More about Jim Dasakis

Political Alliances: Rod McCulloch

In the consolidated (local) elections of 2007, Dasakis ran for a position on the Hoffman Estates Park District Board and also backed three candidates for Streamwood Village Trustee. The Streamwood race drew much attention both for a controversy regarding the trustee candidates’ nominating petitions and also for the involvement of political operative Rod McCulloch, as reported below.

PIONEER PRESS – SCHAUMBURG REVIEW
Indicted Republican pollster working on Dem campaigns
March 22, 2007
By PATRICK CORCORAN Staff Writer

In an effort to put six candidates on a pair of local boards, the Hanover Democratic Township Voters organization has turned to an indicted Republican pollster.

Rod McCulloch faces perjury and forgery charges — both felonies — and a misdemeanor charge of election fraud for submitting petitions that included more than 100 allegedly forged signatures while working for Jim Gumm, a DuPage County Republican who was seeking to retain his position as Milton Township assessor on the April 2005 ballot.

McCulloch was indicted by a DuPage County grand jury in November 2005, but his case has yet to be resolved and the charges are still pending. If convicted of all three charges, he could face up to five years in prison.

Hanover Township Democratic Committeeman Jim Dasakis, who is also chairman of the Hanover Democratic Township Voters organization, said he was unaware of the indictment. Dasakis said McCulloch is helping Hanover Democrats with general campaign volunteer work, as well as press releases and campaign literature.

Asked if he had concerns about McCulloch’s background, Dasakis said, “I do now.”

Dasakis, a Hoffman Estates resident, is seeking a seat on the Hoffman Estates Park Board.

McCulloch sent out a Feb. 27 press release on behalf of the organization. The press release criticized Streamwood Village Trustee Guy Patterson, who filed a failed petition challenge against three Hanover Democratic Township Voters-backed candidates: Rob Eisenmenger, Tyler Gordon and William Morris.

McCulloch said he has known Dasakis for years, but that he has no formal position in the organization and did not write the press release bearing his name.

“I don’t work for them (Hanover Democratic Township Voters),” he said.

McCulloch also said he was not paid for his services.

Asked how his name got on the press release, McCulloch said he had shown one of the organization’s members how to set up a Yahoo e-mail account.

He said the pending indictment against him was “bogus,” but declined to elaborate.

McCulloch is also the plaintiff in a $200,000 civil suit filed in November by attorney Ted A. Donner on behalf of Gumm. It alleges intentional breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent misrepresentation and forgery while McCulloch was employed by Gumm. A court date is scheduled for later this month.

A high-profile Republican pollster with more than 20 years of experience working on campaigns, McCulloch owns a Westmont-based consulting group, McCulloch Research and Polling. His clients have included state and local candidates as well as national candidates such as U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-14th, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

Hanover Township includes parts of Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates.

The following year, McCulloch was convicted of perjury and election fraud in relation to the Gumm affair and was sentenced to two years’ probation. Despite the concerns Dasakis expressed in the above article – and despite McCulloch’s flat claim that he did not work for HDTV – one month after McCulloch’s conviction, he was paid a total of $10,000 by HDTV for “printing,” according to the group’s D-2 Semi-Annual Report (for the period ending 6/30/2008), filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Political Alliances: Victor Santana

One of the more colorful characters in Jim Dasakis’s address book is Victor Santana. Like McCulloch, Santana has advised Dasakis on his campaigns for county and local office, been fined for violating election laws, and solicited donations from business owners, one of whom later fired a bullet into Santana’s shoulder. The following article recounts the 2007 shooting incident along with highlights of Santana’s consulting career, such as a libel suit alleging that a Santana mailer used a doctored photo of a rival candidate standing in front of a strip club.

PIONEER PRESS – SCHAUMBURG REVIEW
Political consultant victim of accidental shooting
July 5, 2007
By MATT KIEFER, Staff Writer

A consultant who has done political work for a number of local candidates was shot and wounded earlier this year by a contributor to one of those campaigns. Those involved said it was an accident.

Victor Santana, a past adviser for state Reps. Paul Froehlich, D-56th, of Schaumburg, and Fred Crespo, D-44th, of Hoffman Estates, and former Cook County Commissioner Carl Hansen, R-15th, of Mount Prospect, was shot in the shoulder in February during a previously undisclosed incident at the offices of an Addison construction company.

The shooter — 40-year-old Arhile A. Iskali, of 1258 Itasca Road, Addison — made large cash donations last year to Hansen’s failed re-election campaign that Santana had worked on. According to Addison police, at about 5 p.m. on Feb. 16, Santana and others were meeting in a conference room at Premier Construction, 721 W. Lake St., when Iskali pulled out a gun. Santana said in an interview for this story that the accident happened after Iskali displayed the gun. Other people at the meeting urged Iskali to put the gun away. “After he pulls it out and everyone starts screaming that he should put it down, he does, and it goes off,” Santana said. Police said there were three people present at the shooting, including one witness. The single bullet fired went through Santana’s left shoulder, but did not hit anyone else, he said. According to police, Iskali was arrested and charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm; the shooting was ruled accidental.

Santana said Iskali was at the meeting in Premier’s offices to discuss investing in a development group. Iskali is registered with the Illinois Secretary of State as the owner of the Addison-based construction firm IMK Inc., among other companies. Premier is owned by George Kouvelis, Spiro Kouvelis and George Dravilas. During the 2006 Republican primary, the owners of IMK and Premier, where the shooting occurred, donated a combined $49,951 for printing work on Carl Hansen’s re-election campaign, on which Santana had worked as a political volunteer, according to campaign disclosure reports filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections. When Hansen lost the primary to challenger Timothy Schneider, Premier donated $12,000 to Jim Dasakis, Schneider’s Democratic opponent in the general election. Santana also worked on Dasakis’ campaign, which came up short against Schneider.

…

Santana is well-known in local political circles for his involvement in northwest suburban election campaigns. He has been accused of helping to distribute misleading campaign literature on several occasions:

• Former Hansen opponent Michael Olszewski filed a libel lawsuit claiming that Santana and other defendants were behind a 1998 campaign brochure that labeled Olszewski as “slum lord,” “tax cheat” and “flesh peddler” and included a faked photograph of the candidate in front of a strip club. That case is still in the courts.

• The Illinois State Board of Elections found Santana in violation of the election code after he failed to report the funding behind a sample ballot he produced for the 2004 primary elections in Wheeling Township. The sample ballot, which was incorrectly attributed to the local Republican organization in Wheeling Township, endorsed one-time judicial candidate Athena Bubaris for office when the Republicans of Wheeling Township had actually endorsed her opponent. Santana lost his appeal on that case in March.

• Last year, a group of Maine Township Republicans filed suit against Santana with the Illinois State Board of Elections, claiming he defamed them by mailing voters an anonymous, “last-minute smear” brochure on the eve of the 2005 primary elections. The mailer, titled “As the World Turns,” alleged corruption on the part of more than a dozen local political figures.

Santana said he played an advisory role in last April’s elections, when he worked with Dasakis and the Hanover Democratic Township Voters (HDTV) to promote two slates of candidates running for the Hoffman Estates Park Board and the Streamwood Village Board, all of whom lost.

“There was no upside to it. As for what I did, I sat down with them, told them what they should do and looked at their stuff and that’s it,” Santana said.

In July 2009, Santana made the headlines again, this time for involvement with controversial property assessment breaks granted (and later reversed) by the Cook County Board of Review. Some of the property owners were donors to State Representative Paul Froehlich of Schaumburg, another beneficiary of Santana’s campaign consulting. The incident remains under investigation. Meanwhile, Froehlich has decided not to run for re-election, and Santana has been barred from the offices of the Board of Review. More details appear in stories by the Daily Herald and Chicago Tribune.