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Carol Calabresa has been an elected Republican office holder in Illinois for twenty years. From 1984 to 1986, she served as a trustee of Libertyville Township, where she was a founding member of the Libertyville Township Open Space District, the first such district in the state. Her first big conservation achievement came in November 1985, when the Township passed a $23 million referendum to buy open space
In 1986, she was elected to the Lake County Board and the Lake County Forest Preserve Board, a “two-hat” office that she still holds. She served as Forest Preserve president from 1998 to 2000, during which time the District passed two bond referenda for a total of $140 million. The District is still buying land with the funds raised during Carol's tenure, and she is proud of the 25,000 acres that the District has acquired, most of them during her years on the board.
Carol's proven support for land acquisition, tough natural resource conservation ordinances, aggressive restoration activities, protecting flood-prone areas from overdevelopment, etc., are the reasons why she has been endorsed repeatedly for election by the Illinois Sierra Club and the Lake County Conservation Alliance Political Committee.
Community service and politics run in Carol's blood as her father was a county commissioner in Dane County, Wisconsin. She has been a GOP precinct committeewoman since 1990. She holds a B.S. degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She and her husband Bill have three grown children.
Carol attended REP's 2003 Lake Forest, Illinois, reception honoring Congressman Mark Kirk, and our 2004 Clean Air Advocacy workshop in Deerfield. She was a speaker at our May 2004 "Land Conservation for Conservatives" conference in Albuquerque. She was elected to the REP Board of Directors in the summer of 2004; her term runs until 2008.
