Dixon candidate forum: Three vying for 37th District state Senate seat

DIXON — A former Dixon mayor, a Dixon city councilman and a sixth-generation farmer from Geneseo took to the stage Thursday night in Dixon to field community questions as they vie to represent the 37th District in the Illinois Senate.

Li Arellano Jr., who in May completed eight years of service as mayor of Dixon; Chris Bishop a former teacher and wrestling coach who is in his second term as a Dixon city councilman; and Tim Yager, who worked in the telecom industry and is now a farmer and a member of the Henry County Board, are competing for the Republican nomination for the seat currently filled by Win Stoller, R-Germantown Hills.

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Li Arellano (left), Tim Yager and Chris Bishop are all vying for the 37th senate district seat of Illinois being vacated by Win Stoller. Discover Dixon hosted a candidate forum Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024 at The Dixon theatre. (Alex T. Paschal)

Stoller, who has represented the 37th District since 2020, decided not to seek a third term. The 37th District includes all of Whiteside and Lee counties, most of Bureau County and portions of DeKalb, Ogle, Rock Island and La Salle counties.

Thursday night’s forum at The Dixon: Historic Theatre, hosted by Discover Dixon and moderated by Sauk Valley Community College President Dave Hellmich, comes 3 1/2 weeks before the state’s March 19 primary election. Pre-election day voting is open now, Hellmich said.

During the hour-long event, the three answered rounds of questions about everything from state debt and property rights to school choice and election integrity.

Arellano said he is running for the seat because he wants to take the experience he gained while serving as Dixon’s mayor and bring it to Springfield to help the state. He is a local businessman, a husband, a father of four and enlisted in the Army shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said. He continues to serve in the U.S. Army Reserves.

He referred to his election as Dixon mayor in 2015, when Dixon residents entrusted him to lead the city after the 2012 discovery that former city comptroller Rita Crundwell had embezzled $54 million from city coffers over 20 years’ time.

“In a state well-known for its corruption... unfortunately for a brief moment, Dixon stood out,” he said. “We needed to figure out as a community how to turn our ship around, how to get our finances back in order.”

Pointing to Dixon’s financial rebound, infrastructure growth and falling tax rates in the years since, he said, “Now I’m proud to say Dixon will be debt free by 2038... Our city has a new future and I’m proud to have led that. I want to take that experience down to Springfield, where they desperately need it as well.”

Yager, born and raised on his family’s hog and grain farm, is married with four grown children, and has a 20-plus-year history in the telecom industry. He has farmed full time since 2014. He is on the Henry County Board and serves on its Finance Committee and Planning and Zoning Committee, which he said has been at the forefront of zoning when comes to solar, windmills and CO2 pipeline projects. He also serves on the Illinois Farm Bureau Board.

He said he is “pro-life, very pro-Second Amendment”, supports local control of schools, and as a farmer supports landowner rights, adding that his daughter, a federal probation officer, is married to a Marine who is now a Geneseo police officer.

“It’s time the state of Illinois backs the blue and supports safety for our communities, and there won’t be a bigger advocate than me for that,” he said.

Of immigration, he said, “Clearly, we have a problem in the nation and in the state of Illinois,” he said. “It’s the federal government’s responsibility to secure the border and they’ve let us down. And I think that’s why Trump is gaining such momentum is because he wants to secure the border and that’s what we need. I want to go to Springfield to end the sanctuary city status of Chicago and the sanctuary status for the entire state of Illinois.”

In his opening statement, Bishop looked back to 2015, when he was a junior high teacher and wrestling coach at Dixon High School and did not yet have children. He also was elected to his first term on the Dixon City Council that year. He said that at time, the person responsible for the $54 million embezzlement was behind bars and the city had been awarded over $40 million.

“That’s what situation the city of Dixon was in when we sat down and took our seats,” he said.

Bishop said that at the end of his first term, Dixon had transitioned to the managerial form of government, which it still has, had passed balanced budgets and had negotiated contracts with the unions that work for the city of Dixon. He also said his wrestling team took home its first state trophy in program history, he was named Illinois Coach of the Year, he earned a master’s degree, and he had two children.

‘What I learned during that time, is with the right people around you, heading toward like goals, you can accomplish a lot. I’ve taken that and I’ve used it in my second term.”

He said that term has included housing, retail and manufacturing development, and looking at pensions and the liability that was there and bonding out.

“So, shortly after my kids get out of high school, the city of Dixon should no longer have debt on their pensions,” he said.

Bishop also is on a committee working on a comprehensive plan that will help grow the city over the next 20 years, he said.

On school choice, Arellano said that as a graduate of Faith Christian School he is a huge proponent of school choice. Bishop spoke about making sure education helps all students and covers their needs, and the number of unfunded mandates passed on to schools has to be reduced. Yager also said local school boards, not the state or federal government, should be allowed to manage their schools.

The three also were asked about election integrity, whether they accepted the results of the 2020 presidential election – chiefly, whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected president – and whether they would accept the results of the 2024 election.

Yager said he accepted the results of the 2020 election and that from what he has seen in Henry County, election integrity is place. Arellano said he also accepted the election results and the court rulings. Bishop said it is important to keep an eye on voter rolls, while Arellano said voter ID is needed and spot audits with counting ballots by hand would be safeguards. All three said they would accept the results of the 2024 election.