Joan Krupa holds news conference in front of Pleasant Hill School to discuss Jehan Gordon’s denial of an abysmal attendance record as a member of the school board and Gordon’s lying about canceling her participation in the Kiwanis debate on Wednesday
Krupa: “Jehan Gordon has sent out mailers saying she has learned from her mistakes, but these continued deceptions are disturbing and the voters have a right to know about them.”
Life-long Democrat and former Peoria County Board Chair Sharon Kennedy joined Krupa to praise Krupa’s work on the county board and explain why it is such a breach of public trust to hold a position and not show up.
(PEORIA) When Jehan Gordon deceived WHOI News yesterday by denying that she had an abysmal attendance record as a school board member for Pleasant Hill School, and she falsely claimed to have called to cancel her participation in the 92nd District Kiwanis Club debate, Krupa decided to hold a news conference to air the truth and call attention to the facts.
Gordon also recently sent out two mailers focusing on “character” and saying she had make mistakes but has learned from them. That is hard to believe in light of her prevaricating to WHOI News just yesterday about two separate matters.
Gordon also has failed to explain why she skipped out on two debates she agreed to participate in this week. She called the Peoria Medical Society hours before their debate to cancel her attendance. But for the Kiwanis Club full blown debate for just the two candidates in the 92nd District, she just didn’t show up without notifying anyone, despite her claim of doing so. She left Kiwanis leaders and members hanging as they tried repeatedly to call her when the debate was supposed to start. They continued for some time trying to reach her and then began the program 20 minutes late when they realized she just wasn’t going to show up.
Gordon told WHOI News yesterday that her “opponent does not want to talk about issues that affect people.” Krupa responded today saying, “I would love to focus on other issues, but it is hard to debate those issues when my opponent skipped two scheduled debates in two days.”
Krupa then said, “When you boil down all the problems in our state government in Springfield, it comes down to bad character. As I speak with voters they agree with me that character is a central issue in this campaign.”
Krupa released a Freedom of Information Act response from the administration of the Pleasant Hill School showing Gordon missed 40% of meetings from when she began as a board member into August of this year. Since then the school had their September meeting and a couple special meetings, giving Gordon a 32% absentee rate and being late for quarter of the meetings she did attend.
Sharon Kennedy, former Peoria County Board Chair who served as a Democrat and worked with Krupa praised the work Krupa did on the county board and said “Joan always showed up well prepared and was a model public servant.” Kennedy castigated Jehan Gordon saying Gordon’s missing such a high percentage of meetings was a breach of the public trust and that she let down the students, teachers and administrators who all rely on the leadership of their school board.
Krupa once again noted that if Gordon was a student at Pleasant Hill instead of a school board member she would be classified as a “chronic truant” with such an abysmal attendance record.
Krupa said Jehan Gordon’s lying just yesterday to WHOI about that attendance record and her not showing up at the Kiwanis debate is further evidence that Gordon has not changed her ways that have gotten her into so much trouble.
Krupa detailed aspects of the disturbing pattern of bad judgment and a lack of character in Jehan Gordon, in addition to being AWOL from school board meetings 32% of the time and being late to one quarter of those she did attend, and then denying it to WHOI News.
Gordon, who was a communications major, has played with words before to fool people into believing positive things about her that are not true. For instance, Gordon was forced to pull an ad in the primary election earlier this year that falsely said she graduated from the University of Illinois.
Jehan Gordon was arrested for shoplifting when she was 19 years old, but the disturbing aspect of that is that she only paid the fines associated with that conviction 8 years later, which was only two weeks before the primary. One wonders if those fines would have ever been paid if Jehan Gordon had not decided to run for state representative.
Continuing that pattern of skipping out on making good on convictions, Gordon was arrested for being “unlicensed,” driving without insurance and no valid registration in 2004 and 2005 when she was in her mid-twenties. Again, the disturbing aspect is that it took her years to pay the fines and she did so only when she was in the middle of her campaign for state representative.
Then Gordon had the audacity to criticize her opponent for not debating the issues, which is hard to do since Gordon skipped out on two debates just this week and then denied she didn’t show up without giving notice to the Kiwanis.
Krupa said there are vast difference for the voters to consider regarding the two candidates positions on issues, records in office, accomplishments, character and integrity.
