Harsh words, complaints, lawsuit, oh my!
You would think the final day before an election would be a breeze.
The candidates have had a full campaign season to get their messages out, and there should be little left by the end but last-minute calls and handshakes.
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
Not so in the 14th Congressional District, where the final day before the special election saw a lawsuit filed, a complaint lodged with the Federal Election Commission, and harsh words bandied back and forth between campaigns and allies of Democrat Bill Foster and Republican Jim Oberweis.
Early Friday morning, word came that Oberweis Dairy sued the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, asking for an injunction and more than $50,000 in damages.
The dairy's complaint charges that the DCCC, in paid ads supporting Foster, put the dairy in a "false light" by claiming the dairy hired illegal immigrants as workers.
The ads reference newspaper stories from 2005 about an Illinois Labor Department complaint filed by a Chicago-based immigrants rights group. The group claimed that two illegal Mexican immigrants were paid less than half the minimum wage to clean Oberweis Dairy stores in Cook County.
While Jim Oberweis still serves as chairman of the dairy's board, his son Joe Oberweis is now the president. The younger Oberweis said Friday that the workers were subcontracted from a local janitorial company, and when their immigration status was brought to light, the dairy ended its relationship with that company immediately.
To his knowledge, he said, the dairy was never served with a labor complaint, and he is not sure one was ever filed.
"We're talking about irreparable harm," Joe Oberweis said of the DCCC's ads. "This damages our brand and our reputation."
Jennifer Crider, spokesman for the DCCC, defended the ads Friday. She said the television, radio and mail pieces in question never stated that the illegal immigrants were employees of Oberweis Dairy, just that they worked in the dairy's stores.
"Jim Oberweis used polarizing rhetoric on illegal immigration while illegal immigrants were in Oberweis dairies doing work," she said, going on to call Oberweis a hypocrite.
She questioned the timing of the dairy's lawsuit, coming one day before the special election.
On Friday afternoon, the DCCC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, charging that the lawsuit promotes Jim Oberweis' campaign, in violation of federal election laws.
The DCCC complaint notes that the dairy lawsuit specifically mentions Jim Oberweis' run for Congress, and calls the suit "sham litigation" which "represents illegal corporate expenditures."
The DCCC has asked that the federal commission enforce a standing agreement with Oberweis that he will not cross-pollinate funds, stemming from an FEC finding that he had appeared in dairy ads while running for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Oberweis Dairy paid $21,000 to the FEC in 2007.
The Democrats' complaint further charges that the lawsuit was "almost certainly" produced in coordination with the Oberweis campaign, something both Joe Oberweis and Oberweis campaign spokesman Bill Pascoe deny. Crider said she is going by the timing and the wording of the press release, which she said matches the tone of Jim Oberweis' campaign releases.
"There is no evidence it was done in coordination," Pascoe said. "There cannot be any evidence, because it was not done in coordination."
"That's obviously pure nonsense," Joe Oberweis said of the claims, noting that the DCCC's attacks have not been against his father's campaign, but against the dairy.
"It's one thing for politicians to attack each other back and forth, but to lie about the family business my great-grandfather started is a step too far," he said.
