Legal challenge could prevent McLemore from taking Lake County Regional Board of School Trustees seat

More than 68% of the Lake County voters who turned out to the polls in April chose Regional Board of School Trustees candidate Clyde McLemore among their ballot selections.

But McLemore, a local activist who founded the Lake County chapter of Black Lives Matter and received more than 43,000 votes, may face a legal challenge that could prevent him from taking the seat later this month when the Regional Board of School Trustees meets.

McLemore shared a letter with the News-Sun from the Lake County state’s attorney’s office informing him that he is ineligible to be seated on the board because he lives in the same congressional township as a current trustee on the board, whose term does not expire until 2025.

The letter, signed by Assistant State’s Attorney John Christensen and dated April 21, 2023, cites an Illinois School Code provision that in single-county regions, “not more than one trustee may be a resident of any one congressional township,” and that McLemore is ineligible, “by operation of law.”

Christensen threatened legal action challenging McLemore’s eligibility for office if he does not “voluntarily resign from the Trustee-Elect position and not seek to be seated on the Regional Board.”

McLemore told the News-Sun he has no such plan.

“I’m not resigning; the people spoke,” McLemore said. “The people have voted me in. I have 43,000 votes. People had every opportunity to object to my petitions, just like any other citizen.”

No other residents, including current Trustee Julie Gonka, challenged McLemore’s petition signatures and he was approved to be on the ballot by the Lake County Clerk’s Office.

Lake County Clerk Anthony Vega said his office does not “weigh in on qualifications or the validity of signatures,” and confirmed that nobody raised objection to McLemore’s election petitions with his office. He said he can understand why McLemore would be upset with the legal challenge after his candidacy was not objected to prior to the finalization of the ballot.

“That’s what the objection period is for,” Vega said. “We accept petitions and we use the Illinois State Board of Elections candidate guide, and one of the very first items in that guide is retaining legal counsel to make sure you’re qualified for these positions you’re running for.

“There were no objections at the petition stage,” he added. “We look for, do you have your signature pages? Do you have your candidate statement? The economics statement of interest? The optional loyalty oath?”

The unpaid board, typically an afterthought in local politics, mostly meets to consider school district consolidations, annexations, dissolvements and opt-outs from educational cooperatives. It meets rarely, and sometimes if there is no new business, meetings get scrapped entirely.

“If one of our school districts is going to dissolve, they would hear those petitions,” Lake County Regional Superintendent of Schools Michael Karner said.

Karner said he believes that a similar situation occurred in 2019 with a member who was elected to the board, but was ineligible to take the seat.

Attempts to reach Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart or a representatives from his office, were unsuccessful.

Two of the trustees, Alison Barker Parker of West Deerfield Township, and Larry McShane of Waukegan Township, have held seats since the 1990s.

Gonka, who holds the seat in question through 2025 according to the Lake County Regional Office of Education, responded to an April Facebook post that McLemore made thanking voters, asserting that the board has, “no authority over any aspect of the day to day operations of any Lake County school.”

McLemore said the state’s attorney’s office could have reached out to him earlier, and said he is examining his legal options in case legal filings ensue.

“Even if they do, I plan to sue because you all could have stopped this a long time ago,” McLemore said.

He pointed out that the state’s attorney’s office in downtown Waukegan is located just down the street from the Lake County chapter of Black Lives Matter’s office, and said the Regional School Board currently lacks diversity.

McLemore said he wants to, “keep our children away from the school-to-prison pipeline,” and added that he thinks Zion-area Republicans who don’t want him to take the seat pointed out his residency to the state’s attorney’s office.

He added, “If the seat wasn’t open, why was it on the ballot? The president (of the United States) wasn’t on the ballot because the president’s seat wasn’t open. Attorney general wasn’t on the ballot.”