Democrat Michelle Mussman won the race for state representative of District 56 in 2010 running as a self-proclaimed “mom on a mission.” Her supposed mission? To clean up Springfield.
A noble goal, no doubt, but one that Mussman's only paid lip service to during her three terms, which probably explains her razor-thin margin of victory in the last election, and her desperate, dirty tactics in the current contest.
Mussman's mission has either been aborted or converted to black ops, the latter manifested in scurrilous attack ads directed at Republican opponent Jillian Bernas.
State Rep. Michelle Mussman (D-Schaumburg), 56th District
We'd expect to see this kind of sleaze in the city, but not in the burbs. We thought we were insulated from all that ugliness out here, right, and all the other embittering bits of blight produced by decades of Democratic rule?
Maybe we were just dreaming, or kidding ourselves. After all, it was never really credible that a Democrat running for a House seat would take on the chairman of her own party, Speaker of the House Mike Madigan. And she didn't. In fact, most recently, she voted for his bloated, unbalanced, unconstitutional $7 billion in-deficit budget proposal.
Nevertheless, enough of her constituents were kind-hearted enough to take her at her word the first time and give her a pass (just barely) the next two. But kind-hearted and soft-headed are two different things, and Mussman's gone too far.
Residents of Bartlett, Elk Grove Village, Hanover Park, Hoffman Estates, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Roselle and Schaumburg are being inundated with Mussman's muck, flier after campaign flier making outrageously dishonest claims about her opponent.
“Jillian Bernas can't be trusted to protect our retirement” screams one flier headline. “Jillian Bernas won't protect Illinois jobs” screams another. And on and on.
Bernas is a Schaumburg Township Library trustee who volunteers at her church teaching English to immigrants, but Mussman has to demonize her somehow.
When the mom on a mission becomes a Madigan minion, what else can she do?
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