On April 1, 2025, Raymond Schwarzkopf won one of two open seats on the Oak Lawn Public Library Board of Trustees in Illinois. He had never run for office before. He had no party behind him, no political network, and almost no name recognition going into the race.
Schwarzkopf used GoodParty.org's campaign toolkit to win his election, finishing less than a percentage point behind his main opponent.
“There were two seats that were available and three candidates. I technically came in second, but the other candidate that won was backed by a lot of political brouhaha and this, that, and the other. She's great. But I came within nine votes of beating her, and nobody knew me. I'm really happy about that. That was because of just following [GoodParty.org’s] suggestions.”
A Library Regular Answers the Call to Serve
Schwarzkopf's connection to the Oak Lawn library ran deep before he considered running for its board. He and his wife taught and performed at the library. They founded Debt Club, a program hosted at the library and dedicated to helping local families eliminate debt.
A librarian asked Schwarzkopf to run after watching how involved he was in the library's programming.
“She basically said, ‘There's lots of things going on at the library, and we'd like to get people who use the library to at least consider it,’” Schwarzkopf said. “Once I got over the ‘why me’ part, the brain started working, and I started thinking, ‘Well, what is it that I think the community could use, and what is it that the library does for us?’”
Schwarzkopf said he was reminded of the many hours he spent at the local library while growing up on the South Side of Chicago.
"It just brought me back to all of the reasons why a strong library can be so fortunate for a community," he said. "That made me think, ‘Yeah, why not? Why not me?’"
Running to Empower Oak Lawn Residents
After deciding to run, Schwarzkopf grounded his campaign in the idea of empowering people to get more out of their library.
“My campaign really was about empowering patrons and supporting the staff. I wanted to increase the library engagement. It was very important to me that the job of a library trustee, as any trustee in a municipality, is to maximize the taxpayers' dollars.”
To get on the ballot, Schwarzkopf needed to collect 50 signatures from registered voters. He realized the library itself, which doubled as a polling place during the concurrent national election, was the best place to find people who cared about it. He spent 90 minutes outside the building, helping keep the voting line orderly and talking with everyone who'd listen.
He collected close to 200 signatures in that single session, nearly four times what he needed, and helped at least nine people to sign up for library cards in the process.
“I know for a fact that at least nine people signed up for library cards that day because of talking to me, and I'm like, ‘Well, if I can keep doing this, one of the things we can do is keep engagement going and get people involved,’ which is exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
After collecting signatures, Schwarzkopf began running into roadblocks as he tried to officially launch his campaign. From navigating filing windows to encountering what he called “a wonderful brick wall” when he pressed for more information, Schwarzkopf came up against unexpected obstacles.
“All of those no’s, I'll call them, all of the obstacles that were placed, were just like a video game. I just kept going, and luckily I didn't lose any lives or anything, but I just kept going until I was ready to start making things happen,” he said. “The week between Christmas and New Year's, that's when I found GoodParty.org. I was so frustrated trying to find how does an independent person do these things, and somebody told me that there was this organization out there.”
Schwarzkopf said that GoodParty.org provided the guidance his campaign had been missing.
“I really started finding what I was looking for, which was guidelines, not politics. I guess I'm the kind of person who can play politics if I have to, but I don't like it.”
Schwarzkopf used a metaphor to describe his commitment to staying independent and anti-political:
“They always say there's two ways to build the tallest building in the community. You can either place brick by brick and do the work and create a good foundation, build the walls, build the infrastructure, build everything together, put all the glitz and shine on it and make it a wonderful place to be — or you can build a mediocre building and knock all the other ones down. I'm not a knock-all-the-other-ones-down. I will hold people's feet to the fire just like I hope they'll hold my feet to the fire, because if I say I'm going to do something, I want to do it. But I really didn't want to play this game.”
GoodParty.org asks all candidates to take a simple pledge to run independent, people-first, and anti-corruption campaigns. Schwarzkopf said the GoodParty.org Pledge aligned seamlessly with his values.
"What I loved about signing your [pledge] is I was like, 'Yes, what do you mean I have to sign this? You’re not asking me to give 10 pints of blood. You’re not, even though I do that every year. You’re not asking me to give away my firstborn child. I don’t have one. You're asking me to just be a good human being.' I can do that,” he said. “I wish we would do more of that, and that even partisan people would just step up and say, 'Hey, you know what? Yes, I’m part of this party, but first and foremost, I'm a human being.'"
Through GoodParty.org, Schwarzkopf gained access to voter data, which allowed him to plan his outreach more strategically.
“We have 44,000 people in the municipality. How was I going to reach 44,000 people in this municipal election? [With GoodParty.org,] the pressure got alleviated because I didn't have to reach all 44,000 households. I only had to reach the households that actually voted in this type of election. Once I started looking at that and the numbers were broken down, I just took the number of days that I had and started doing the math, and then dedicated myself to doing something every day.”
As he broke down the data, Schwarzkopf realized that the typical voter turnout for local elections was much lower than for national contests.
“There's a lot of people that don't vote in municipal elections. My mind was blown because I remember the previous fall we had just had the national election and there were lines for days,” he said. “I'm sitting there thinking, ‘You know what, people, all of your votes mean little to nothing in that type of national election. But in a municipal election, all that counts are the 44,000 people.’ Whatever your municipality is, just take that number and probably divide it in half. Maybe divide it by 20%. Maybe you only get 10% of the people that come out. Well, what does that mean? That means every voter that shows up means more.”
Schwarzkopf encouraged more voters in Oak Lawn to participate in municipal elections.
“I went to talk to everybody that I could and got people to commit that they were going to vote. Think about this. If the municipality only has 10,000 people, let's say 25% of 10,000 people actually show up to vote. Well, if there's 10,000 people that voted in that municipality, but that's the total election, how does that same 10,000 people count for the national election? They're a hair on a gnat on the back of a horse. It's so insignificant, but the biggest challenge we had was getting people to realize how important their vote was in the municipal election.”
As part of his effort to increase voter turnout, Schwarzkopf personalized his campaign outreach, including text messages and robocalls.
“Everything that I ended up doing was very personal. I did text messages, and I was so against it because I hate it when I get text messages, but I thought, ‘Okay, Raymond, let's take your text messages and not make them like the ones that you get. What is it that you hate about them?’” he said. “What I hated about every text message I got — they were dry. They were flavorless. They were just, ‘Hey, I'm here. Vote for me.’ That wasn't my text message. My text message was, ‘Hey, this is important. You can make a difference.’”
He also found himself drawn to nonpartisan candidates running for other local offices in Oak Lawn. About 30 days before the election, several of them ended up at the same meet-and-greet and realized their platforms complemented each other rather than competed.
“We realized that each office that each of us were running for really were integrated and we could help each other out and make the community better, because the things that I can't do at the library, the park district can do, and the stuff that the park district can't do, maybe the school system can do, and the stuff that the school system can't do, maybe we can do at the library. It was just this big whole coalescence, not a coalition, a coalescence of ideas about the community,” Schwarzkopf said.
In the end, Schwarzkopf won his seat with a comfortable margin, earning 35.7% of the vote in the three-way race.
“Coming in Hot” to the Library Board
After being elected, Schwarzkopf wasted little time. Before his first board meeting, he reviewed the past three years of board minutes and got up to speed on the library’s budget, staff, and programs.
“I had already done my homework. I had looked at all of the board meeting minutes for the previous three years. I had looked at everything that the library had done — what the director had done, who the staff were, who the managers were, what was going well, what people were telling me, and then just talking to people in the community,” he said.
On top of Schwarzkopf’s previous history of engagement with the library, this research set him up to start asking the right questions from Day One. He described himself as “coming in hot” during his first months on the board.
“I saw stuff that was working and I saw stuff that wasn't. As I asked questions and didn't get answers that I thought the taxpayers should know, I just kept asking more questions.”
As Schwarzkopf continued asking questions, he began to see an increase in transparency.
“Those first months, I think a lot of heads turned. We would get to the part of the meeting where they would say, ‘Are there any questions?’ And all the heads would turn and look at me,” Schwarzkopf said.
“We had a really fun moment at the beginning of this year where all the heads turned and looked at me, and I said, ‘I don't have any questions. These are the kind of reports that are really wonderful. Anybody could look at these reports and know everything that's going on. Thank you for doing that.’ But if I hadn't pushed for it, would that have happened? I don't know. Maybe. But I'd like to think that now if somebody wants to ask those questions, there are processes that are more readily available.”
Inspiring the Next Wave of Changemakers
While serving on the library board, Schwarzkopf is passionate about encouraging others to make a difference in their own way.
“What if we got 1% better at what we were doing? What if we did create this open community and open communication, which is where the word communication and community come from, is to gather people together? What could we change? What could we make happen that would make our lives easier?” Schwarzkopf asked.
He said this mindset of incremental change can apply even in the midst of increasing political polarization.
Today is polarized in so many ways. Does it have to be? I can feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the jaw clenches, and all of that, but I have to go, ‘Breathe a second. How important is this? Is this really affecting me?’
National politics and all these things aside, what's going on right here in my backyard? What can I do with my neighbor? What can I do with the people down the street? What can I do with people on the opposite side of the neighborhood?
Asked what he'd tell someone considering a first run for local office, Schwarzkopf pointed to the story of the tortoise and the hare.
"The hare runs and runs and gets distracted, while the tortoise isn't glamorous, doesn't have the shiny stuff, but just keeps going day after day after day. You know what the funny part is? Every time I've read that book, the tortoise wins the race,” Schwarzkopf said. “Figure out why you want to do what you want to do. Put yourself in a mode of stewardship, of service. That's what these jobs are. We're in service to the community."
Raymond Schwarzkopf is one of over 13,000 independent and nonpartisan candidates who have won their elections using GoodParty.org.
“I couldn't have done it without you all. You all inspired me and told me I was heading in the right direction. Thank you, GoodParty.org.”
