Lottery will determine ballot position

Monday's first day of filing for the March 18th Illinois primary painted a three-way race for the GOP nomination for Sheriff in Ford County.

Incumbent sheriff Mark Doran will be challenged by Paxton Police Chief Bob Bane and Dennis Higgins, the Ford County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Coordinator, who's also a former Police Chief in Gibson City.

All three candidates filed first thing Monday morning, setting up a lottery draw to determine the order the names will appear on the ballot.

The filing period continues this week.

* County Board seats challenged ---

Two Republican candidates are running unopposed for re-election to four-year terms in District 1 on the county board: Dave Hastings and Gene May, both of rural Paxton. Both filed their nominating papers Monday at the same time, so a lottery will also be held on December 3rd to determine their ballot order.

Also filing his petition for re-election was Tom McQuinn, a Republican from rural Paxton, for a two-year term as a District 1 county board member.

Other county board members up for re-election are Floyd "Bud" Otto Jr. of rural Roberts and Pat Haskins of rural Sibley, both in District 2, and Randy Berger of Gibson City and Rick Bowen of Elliott, both in District 3. Of those, only Otto had filed a petition as of Monday afternoon.

Also filing Monday was Penny Stevens of Paxton, as a Republican candidate for county treasurer. The incumbent treasurer, Judy Hastings, has announced she will not run for re-election. Marsha Peznowski of Roberts has picked up a petition to run as a Democrat, but she had not filed her petition yet to be listed on the Democratic primary ballot.

County Clerk Linda Kellerhals also filed as a Republican for re-election to her post.

94.1 FM, WGFA