Eye On Illinois: Taxpayers should hope to avoid frivolous election challenges

There is a line of thinking among political journalists that everyone running for office in 2022 ought to go on the record regarding their view of the 2020 presidential election and the events of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C.

I didn’t automatically subscribe to that logic to the extent it seemed designed as another “gotcha” question covering a topic about which few voters are agnostic. If that specific issue motivates you, chances are very good any candidates who survived the primary have sufficiently signaled a position, and persistent questioning can be little more than testing a candidate’s fidelity to principle or ability to avoid rhetorical landmines.

Pulling back a bit, the questions do reach a salient point: will candidates accept the results of their own elections in November? Challenging clearly settled results can engender significant expenses for election and judicial officials – and ultimately taxpayers – so signaling a predetermined belief election fraud is inevitable doesn’t portend fiscal accountability.

That said, the ballot is settled. Vows to accept outcomes are irrelevant because there’s no penalty for backtracking come Nov. 9.

ON THIS DAY: Born this day 100 years ago in Alton, Don Lenhardt played 481 Major League Baseball games from 1950-1954. After 139 games with the St. Louis Browns, he had stints with the White Sox, Red Sox, Tigers and then back to the Browns, moving with the team to Baltimore in 1954 and back to Boston. He played two minor league seasons for the Red Sox then spent more than 40 years scouting for the team in the Midwest and was Boston’s first-base coach from 1970-1973.

Lenhardt played as a college freshman in Champaign, before enlisting in the Navy, and then in 1948 led the Three-I league with 22 home runs playing for the Springfield Browns. For more, visit sabr.org/bioproj/person/don-lenhardt.

MUSEUM MENTIONS: I’ve invited readers to share their favorite Illinois museum or ideas for new institutions. From Kurt Payne, Crystal Lake:

“I’ll offer one that few might know about. It’s in Chicago on the Northwest side in an industrial building that on the outside looks like the factory it was for decades. It used to be home of the Rotoprint printing company, part of WF Hall Printing company that used to print among other things the Montgomery Ward catalog and color pages of Playboy magazine. Stretching four city blocks, the south end is now Walmart and the north is now an auto museum with at least 300 cars of various vintages. The founder, Larry Klairmont, who owned Imperial Realty, passed away last year but he did like cars and his collection is worth the trip to see.”

The website is klairmontkollections.com.

Please email your favorites. Responses printed as space allows.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.