Dupage Policy Journal

Reid McCollum has stepped down from Asma Akhras’ campaign for Hinsdale Township High School District 86 after being caught engaging in dirty tricks on behalf of the campaign. 

McCollum, who is also a campaigner for U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), created a bogus campaign website in the name of Akhras’ opponent Drew Catton. 

Catton is an outspoken parent in the district who has drawn the ire of leftists. 

“Neither Asma Akhras nor anyone on her team were in any way aware that I created this website, which I did not do on behalf of her campaign,” McCollum said in a social media post announcing his resignation from the campaign."

“In fact, I purchased the domain and several domains for other candidates in December before I'd even met the members of Asma's core campaign team, and I had no involvement in creating her actual website.” 

“The fact that I purchased these domains hours apart from when someone purchased her campaign web domain was a coincidence, though not surprising given that it was the same week as candidate petitions were due and campaigns were getting organized.” 

“After previously denying it, on March 18 I told Asma that I created the website. Given her strong commitment to running a positive campaign and because I had previously denied my involvement, she has asked me to step down as a core volunteer. I completely respect her decision and her focus on staying positive and above the fray. I published the website anonymously for obvious reasons. Doing something that I feel strongly was in the public interest is not the same as wanting to become a target of attacks from the usual suspects. Unsurprisingly, from the moment the website was noticed, a clear effort was made by some to center the mystery of who done it and to characterize it as a vicious attack.”

The bogus website, which is now defunct, included only the title “Who is Andrew Catton?” and an email that Catton sent to the school district noting his disdain for the current leadership as well as social media posts. 

That website was set up on Dec. 15, 2022, registered with and hosted by godaddy.com and developed using the WIX development platform.  

The Ahkras campaign used the same platform and hosting service to set up their website on the same day. Those “coincidences” were too much for some in the community. 

“I've been in politics for over ten years and when I saw what happened with this bogus website, it strikes me as being political in nature,” Noel Manley, who is assisting Catton’s campaign, told DuPage Policy Journal prior to McCollum's admission. 

“Coincidence, perhaps, but I don't check my common sense at the door when you have when one of the candidates' websites being launched within hours on the same day is the bogus website. There [are] some red flags. Adding to that, both are on the same hosting website. Both were developed with the same development tool since perhaps, but I don't check my commonsense at the door.”

McCollum the ‘Masktivist’

 McCollum is no stranger to the DuPage Policy Journal. In 2020 McCollum was outed for clandestinely taking photos of maskless children from his house Bodin Street home overlooking Dietz Park in Hinsdale and then posting the photos to social media and shaming the children. 

“This is almost every day. If you know their parents shame them,” McCollum said in one post in which he displayed photos of children in his neighborhood. 

Doxing children, as McCollum asked others to do at the time, has been decried as a tactic of the far left and is increasing in its use to harass others. While it is legal to post photos of neighborhood children online, such behavior is certainly frowned upon and can quickly spiral out of control. In addition, the World Health Organization by that time had noted masks are completely ineffective and can be harmful when exercising.

Sean Casten himself was an advocate of indefinite masking in schools despite an early 2022 ruling by a state court noting the practice’s unconstitutionality after which Gov. J.B. Pritzker begrudgingly announced the end of mandatory masking. 

“The only sound policy is to keep mask requirements in place while COVID is still prevalent,” Casten said in a Feb. 20 op-ed, seemingly oblivious to the constitutional defects in mandatory masking.

More recently a Cochrane Review was released noting the ineffectiveness of masking and the genesis of mandatory masking in activist ranks of the left. 

The review’s lead author Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor at the University of Oxford, told Maryanne Demasi after a review of 78 studies involving 610,872 participants the team came to a determination on masking. 

“There is just no evidence that (masks) make any difference. Full stop. My job, our job as a review team, was to look at the evidence, we have done that. Not just for masks. We looked at hand washing, sterilization, goggles etcetera…” Jefferson told Maryanne Demasi. 

Jefferson added that the fervor for mandatory masking began with leftist activists in positions of power, such as the Casten political circle. 

“When academics and politicians started jumping up and down about masks. We call them ‘strident campaigners.’ They are activists, not scientists,” Jefferson said.

Casten seeks broader involvement in schools 

The push for leftist involvement in school board races seems to center on the Casten’s involvement. 

This election cycle Casten’s wife Kara Casten is running for Community High School District 99 school board where parents have been outspoken on a number of hot-button issues including animated pornography in school libraries and reading lists, Covid protocols - including mandatory masking in many schools for nearly two years - and declining academic performance. 

Kara Casten has promised to support continued instruction in controversial political ideologies, including Marxist "Critical Race Theory" (CRT) and transgenderism, which holds there is no such thing as biological sex, for students at Downers Grove North and Downers Grove South high schools.

Flags were also raised when the wife of a CUSD99 slatemate of Kara Casten’s was hired by the district on a contract basis.