Sparks fly in battle for District 96 House seat

The race for the 96th District House seat has turned into a bitter tussle in a district that hasn't been contested by a Democrat for the past six years.

Dianne McGuire is filling mailboxes of west Naperville residents with ads attacking her Republican opponent, Naperville City Councilman Darlene Senger. McGuire's campaign has mailed out a stream of fliers, mostly funded by the state party, that accuse Senger of raising taxes, giving breaks to developers and holding "extremist" views on abortion.

McGuire moved to Naperville in 1979 and began a 27-year career of teaching language arts to District 203 middle school students. She and her husband, Fred Greenwood, have two grown daughters. After retiring in 2006, she looked for other ways to get involved in the community and joined the Naperville Fair Housing Commission and her own housing association.

Then, when state Rep. Joe Dunn announced last year he wouldn't run again for his House seat, McGuire said friends sat down with her and showed her evidence that Democrats were growing in numbers and support in the traditionally Republican area. After taking six weeks to mull it over, McGuire decided to run for the seat - which covers western Naperville in DuPage and Will counties as well as the DuPage County portion of Aurora.

"I absolutely love the role as advocate and problem-solver," McGuire said. "In my years as a teacher-leader, that was my role as well. It feels like a good fit for me."

McGuire has certainly thrown herself into the race. She frequently references conversations with residents she says she's met while knocking on Naperville doors for eight hours each day. She held slightly more cash than Senger at the end of June, and her $48,235 in receipts to date lag just behind Senger's $54,100.

Even with the help of the state party, McGuire has a tough fight ahead of her.

Senger's six years on the City Council is preceded by a long list of community involvement. She's sat on the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation board, the Naperville Plan Commission and the DuPage Children's Museum board, to name a few. With better name recognition in Naperville, she's gathered twice as much in individual contributions as McGuire.

Senger has not responded in like manner to the slew of negative ads McGuire has aimed at her. But neither is she just sitting back and taking the blows. The day before the two candidates faced off at debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters, she held a press conference to respond to a flier that called her "the developers' candidate."

And last week, her campaign sent out a mailing with quotes from fellow Naperville Councilman Kenn Miller and other local officials defending her against McGuire's "negative smear campaign."

"Dianne McGuire needs to stop relying on the Chicago Democratic machine, who feed her baseless and untrue facts about Darlene Senger," said a statement by state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale. "Chicago machine politics are not needed or wanted in Naperville."

Rep. Joe Dunn, who's represented the 96th District since 2003, asked Senger to seriously consider running for the seat. Senger, her husband, Terry, and their two children have lived in Naperville for 16 years. She says she jumped into the House race for the same reason she ran for the City Council in 2002: She knows the community "inside and out."

"That's why we threw our hat in the ring for council," Senger said. "It's a thankless job, but there's a lot of satisfaction coming out of it knowing you are put in office by people you are representing."

Senger, who holds financial degrees from Purdue and DePaul universities, worked for GCG Financial for several years. She says she'll bring her financial planning skills to state government, which she says ought to be treated like a business. State government's core functions of providing public safety, transportation and education should take priority above social programs that push spending over the top, she says.

"Stick to your core business and do a good job with that first, and then you'll have a good government," she said. "When you move into other things, like going into (Blagojevich's) health care plan, those are good needs, but let's take care of our core business first."

Practically speaking, that means legislators must be given much longer to review the state budget and must retain a clear vision of the priorities, Senger said. Programs that exceed the budget and don't fit into the core tasks of the government should be cut, she said.

Senger also warns against ignoring revenues. The tax dollar should be viewed as a way to make a profit, and that means businesses must stay strong, she says.

"The other way you fix the budget is to make sure the revenue streams you have coming in stay positive," she said. "Make sure you have businesses here producing sales tax, make sure you have people that can have a job to pay income tax. Everyone talks about cuts, but no one talks about the revenue side."

Senger says the second-most important strength she'd bring to Springfield is her experience with pension consulting. Just like with budgeting, the state government needs to act like a business by fulfilling its responsibility to take care of $44 billion in unfunded pension obligations, she said.

"The top thing you need to do is to set what your goals are and set them in a way they're realistic and function as a fiduciary doing it," she said. "Let's have those conversations."

Conversations about policy come most easily to McGuire when she's talking about education. Her experience as a teacher is especially important when one considers that more than 1,000 bills are introduced in the state Legislature that deal with public education, she said.

McGuire says she would subject any piece of education legislation to a list of priorities, saying a bill must provide adequate funding for all schools, from pre-kindergarten to higher education, must do no harm to any public school entity, must provide adequately for all public pensions and must provide student achievement measures.

"As an educator, I'm going to be able to evaluate those (bills) effectively," she said. "I'll also get special education reimbursement dollars ... I don't think we always get those back. I'm going to see if we can secure a few more dollars from the state for education."

A phrase McGuire often repeats reflects her passion for education and the general priorities she says would mark her service as a state legislator.

"When a community gets it right for its children and its families and its education, many wonderful things fall into place," she said.

McGuire emphasizes two more reasons she thinks Naperville residents should send her to Springfield: She is a trained mediator (she holds a certificate of professional achievement in mediation training from DePaul University) and she is a Democrat. It would be to the benefit of the district to send a member of the dominant party to the capital, she says.

"If you want a voice in the majority in power, elect a Democrat," she said. "I think it's important to realize having a voice that will be respected and heard in the majority party makes sense if you really want to get something done."