By Bob Seidenberg/rseiden914@gmail.com
“A lot of good old-fashioned politicking,” proved the key for Matt Rodgers, the one candidate in Evanston’s municipal election field Tuesday to defeat an incumbent for a seat on the city council.
Rodgers, the former chair of the city’s Land Use Commission, took home 810 votes or 64.18% of the vote compared to 452 votes or 35.82% for council member Devon Reid, the incumbent, in the southeast 8th Ward, unofficial vote totals showed.
The results were a reversal of sorts: Rodgers was a past campaign chair for Ann Rainey. Rainey lost in the primary in 2021 to Reid, ending her reign as alderman of her “Great Eighth” ward, as she dubbed it, which had dated back to 1983.
His formula wasn’t a fancy one. Rodgers announced in January he was resigning from the Land Use Commission to focus on his campaign.
No social media. He went out, knocking on doors — “good old fashioned politicking’ — all throughout the ward, he explained, showing his face and trying to learn what residents felt on the issues, “and kind of sharing where I am on those things…just engaging people.”
In some respects, that kind of campaigning can be a little tricky these days. There are doorbell cameras everywhere, people aren’t eager to deal with solicitors.
Rodgers made “lots of knocks” and left “lots of door hangers,” with information about his campaign, when doors didn’t open up.
In the conversations he did have, however, the big issue he kept hearing “over and over and over again,” he said, “was just a return to constituent services.”
In that respect, he said, Rainey had been a “powerhouse.”
People wanted their emails returned. They wanted to know where their requests for a service to the city had gone.
In other words, said Rodgers, whose background is in marketing, they want “city government working for people” rather than “people existing to support city government,” and “I think sometimes we lose sight of that,” he said.
