In Rock Island County, the Democratic primary is almost always the toughest battle, with the general-election result nearly a foregone conclusion.
There hasn't been a Republican sheriff in Rock Island County in 20 years, and that makes the March 19 primary for the office especially important. The crowded Democratic field features incumbent Mike Grchan and three challengers: Mike Huff, Robert Schroeder, and Gene Jungwirth. The winner will face Republican Angelo Anderson in the November election.
The race is particularly interesting because it pits Grchan against Sergeant Mike Huff, who was discharged by the Sheriff's Merit Commission for misconduct in October 1995 and - after a lengthy labor case - reinstated in 2000 because his dismissal was determined to be in retaliation for union activities.
The duel between Grchan and Huff would be merely intriguing under normal circumstances, but morale and labor relations are cited as problems within the sheriff's office by all of Grchan's challengers. Thus, the history between the incumbent sheriff and challenger Huff could be a seen as a microcosm of key issues in the race.
Huff got a boost on Sunday when the fifth Democratic candidate for the office, Rock Island correctional officer George Pickett, withdrew from the race and endorsed Huff. Pickett said the challengers were simply likely to split the vote, "and all that's going to do is help Sheriff Grchan."
Pickett is president of the union local that represents Rock Island county correctional employees, and he casts his withdrawal in a workplace rather than a public-safety context. "It's the best thing for the employees of the sheriff's department," he said.
But beyond labor issues, the sheriff's race offers four candidates with significantly different backgrounds. And for people who are fed up with the bad blood between Grchan and Huff - the two highest-profile candidates - there are two interesting challengers with strong qualifications.
Mike Grchan
Sheriff Grchan doesn't think he has a labor-relations problem. When asked about how his administration gets along with the two unions that represent county law-enforcement officials, he said, "We have a good relationship." He said that about 5 percent of any group is going to be discontent, and he claims it is from this group that Huff comes.
The sheriff has spent more time talking about Huff in this campaign than he has been able to deal with issues such as his record and his plans for the next four years. But with three terms on the job, the incumbent has a lot to back up his claim that he's been an active sheriff.
Under Grchan's watch, the county has built a new justice center, and the sheriff's office has helped bring a larger federal-law-enforcement presence to the Quad Cities. The office has also established liaison officers in high schools; started the Rock Island DARE program; began community policing; assigned two officers exclusively to MetroLINK; and participated in the early 1990s in the federal Operation Adobe, which sent 22 people to federal prison on drug-related charges.
The addition of 150 beds with the justice center has helped the county offset the cost of the facility. In the past six months, Grchan said, Rock Island County has generated $500,000 by housing prisoners from outside counties. "We're kind of paying for our jail with having other prisoners," he said.
In the next four years, Grchan said, the county needs to find an alternative to housing juvenile offenders to Knox County - at a cost of $75 a day plus transportation costs - and also should consider starting home detention for nonviolent offenders, to ensure that the new jail doesn't fill up too quickly.
Grchan said the issue of morale has been trumped up by a few malcontents. "There's a problem with sick time in the jail," Grchan concedes. But rather than being systemic, he said, a handful of employees have been coordinating "sick-outs" - in which five or six officers call in sick on the same day - to make the incumbent look bad. "That's exactly what's happening," Grchan said. "It's political."
But his claim that he gets along well with unions is countered to some degree by the endorsement of Huff by AFSCME, which represents the sheriff's correctional officers, and the fact that both Schroeder and Jungwirth agree with Grchan's critics that there is a morale problem in the sheriff's department. "It's more than a few people saying" there's labor strife, Jungwirth said.
Mike Huff
Huff has been with the sheriff's department for 22 years and is currently a senior supervisor in the patrol division, a role in which he supervises approximately 10 deputies.
Huff's first goal is to improve service, and his second is to cut costs. Those aims might seem to be contradictory, but Huff doesn't think so.
The sheriff's office has spent more than $300,000 fighting against the union, Huff claims, "and that's a very expensive proposition to the taxpayers." A better relationship with the union, Huff argues, will leave more money to provide law-enforcement services.
Huff's protracted case cost the county more than $160,000 in attorney's fees alone. (Grchan said he does not support the expenses incurred in defending the county in the Huff matter. Schroeder and Jungwirth also cite the legal expenses incurred defending the sheriff's office as unnecessary.)
Huff's other major issue is the amount of administration. He said the ratio of officers to command personnel in the sheriff's office is two-to-one, when it should be three-to-one. "There's been too much specialization and too much administration," Huff said. "We have too many people working Monday through Friday eight to four, and not enough during the peak hours when crime occurs."
Under Huff's plan, the sheriff's office would not fill command vacancies when people leave and shift more command personnel to the streets.
Huff is also actively courting senior citizens, proposing that the sheriff's office begin two programs - TRIAD and RUOK - designed to check regularly on older residents and ensure that they're safe.
But the other three candidates in the race claim that Huff does not have their qualifications.
Grchan has the harshest words for Huff. "Huff has been suspended by every sheriff," Grchan claims. Huff has served under four sheriffs since he began with the department in 1979. He concedes that he was suspended by two sheriffs - Randy Heaton and Grchan - but claims he was "definitely not" suspended by Sheriff Michael Green and that he can't recall being suspended by Sheriff Gordon Powell.
Huff's claim that his disciplinary record isn't as bad as Grchan paints it is backed up by the Illinois State Labor Relations Board, which noted that Huff "had a relatively clean disciplinary record" prior to the series of disciplinary actions taken against him in 1995. Those 1995 actions were determined to be retaliatory for protected union activity.
Schroeder and Jungwirth simply say they're more qualified than Huff.
Robert Schroeder
In this campaign, Robert Schroeder is the outsider - and perhaps the candidate most likely to stand apart among the challengers. He served 27 years on the Rock Island police department - including 13 years in upper management - and then served as police chief in Andalusia and Colona. While the other three candidates have experience in the Rock Island County Sheriff's Office, Schroeder does not - and he views that as a positive.
"I have no vendettas or axes to grind personally," he said.
And Schroeder is trying to make that a major issue, touting that he's "impartial and unbiased."
Schroeder said that among the three challengers, he is the most qualified. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy as well as the Northwestern University Traffic Institute Executive Management Program.
He has led two law-enforcement agencies, but they were municipal - rather than county - departments, and he's never run a jail, which the sheriff does in addition to law-enforcement duties outside of city limits.
Schroeder thinks the sheriff's department can correct some of its morale and staffing problems by switching to a five-two-five-three schedule: five days on, two days off, five days on, three days off.
Currently, he said, the sheriff's office works on a six-two schedule, and "that's a lot of days in a row." By working an extra 35 minutes each day, he said, employees get more days off. Furthermore, shifts overlap by 35 minutes, which could reduce overtime.
Schroeder also said he believes he can increase the revenue the sheriff's office generates by increasing enforcement of drunk-driving and overweight-truck laws. As police chief of Colona, he said, he increased fines from $68,000 in 1997 to $170,000 in 1999. "The taxpayer comes out the winner," he said. He said that many overweight trucks use secondary roads to avoid weigh stations.
Gene Jungwirth
Jungwirth retired from the Rock Island sheriff's department in 1998 (after 30 years) as a captain and calls the sheriff's job a "dream."
He also boasts experience in virtually every facet of the sheriff's office operations - as a patrol commander, jail administrator, radio supervisor, chief investigator, and administrative assistant. As administrative assistant to the sheriff, Jungwirth said, he prepared and administered the office's budget, and he said he wrote policies for the jail, domestic-violence response, courthouse security, and deputies. After his retirement, he also consulted on the new Rock Island County criminal-justice building. "I've worked all those fields," he said.
He contrasts himself with Schroeder by saying that the sheriff's office is significantly different than a city police department and adds that there's "no comparison" between his and Huff's experience.
Jungwirth's agenda also includes getting more officers out on patrol and addressing the morale problem.
"A lot of the problems could be solved by sitting down and talking with" employees who have grievances or problems with the sheriff's department, Jungwirth said. (He, like the other two sheriff's department veterans, claims to be pro-union.)
In addition to the Huff case, Jungwirth said, several other employees are likely to contest their dismissals, and "it's going to cost more money."
Jungwirth got into the race because he - like many others - thought Grchan was going to retire rather than seek a fourth term. "That's why you have so many people in the race," he said. (Grchan said he considered retirement.)
Schroeder and Jungwirth clearly have an uphill battle against the incumbent and his most-visible challenger, but they have the advantage of having strong résumés. Unlike primaries in which voters scratch their heads trying to figure out how the candidates are different, the electorate in this race has four distinct choices.
The race is particularly interesting because it pits Grchan against Sergeant Mike Huff, who was discharged by the Sheriff's Merit Commission for misconduct in October 1995 and - after a lengthy labor case - reinstated in 2000 because his dismissal was determined to be in retaliation for union activities.
The duel between Grchan and Huff would be merely intriguing under normal circumstances, but morale and labor relations are cited as problems within the sheriff's office by all of Grchan's challengers. Thus, the history between the incumbent sheriff and challenger Huff could be a seen as a microcosm of key issues in the race.
Huff got a boost on Sunday when the fifth Democratic candidate for the office, Rock Island correctional officer George Pickett, withdrew from the race and endorsed Huff. Pickett said the challengers were simply likely to split the vote, "and all that's going to do is help Sheriff Grchan."
Pickett is president of the union local that represents Rock Island county correctional employees, and he casts his withdrawal in a workplace rather than a public-safety context. "It's the best thing for the employees of the sheriff's department," he said.
But beyond labor issues, the sheriff's race offers four candidates with significantly different backgrounds. And for people who are fed up with the bad blood between Grchan and Huff - the two highest-profile candidates - there are two interesting challengers with strong qualifications.
Mike Grchan
Sheriff Grchan doesn't think he has a labor-relations problem. When asked about how his administration gets along with the two unions that represent county law-enforcement officials, he said, "We have a good relationship." He said that about 5 percent of any group is going to be discontent, and he claims it is from this group that Huff comes.
The sheriff has spent more time talking about Huff in this campaign than he has been able to deal with issues such as his record and his plans for the next four years. But with three terms on the job, the incumbent has a lot to back up his claim that he's been an active sheriff.
Under Grchan's watch, the county has built a new justice center, and the sheriff's office has helped bring a larger federal-law-enforcement presence to the Quad Cities. The office has also established liaison officers in high schools; started the Rock Island DARE program; began community policing; assigned two officers exclusively to MetroLINK; and participated in the early 1990s in the federal Operation Adobe, which sent 22 people to federal prison on drug-related charges.
The addition of 150 beds with the justice center has helped the county offset the cost of the facility. In the past six months, Grchan said, Rock Island County has generated $500,000 by housing prisoners from outside counties. "We're kind of paying for our jail with having other prisoners," he said.
In the next four years, Grchan said, the county needs to find an alternative to housing juvenile offenders to Knox County - at a cost of $75 a day plus transportation costs - and also should consider starting home detention for nonviolent offenders, to ensure that the new jail doesn't fill up too quickly.
Grchan said the issue of morale has been trumped up by a few malcontents. "There's a problem with sick time in the jail," Grchan concedes. But rather than being systemic, he said, a handful of employees have been coordinating "sick-outs" - in which five or six officers call in sick on the same day - to make the incumbent look bad. "That's exactly what's happening," Grchan said. "It's political."
But his claim that he gets along well with unions is countered to some degree by the endorsement of Huff by AFSCME, which represents the sheriff's correctional officers, and the fact that both Schroeder and Jungwirth agree with Grchan's critics that there is a morale problem in the sheriff's department. "It's more than a few people saying" there's labor strife, Jungwirth said.
Mike Huff
Huff has been with the sheriff's department for 22 years and is currently a senior supervisor in the patrol division, a role in which he supervises approximately 10 deputies.
Huff's first goal is to improve service, and his second is to cut costs. Those aims might seem to be contradictory, but Huff doesn't think so.
The sheriff's office has spent more than $300,000 fighting against the union, Huff claims, "and that's a very expensive proposition to the taxpayers." A better relationship with the union, Huff argues, will leave more money to provide law-enforcement services.
Huff's protracted case cost the county more than $160,000 in attorney's fees alone. (Grchan said he does not support the expenses incurred in defending the county in the Huff matter. Schroeder and Jungwirth also cite the legal expenses incurred defending the sheriff's office as unnecessary.)
Huff's other major issue is the amount of administration. He said the ratio of officers to command personnel in the sheriff's office is two-to-one, when it should be three-to-one. "There's been too much specialization and too much administration," Huff said. "We have too many people working Monday through Friday eight to four, and not enough during the peak hours when crime occurs."
Under Huff's plan, the sheriff's office would not fill command vacancies when people leave and shift more command personnel to the streets.
Huff is also actively courting senior citizens, proposing that the sheriff's office begin two programs - TRIAD and RUOK - designed to check regularly on older residents and ensure that they're safe.
But the other three candidates in the race claim that Huff does not have their qualifications.
Grchan has the harshest words for Huff. "Huff has been suspended by every sheriff," Grchan claims. Huff has served under four sheriffs since he began with the department in 1979. He concedes that he was suspended by two sheriffs - Randy Heaton and Grchan - but claims he was "definitely not" suspended by Sheriff Michael Green and that he can't recall being suspended by Sheriff Gordon Powell.
Huff's claim that his disciplinary record isn't as bad as Grchan paints it is backed up by the Illinois State Labor Relations Board, which noted that Huff "had a relatively clean disciplinary record" prior to the series of disciplinary actions taken against him in 1995. Those 1995 actions were determined to be retaliatory for protected union activity.
Schroeder and Jungwirth simply say they're more qualified than Huff.
Robert Schroeder
In this campaign, Robert Schroeder is the outsider - and perhaps the candidate most likely to stand apart among the challengers. He served 27 years on the Rock Island police department - including 13 years in upper management - and then served as police chief in Andalusia and Colona. While the other three candidates have experience in the Rock Island County Sheriff's Office, Schroeder does not - and he views that as a positive.
"I have no vendettas or axes to grind personally," he said.
And Schroeder is trying to make that a major issue, touting that he's "impartial and unbiased."
Schroeder said that among the three challengers, he is the most qualified. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy as well as the Northwestern University Traffic Institute Executive Management Program.
He has led two law-enforcement agencies, but they were municipal - rather than county - departments, and he's never run a jail, which the sheriff does in addition to law-enforcement duties outside of city limits.
Schroeder thinks the sheriff's department can correct some of its morale and staffing problems by switching to a five-two-five-three schedule: five days on, two days off, five days on, three days off.
Currently, he said, the sheriff's office works on a six-two schedule, and "that's a lot of days in a row." By working an extra 35 minutes each day, he said, employees get more days off. Furthermore, shifts overlap by 35 minutes, which could reduce overtime.
Schroeder also said he believes he can increase the revenue the sheriff's office generates by increasing enforcement of drunk-driving and overweight-truck laws. As police chief of Colona, he said, he increased fines from $68,000 in 1997 to $170,000 in 1999. "The taxpayer comes out the winner," he said. He said that many overweight trucks use secondary roads to avoid weigh stations.
Gene Jungwirth
Jungwirth retired from the Rock Island sheriff's department in 1998 (after 30 years) as a captain and calls the sheriff's job a "dream."
He also boasts experience in virtually every facet of the sheriff's office operations - as a patrol commander, jail administrator, radio supervisor, chief investigator, and administrative assistant. As administrative assistant to the sheriff, Jungwirth said, he prepared and administered the office's budget, and he said he wrote policies for the jail, domestic-violence response, courthouse security, and deputies. After his retirement, he also consulted on the new Rock Island County criminal-justice building. "I've worked all those fields," he said.
He contrasts himself with Schroeder by saying that the sheriff's office is significantly different than a city police department and adds that there's "no comparison" between his and Huff's experience.
Jungwirth's agenda also includes getting more officers out on patrol and addressing the morale problem.
"A lot of the problems could be solved by sitting down and talking with" employees who have grievances or problems with the sheriff's department, Jungwirth said. (He, like the other two sheriff's department veterans, claims to be pro-union.)
In addition to the Huff case, Jungwirth said, several other employees are likely to contest their dismissals, and "it's going to cost more money."
Jungwirth got into the race because he - like many others - thought Grchan was going to retire rather than seek a fourth term. "That's why you have so many people in the race," he said. (Grchan said he considered retirement.)
Schroeder and Jungwirth clearly have an uphill battle against the incumbent and his most-visible challenger, but they have the advantage of having strong résumés. Unlike primaries in which voters scratch their heads trying to figure out how the candidates are different, the electorate in this race has four distinct choices.
