Bohm captures Republican nomination for sheriff; Pontiac sales tax referendum fails again

On the afternoon of Jan. 14, Ryan Bohm stood in the Historic Livingston County Courthouse and announced his candidacy for sheriff. Moving forward six months and two weeks, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Bohm will be getting a new job title after scoring a big victory over Tom Vagasky for the Republican nomination in the Livingston County sheriff's race Tuesday.

“It was a long six months, I appreciate that it's over,” Bohm told the Daily Leader Wednesday morning. “I'm ready to get into December and get into the office and start working toward some things.

“I truly can't thank everybody enough. The support over the last six months has been just unbelievable. I truly have the absolute best of friends in the world and they've come out of the woodwork in support during this entire campaign.

“It's overwhelming to see all the people that had kind things to say to me and kind things to even publicly say,” Bohm added. “Many of these people, I have looked up to in my career, some of them were mentors to me. When they come out and show the kind of support they have for me, it really meant everything to me. Having their support has helped give me the confidence that I needed throughout the campaign.”

Bohm, who has spent nearly 20 years in the Livingston County Sheriff's Department, secured the Republican nomination by garnering 3,902 votes of the 6,805 votes cast (6,666 were counted) to easily defeat Tom Vagasky, a retired member of the Illinois State Police. Bohm's vote total accounted for 58.54 percent of the vote. Vagasky took in 2,764 votes (41.46 percent).

Although there is still the General Election in November, a challenger is unlikely for Bohm, leaving him as sheriff-to-be. He is looking at charging into his new job with a lot of support.

“There's no way this could be done without just an unbelievable team of people,” Bohm said. “That team is just vast, can't even begin to name them all. I don't know what I would have done without each and every person.”

Bohm said that there isn't a lot of changes expected when he takes over for Sheriff Jeff Hamilton, who is completing the term of former Sheriff Tony Childress, who retired earlier this year. Hamilton was a big supporter of Bohm throughout the campaign.

“I have a lot of things on my plate, I don't have any personnel changes in mind, other than bringing in Chief Turner,” Bohm said. Turner is retiring Streator Police Chief Robert Turner. “I'm looking forward to working with him in that capacity, I've worked on and off with him over the last 20 years. He's been a great confidant, a great guy to work with.”

Bohm is a Cornell-area resident whose family has a history in law enforcement and area business.

The other major issue on the ballot, as least as far as Pontiac residents were concerned, was the 1 percent tax referendum that failed for the third time. Pontiac residents decided against enacting the tax despite city officials saying that most of the tax was going to be paid for by visitors to the community.

“It was disappointing, but like most tax situations, it was a tough uphill battle,” Mayor Bill Alvey told the Daily Leader Wednesday. “We'll have to look for other opportunities and go from there.

“The concept that we worked with was quite unique and would have made a nice, smooth transition over a number of years to do a lot of infrastructure and it would have certainly helped with maintaining the ambulance service,” Alvey said. “We will maintain regardless, we just have to do more work.”

The voting difference was 1,026, or 56.25 percent, against passage to 798 (43.75 percent) for approval. The defeat will affect how much street repair can be done, as well as offsetting costs to maintain the ambulance service, which the city inherited in August 2021.

“We have some backup thoughts,” Alvey said. “There's a couple different things.”

For the state elections related to Livingston County, most ballots in the county were cast by those who took a Republican ballot, where there were more contended races.

In Livingston County, Darren Bailey overwhelmed the opposition in the county in his bid for governor. Bailey collected 4,277 of the 6,805 ballots cast for 65.61 percent in the county. Jesse Sullivan was next with 1,128 (17.3 percent) and Richard Irvin was third in the five-person race with 779 votes (11.95 percent).

Statewide, Bailey collected 4450,944 votes for 57.7 percent, far more than second-place vote-getter Sullivan, who claimed 122,350 (15.6 percent). Irvin was slightly behind with 116,433 votes (14.9 percent). The other three candidates had fewer than 100,00 combined votes.

Gov. JB Pritzker easily defeated Beverly Miles with 91.8 percent (744,677) of the Democrat vote. Miles had 66,874.

The 16th Congressional District GOP race was won by Darin LaHood with 55,957 votes (66.3 percent). He claimed 1,194 (70.44 percent) votes in Livingston County.

Rep. Dan Brady, whose district included portions of Livingston County, won the county's nod for GOP candidate for secretary of state with 5,466 votes (86.17) to 877 (13.83) for John Milhiser. Statewide, Brady secured 540,475 votes (76.4 percent) with almost 94 percent of the votes counted. Milhiser had 166,631.

This sets up a likely battle between Brady and Alexi Giannoulias in the General Election. Giannoulias was winning the Democrat primary with 420,650 (52.7 percent).

Closer to home, the newly drawn 105th District for the state legislature saw Livingston County Board member Mike Kirkton claim 1,135 votes of the 3,420 cast in the county. This was 36.76 percent. Donald Rients was second with 861 votes (27.88) and Kyle Ham, who was supported by former State Treasurer Dan Rutherford, had 769 (24.9 percent). Dennis Tipsword had 323 (10.46 percent).

However, Tipsword was leading overall in the district as of deadline Wednesday with 5,616 votes, which was 39.3 percent of the estimated 95 percent votes counted. Ham was second with 3,301, just ahead of Kirkton, who had 3,219 votes. Rients was fourth with 2,153. There was no Democrat running for the seat.

Rep. Tom Bennet ran unopposed in the 106th District in the primary and will run unopposed in the General Election.

County Clerk Kristy Masching and County Treasurer Nikki Meier ran unopposed to retain their seats in the county government.

The County Board will be seeing a decrease in seats. The three districts will each have six candidates on the board after the November election. Jack Vietti led the First District candidates with 1,509 votes and was followed by James “Doc” Carley (1,269), Gina Manker (1,197), Marty Fannin (995), William Mays (992) and Jim Blackard (939). Corlee Erkkila (649) was left on the outside. There were no Democrats on the ballot.

There also seven candidates for six seats in the Second District. Claiming the most votes was Jim Bunting with 1,288 while Joel Barickman was next at 1,102. Dan Myers had 990 and was followed by Bob Weller (980), Gerald Earing (932) and Steve Lovell (909). Joe Steichen was left on the outside with 843 votes.

The Third District had nine candidates with newcomer Rebekah Fehr leading the way with 1,647 votes. Linda Ambrose was second with 1,528 votes. Mark Runyon had 1,395 for third and was followed by John Vitzthum (1,351), Seth Welch (1,188) and Paul Ritter (1,117). Challengers Jared Drayer (748), Steven Tjarks (679) and Craig Monson (663) fell short.