With municipal elections being held on April 1, Illinois Wesleyan’s Center for Engaged Learning is holding a student-led mayoral candidate panel in conjunction with IWU Student Senate, featuring all three candidates running in the town of Bloomington.
The event will be held in Hansen Student Center on Sunday, March 2nd, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Refreshments of coffee and hot chocolate will be available.
The candidates running for Bloomington mayor are Mboka Mwilambwe, Cody Hendricks and Dan Brady.
Mboka Mwilambwe is running for his second term as Bloomington Mayor. Mwilambwe was first appointed to the City Council in March 2011 to serve out the term of the previous City Council Member for Ward 3. He was then officially elected to the position in April of 2013. After a successful campaign, Mwilambwe was elected as Mayor in April of 2021.
Cody Hendricks is currently a Ward 6 City Council member. He was elected to the position in April of 2023. Hendricks is a former Pekin City Council member, where he served from 2011-2015 after being elected in his senior year of high school. He attended Eureka College while on the Pekin City Council, earning a degree in Political Science, History and Secondary Education. He has lived in Bloomington since 2016.
Dan Brady is running with extensive legislation experience. At the local level, he was McLean County Coroner from 1992 to 2000. He was an Illinois State Representative from 2001-2013. Brady’s previous campaigns include running for Illinois House of Representatives in 2020 and Illinois Secretary of State in 2022, both of which he was unsuccessful in.
The candidates will be answering the following questions during the panel:
- What are your top three goals as Mayor of Bloomington?
- How will your goals for Bloomington affect IWU’s campus and its students?
Students are also invited to submit as many questions to each candidate as they would like. Posters with a QR code to submit these questions anonymously are posted around campus and will be posted on Student Senate’s and the Center for Engaged Learning’s Instagram pages. People can also find the link to the google form on the Center for Engaged Learning’s website.
For more information or any additional questions about the panel, contact cpavlice@iwu.edu or gowens@iwu.edu.
For questions about voting, refer to https://www.iwu.edu/action/vote.html or contact Deborah Halperinat dhalperi@iwu.edu.