for Will County judge in the February Democratic primary. When she graciously scribbled her name on my petition, my journey’s first step was behind me.

Over the following month, I walked throughout my district collecting a thousand signatures from local voters.

As you can probably imagine, the thought of accosting that many people at their front doors was extremely intimidating. In fact, every time I stepped out of my car to walk a neighborhood, I had to take a deep breath to work up the nerve to do it. I mean, if you based your view of society on what you see on TV every day, you’d think there’s a nutcase lurking behind every door.

But the real world isn’t nearly as dire a place. I found myself continually shaking my head at the kindness and generosity of almost every person I encountered. In fact, the entire exercise gave me renewed faith in human nature and in my community.

That being said, though, it probably won’t surprise you to learn the journey to a thousand front doors led to some humorous observations.

Take that first moment of introduction. I’ve never run for office, so I quickly learned a simple reality of face-to-face encounters with voters. You can forget any deep talk about platforms and policies. When you show up uninvited at somebody’s door, they’re only interested in hearing five magic words: “Hi, I’m not selling anything.”

I met many residents who happened to be working inside their open garages. At one house, I spotted a guy standing behind some boxes stacked in a back corner. As I strolled up the driveway, I launched into my spiel for several seconds without getting a hint of response. That’s not surprising considering I soon realized I’d been conversing for a half-minute with a life-sized cardboard cutout of professional golfer Fred Couples. I might have gotten his signature, too. Unfortunately, cardboard people are only allowed to vote in Chicago.

I noticed approximately 8 percent of men have absolutely no problem answering their doors without wearing a shirt. Now I don’t know if this reveals something about the Joliet area, or whether it’s more of a commentary about men in general. In order to draw a valid conclusion, perhaps I should call on residents in Naperville to see whether its men answer their doors sans shirts—or at least whether their butlers do. I must say, though, I had some really interesting conversations with several of the shirtless guys, proving you can’t judge a book by its cover—or lack of one.

One of the challenges of petition-circulating was identifying which homes were occupied by registered voters. Surprisingly, an American flag on display wasn’t always a rock-solid clue. After weeks of walking, I came up with a much better indicator. If the house had a concrete goose on the porch, there was a 95 percent chance the resident was registered. The odds were even greater if the goose was wearing clothing.

For all you lovers of “A Christmas Story,” you’ll be interested to learn several Joliet area residents have apparently won “major awards” recently. These homeowners were proudly displaying fishnet stocking leg lamps in their front windows.

Last, but not least, there are the dogs. Oh, lordy, there are a lot of dogs out there. About 20 minutes into my first day of walking, I changed my goal from “getting a thousand signatures,” to “getting a thousand signatures without getting bit.” I didn’t make it, by the way. But I got Cujo’s owner’s signature, so I let it slide.

So now, the signatures are all in the book—signed, sealed and delivered to Springfield. If you’re eager to see how my race turns out, keep your shirt on, will ya? We’ll find out in February.

Tim Placher can be reached at timplacher@yahoo.com

Copyright 2007 Tim Placher