Township Dems won’t make endorsement in 7th race

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Updated: February 20, 2012 8:20AM

Three 7th District state representative candidates seeking an endorsement from the Proviso Township Democratic Organization will have to campaign without it.

Rory Hoskins, Emmanuel “Chris” Welch and Sherby Miller, three of the five candidates running for the seat, answered questions and discussed their political agendas in hopes of receiving the endorsement at a Jan. 5 candidate forum in Hillside. The votes from members of Proviso Township Democratic Organization (PTDO) put Hoskins on top by one vote.

But Hoskins did not receive the PTDO endorsement.

Current State Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-7th, and committeeman of PTDO said only 113 of 233 members voted, with Hoskins receiving 52 votes, Welch received 51 votes and Miller received 9 votes. Yarbrough added there was no clear majority of support from PTDO membership for one candidate to receive an endorsement.

“We decided the thing to do was to have no endorsement,” she said. “There’s no way I could endorse a candidate with numbers like that.”

An endorsement from PTDO would have carried a lot of weight for a candidate’s campaign due to Yarbrough’s political clout. Her husband is the mayor of Maywood, and she is the committeewoman for PTDO and the incumbent state representative of the seat the three candidates are running for.

Yarbrough plans to leave her state representative post and run for the Cook County Recorder of Deeds position. So far she is running unopposed in the race.

Yarbrough said she talked to Hoskins about the decision and said he did not seem upset about not receiving the endorsement.

“I don’t feel slighted,” Hoskins said. “I appreciate the organization putting on the event and I’m happy to have been invited and I’ll keep moving forward from there.”

“The fact that she published the results was significant as far as I was concerned,” he said.

Endorsement or not, Yarbrough said the candidates still have work to do.

“The candidates are going to have to duke it out,” she said. “They will have to run their campaign and get their message out and the voters will speak.”

Overall she thinks on March 20, Election Day, it could be a win-win for the PTDO. “If any one of the three win they would have come out of our organization,” she said.

Princess Dempsey and Beyonca Johnson are also candidates for the state representative seat but are not members of PTDO.