WTHI-TV, Mike Conway, reporter/photographer
Illinois Secretary of State Jim Edgar makes a campaign stop at the Republican Pole Raising Event in Melrose Twp. near Marshall in Clark County.
Al Warns of the Clark Co. Central Committee says pole raising was a historic campaign event in which the Republicans and Democrats competed to see how tall of a pole affixed with campaign signs they could raise. Warns says the story goes that the Republicans always won so the Democrats stopped showing up. The tradition was renewed as just a Republican event.