UIUC College Dems

This blog is published by the UIUC College Democrats. We focus on state and local politics, but are willing to discuss pretty much anything.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Illini Pundit = Mark Shelden

There's been some discussion about this topic in the previous thread, so I thought I'd do a whole post on it. One anonymous commenter suggested that Shelden, whom many local political junkies have long speculated is Illini Pundit, will slowly out himself. Why? Because Illini Pundit may soon be subpoeaned in relation to a lawsuit involving a fired MTD employee, who claims she was terminated for posting on IP.

Let's say that Shelden admits he is IP. Then what? Running a political blog on a county computer is clearly illegal, but then again, so is sending political ad buys from a county fax machine, and look what happened with that, absolutely nothing.

Will a scandal involving Shelden and IP entice a strong Democrat into the county clerk race? Will such a Democrat be able to gain any traction with this issue? I still have my doubts. 1. Incumbent County Clerks don't lose reelection bids. 2. The average voter doesn't even know what a blog is. 3. Recruiting a strong candidate for this race is still a longshot. Your thoughts?


posted by U of I College Dems @ 6:07 PM  

11 Comments:

  • At 7:57 PM, Blogger Dave J. Escobar said…

    Your three points are good ones. And unfortunately, voter apathy (which kinda goes along with point #2) will keep Shelden in.
    Supposing that Shelden really is IP, it would be nice for the County to step in. However, that isn't terribly likely, and I don't think anyone would run against Shelden and win (even though I would vote for such a candidate).

     

  • At 7:58 PM, Blogger Gamera said…

    I do *not* know who IP *is*....

    But I sincerely doubt Mark Shelden is IP. I just don't believe that's a reasonable guess.

    My guess would be that IP is someone that isn't widely known outside of Republican circles. I'm going to guess that he's been involved behind the scenes in politics in CU for quite sometime and that while some may know who he is, no one knows he's IP.

    Just my two cents....

     

  • At 11:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think it's obvious that Shelden enjoys the attention of people thinking he is IP. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he is. I don't think the legal situation with IP will be an issue. Also, I don't think voters care about what IP does with his/her website. Shelden is there to stay, only now we will just have to listen to him offer ridiculous complaints about Frerichs as State Senator instead of auditor.

     

  • At 11:04 PM, Anonymous ud said…

    If Shelden is confirmed as IP, I think it makes a huge opening to beat him in the election. Frankly, it probably opens him up to disciplinary action or something similar for spending so much of his time at work doing political campaigning.

    Finding someone to run against him will still be hard, because you still need someone willing to take on the full-time job of County Clerk if they win.

     

  • At 8:29 AM, Blogger U of I College Dems said…

    ud-

    What makes you so confident that Shelden would be subject to a disciplinary action this time? When he got caught up in fax-gate the State's Attorney investigated him, but no charges were ever filed and he was never fined.

    I suppose this charge would be more serious, because Shelden's outing as IP would indicate that he has spent more than a year running an explicitly political blog on his county clerk computer.

     

  • At 10:35 AM, Blogger Kiyoshi Martinez said…

    UIUC C.D.: Where exactly does it say that running a political blog as C.C. is illegal? Any laws/prior cases you can point to?

    I've heard this before, just never seen it proven.

    For what it's worth, I speculate that IP isn't M.S.

     

  • At 10:52 AM, Blogger The Squire said…

    Wasn't the state's attorney a republican at the time?

     

  • At 11:24 AM, Blogger U of I College Dems said…

    Kiyoshi-

    I don't think there is any statute that says explicitly that running a political blog as CC is illegal, but state and county laws state pretty clearly that an elected official can't do political work on county time using county resources (like the fax thing).

    Squire-

    The State's Attorney was Republican John Piland, but he assigned an independent counsel to investigate Shelden

     

  • At 3:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Kiyoshi,

    Many government employees and elected officials are required to sign ethics statements that say many things one of which is that taxpayer property should be used government purposes and very little personal uses.

    For instance, I could use a government phone while I am working to schedule a doctor appointment but I should not be using my computer to run a blog and write comments on blogs all day.

    Is it illegal for Shelden to run Illinipundit on county computer or to have spent significant amounts of his day running a blog? Probably not.

    Do residents have a right to know that their county clerk is spending a good part of his working hours time posting on his blog and using their taxpayer funded computers? Yes they do. It is a surprise that the county board, with all the allegations of IP being Shelden, are at least not investigating such claims even if it is to save their own butts.

     

  • At 4:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Also, when considering the large amounts of evidence for Shelden being Illinipundit, isn't it interesting that daytime posts from Shelden (primary anon user) have almost ceased.

     

  • At 9:39 PM, Anonymous John Bambenek said…

    IP isn't Shelden. This rumor has presisted for months even when shown not true.

    Also, if it WAS Shelden it would be unethical, surely, but doubtful that you can say it's illegal. Unless you are prepared to say that anyone posting to a political blog using state resources (that includes students in the dorms, or on those handy wireless connections in class) is breaking the law.

     

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