History? Maybe not

I know some people are giving the spin that Tuesday will be a historic day for Chicago. What with all that first black woman as mayor jazz, and some even stoked up by the possibility of Lori Lightfoot’s orientation being another “first.”

Will polling places be anywhere near this packed on Tuesday?

But what does it say that the first phase of this year’s election cycle was dreadful, and the evidence exists that Tuesday will give us equally pathetic results?

I’M TALKING ABOUT the voter turnout – which back in February reached only 34 percent (only 1 percent higher than the all-time record-low turnout for a mayoral election in Chicago – back in 2007).

Guess what? The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners says that the number of people who have turned out to cast their ballots early for the city municipal elections is low.

So low that we’re not likely to match the voter totals from Feb. 26. Seriously, just under 110,000 votes have already been cast for Tuesday – compared to the 125,000 who voted early before the first part of this year’s election cycle.

Basically, unless we have some record-setting voter turnout of people who actually wait until Election Day proper to cast their ballots, what we’re going to get is a pathetic voter total.

NOT EXACTLY WHAT you’d expect to see for a moment of Chicago history – an event that people will want to think was a significant shift in the way things were done in the Second City.

So this is what 'history' feels like?

More like just the beginning of a four-year period in which many of us are going to gripe about the way things are done here, because – after all – that’s what happens when people don’t bother to vote.

Their views tend to get ignored, and they think it’s their “right” as an American to gripe and grouse about it. Rather than do something to actually express their attitudes that impact the election’s outcome.

Of course, what is particularly appalling about all of this talk of pathetic voter turnout is that it falls into the political strategies of the candidates themselves. Rather than try to win over voters, they’re counting on it to be pathetic.

Will Preckwinkle need to update her headshot?

TONI PRECKWINKLE, IN particular, talks openly about how poor she expects voter turnout to be for Tuesday.

Which means her focus is going to be on getting the “right” people to show up at the polling places. As in the kinds of people who are inclined to view her as the “good government” Preckwinkle and not the “political hack” Preckwinkle that is the image that has arisen about Toni in recent months.

Preckwinkle does have the endorsements of people like Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and the unions for school teachers and some municipal government employees.

Get those kinds of people to turn out en masse while the masses feel a sense of apathy toward this mayoral election – and, who’s to say. Tuesday could turn out to be an Election Night victory for the Preckwinkle campaign.

BASICALLY, IT COULD turn out to be similar to the Feb. 26 election for aldermen when Edward M. Burke of the 14^th Ward managed to get select precincts of voters to cast their votes for him – thereby enabling him to prevail over the strong sentiment of the Latino majority population that Burke’s time has passed.

Can Preckwinkle play hardball electoral politics just like Eddie Burke? Or is there too much of that Hyde Park “goo goo” spirit in her to overcome the strong sentiment amongst some voters who think Lori Lightfoot represents change and reform – and who are more than willing to take it out on Toni the fact that Burke (who faces criminal corruption charges) got himself re-elected last month?

Will you bother to vote?

Who’s to say just what Tuesday’s voter outcome will be. Other than that it likely will reflect the views of a minority of the Chicago electorate, with many other people likely to complain about the results – which came about because they couldn’t be bothered to cast ballots.

Not quite how “history” is supposed to feel when it’s in the making!

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14 more ‘shopping’ days ‘til we narrow down the field for a new Chgo mayor

We’re two weeks away from Election Day, although some people have taken the time to cast their ballots already.

Chicago's next mayor?

Not that it’s all too clear who the people are leaning toward at this point. One of the drawbacks of a 14-candidate field for mayor where “undecided” is leading everybody else is that it’s not all as clear as the polls would have us believe.

THE LATEST POLLS may well show Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and one-time White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley as the top two vote-getters. But they’re not dominant.

There’s always the chance that the “margin for error” factor that is inherent in polls is undercutting someone else to the point where they may wind up being amongst the top two candidates once the votes are actually counted. The very reason why the old cliché about the “only poll that matters is the one on Election Day” is ever so true.

There’s also the confusion of the early voting process that theoretically gives somebody a chance to have a head start on building their base for Election Day.

But until Monday, all early voting took place at the downtown offices of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Anybody who wanted to cast their vote already had to take a trip downtown – and I’m not sure how many people are that politically motivated.

ACTUALLY I DO know. It’s 1,762.

The so-called 'frontrunners' … 

That’s the number of people who went to the early voting center during the past couple of weeks. That figure is bound to get a significant boost in the next few days, as now is the point in which an early voting center will open up in each of the city’s 50 wards.

But it may also be a time period in which confusion reigns. As in one in which the lack of a clear front-runner will make people inclined to wait until the last minute before deciding just who it is they’d like to see become the successor to Rahm Emanuel as mayor.

Why rush into things, many may think? They may wind up voting for a ‘loser’!

… for a spot in April 2 run-off

AND BY LOSER, I don’t mean someone who didn’t get the most votes. I mean someone who may later turn out to be totally incompetent for the mayoral post.

What I personally am trying to figure out is just how much of the ‘undecided’ vote will remain undecided enough to not bother casting a ballot.

I don’t doubt municipally-minded voters will believe this is an excessively important office for which to cast a ballot. But I also wonder how many people will come to the conclusion that none of the 14 are worthy of their vote.

How many are going to feel contempt for the concept of having to vote for the least-inept mayoral candidate available? How many will decide it’s just not worth their time or effort to show up – either at an early voting center or at their polling place come Feb. 26?

IN WHICH CASE, it may wind up being that all 14 candidates will get a slight boost in the poll percentages that show them all basically piled up on top of each other in terms of voter support.

How loud will Enyia scream IF she falls short?

It means that the Feb. 26 election is likely to produce a result with some two-thirds of Chicagoans casting votes for someone other than the two who qualify for an April 2 run-off.

Which means the ultimate factor in deciding who will become Chicago’s next mayor may wind up being the candidate whom somebody could support as their compromise pick, if their preferred candidate can’t get enough voter support.

This may well be the election cycle where being second-best in the minds of voters two weeks from now will have the end result of being the person who gets to take the oath of office come May.

  -30-

Does anyone have nerve to challenge election outcome based on early voting?

According to the letter of the law, people should have been able to cast their ballots for the upcoming mayoral election as far back as Jan. 17.

Voting starts Tuesday for mayoral election

We should have had some 12 days worth of votes being cast by people who just can’t wait until Feb. 26 proper for Election Day and to make a trip to their polling places.

INSTEAD, THE EARLY voting process begins Tuesday. Anybody who is so eager to cast a vote for mayor for the 2019 election cycle can make the trip downtown to the Board of Election Commissioners offices on Washington Street.

As for people who want the convenience of casting their votes for the municipal elections at a facility in or near their neighborhoods, those places will open to the public as of Feb. 11.

Which creates the potential problem in that state laws that permit the concept of voting in advance of the election say there should be 40 days worth of time prior to Election Day for the process to be valid.

Would it be possible that someone would dare try to challenge the election results based on the idea that the process for early voting wasn’t adhered to? Would somebody out there have the nerve to try to have election results tossed out because of a nitpicking attitude toward process?

I COULD SEE such a thing happening; particularly by a “sore loser” type of person who had supported one of the mayoral candidates who had only got 1 or 2 percent voter support.

If Chicago won’t pick their preference, they’ll fight to gum up the works so that we get nobody. Which is a whiny, loser-type attitude. But I could see someone trying to justify it as merely being politics.

The reality is that there was no way the 40-day standard could have been adhered to; what with the fact that there once were some 21 people who had nominating petitions filed on their behalf so they could be on the ballot for mayor.

The appeals process managed to winnow some seven of them off the ballot – most prominently Cook County clerk of court Dorothy Brown, whom Elections Board officials concluded didn’t have enough valid signatures of support to be worthy of a ballot slot.

ALTHOUGH TO BE honest, her own legal predicament (Alderman Edward M. Burke isn’t the only political person who has federal investigators looking into their affairs) would have doomed any mayoral bid of hers to failure.

But that winnowing process took time. It has only been in the past week that the mayoral ballot has become settled. Unless someone is capable of a successful legal challenge in the courts to get restored.

Which would be a complete headache for political people – one that just about everybody involved in the process is hoping has no chance of becoming a reality.

So the situation now is that we have some 14 people running for mayor, and various polls show that none of them have overwhelmingly strong voter support.

WE’RE LIKELY TO get an election at February’s end in which two candidates, each of whom manage to get about 20 percent voter support, face each other in the April 2 run-off. Which would mean about 60 percent of the electorate is going to be peeved because they wanted somebody else.

People of a petty nature are most likely to get p-o’ed enough to want to try some sort of ridiculous scheme to throw the election process out of whack. A desperation move perfect for someone who’s more interested in causing calamity, rather than seeing the city elect a replacement to serve as mayor for the soon-to-be retiring (at least as far as municipal government is concerned) Rahm Emanuel.

So it wouldn’t shock me in the least to see someone try something as absurd as this.

Election ’19 has been ridiculous enough. Seeing the city have to justify in a courtroom why it couldn’t follow the letter of the law in conducting the election would be a fitting end – although I doubt there’s a judge alive who’d want to go into the city history books as the guy who tried to overturn an electoral outcome.

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Is there really room on ballot for mayoral term limits referendum?

I can’t help but wondering who with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners is going to wind up being punished politically for giving aid and comfort to the notion that a referendum question about term limits for the mayor may have some legal merit.

Somebody gave thought to what was right; how dare they!

That question, along with one whether a position of Chicago city consumer advocate ought to be created, are the latest initiatives by Pat Quinn – the former governor who is trying to remain politically active as a man inclined to throw a wrench into the political works.

THUS FAR, THE courts have ruled in ways that say the measures are not valid – saying there already are too many referendum questions on the ballot for Nov. 6 AND that Quinn screwed up in the way he filed the referendum questions.

But as the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Sunday, elections board officials went ahead and had ballots printed up WITH the referendum questions on them. Also, voting machines used in polling places in Chicago will include the issues so people can cast their “yes” or “no” votes.

Officials say they went ahead and did so because they wondered if an appeals court of some form will come up with a ruling making the referendum questions legitimate.

If elections board officials had not shown the initiative to put the issues on the ballot, it would be possible for a court to say they were legitimate questions that could not be on the ballot because there wasn’t enough time to reconfigure everything to include them.

WHICH IS EXACTLY the kind of political chaos that people opposed to including the referendum questions on the ballot would like to see happen.

Just like the intent of the Chicago City Council to come up with three other referendum questions for consideration wasn’t so much because anybody in city government cares about the use of plastic straws in restaurants (an environmental threat), but so as to screw up the intent of anyone who’d want to use a referendum question to measure public support for a concept.

Such as whether or not people should be limited to two terms (of four years apiece) in the office of Chicago mayor.

Emanuel's choice makes term limits issue a moot point, … 

Nobody in a position of political authority really wants anybody messing around with that issue. Out of fear that voters might give a knee-jerk response and say “yes” to the idea. Which would then put political people in a real predicament.

SO IF YOU are of the perspective of the “goo goo” (the good government activist who has some sort of high-minded noble concept of what government ought to be all about), you are probably very pleased with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

Because somebody there thought it important enough for votes to be recorded so as to put the issue on the record, even if nothing is done with the vote tallies – an attitude the political hacks of the world most definitely want nothing to do with.

As for the “hacks,” I suspect their priority now will be to ensure that those votes are NEVER counted, or disclosed in any way.

Which if it turns out that the courts continue to say the referendum questions are invalid, is exactly what will happen.

THERE WILL BE no reason to count the votes that people cast on these particular referendum questions. In fact, they will become the ultimate non-issue of the Nov. 6 election cycle.

… but Quinn likely to pursue regardless

In fact, I’m sure there will be some activist types who will start making demands that those votes be counted regardless, and that the vote tallies be publicly disclosed. Something I’m sure the “hacks” will consider to be an act of political heresy

How dare you tell people that maybe a majority of people who bothered to cast ballots would want to limit the stint one can serve as mayor – similar to how we limit the time of anyone as U.S. president! As though the will of the public serves any point in an election.

What next? We’ll probably start hearing from people who say we’ve had too many “Daleys” serve as Chicago mayor. Sorry Bill!

  -30-

Are we being teased by all these early ballots being cast in upcoming election?

With the exception of Monday’s snowfall, the weather this week has been fairly mild – which could make it less unpleasant for people to actually go out and cast ballots for the upcoming municipal elections.

That may account for the fact that the early voting centers open this week in Chicago have seen significant numbers of people show up.

THE CHICAGO BOARD of Elections indicated that through Thursday, there had been 44,291 people who had showed up to vote – more than the 21,557 people who cast ballots in the first four days of early voting prior to the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

Now I know some are going to point out that the early voting for that February election wound up being higher than any other early voting for city government posts – so it must be a sign that there is intense interest in the upcoming mayoral election.

Which I’d like to believe, but I’m not sure I do.

The fact I remember is that most of the early voting for those elections came in the final days of the two-week period in which people could cast ballots prior to Election Day. So being ahead of the pace for now isn’t that difficult.

THERE ALSO IS the fact that in the November 2014 elections for state and county government posts, there were a high number of early voters who participated.

Yet let’s point out that the overall percentage of people who voted for governor and the other posts last year wasn’t all that high. And the total number of people who bothered to cast ballots for mayor back in February stunk – it came within a few hundredths of a percent of being the lowest mayoral voter turnout ever.

What we’re seeing are the hard-core types who – for whatever reason – are capable of taking a day off during the week, and include a trip to the polling place amongst their daily errands.

These are the people who have that Rahm “hatred” that is getting them all worked up so they feel the fire in their bellies to partake in this political crusade – which has the potential to disappoint them come April 8 when they realize that perhaps the bulk of Chicago doesn’t care.

NEARLY TWO-THIRDS OF registered voters didn’t bother to vote back in February. It may turn out that the overall percentage of voters who bother to vote come 10 days from now won’t be any higher.

Which is a shame, since I really think people ought to express themselves politically – it is their government and they have every right to let it be known what they want, and expect.

It is this kind of apathy that ultimately makes political people think they can do what it is they want, without having to pay much regard to “We, the People” (remember that blasted U.S. constitution?), for whom the political people supposedly work for.

It also is the reason why I bothered to take the time Friday to get my “I voted!” sticker, which means I cast my actual ballot.

IN MY PARTICULAR part of the Chicago area, the elections aren’t that thrilling. Most of the votes I cast were for unopposed candidates. There were a couple of picks, but I was able to work my way through the whole ballot in a matter of a few minutes!

In fact, it took more time for the election judge to find my name in the voter rolls and program the card so I could use a touch-screen to cast my ballot than it did to actually vote.

Although the sun was shining and it wasn’t extremely freezing outside. Because I went in mid-day, there was no line. I was able to walk right up, cast my vote, then go back home within minutes.

Thereby reclaiming my Constitutionally-given right to complain about my elected officials and their actions; which are, after all, known to many political operatives as, “the People’s business.”

  -30-

Why should we bother to vote if there isn’t much (if any) of a choice?

I have written many a commentary at this weblog whose purpose was to tell people to get up off their bulbous buttocks and show up on Election Day to cast a ballot.

Yet I have to admit that the political people who offer themselves up as our choices for electoral office often give us little reason to want to vote for them. In many cases, they give us absolutely no choice to the point where casting a vote seems like a waste of time.

A CONCEPT THAT I find to be abhorrent, because I really do believe that casting a vote is a civic duty and that people who can’t be bothered to vote deserve to be ignored by their government officials.

Many of those officials are going to do that regardless. But should we really give them the reason that justifies their inaction in their own minds?

Part of what has me thinking about this “to vote, or not to vote” issue is the fact that early voting for the April 7 run-off elections in Chicago and the actual municipal elections out in the suburbs begins Monday.

Next week and the week after will be when the city Board of Elections and the Cook County clerk’s office will maintain the early voting centers for those people who don’t want to wait until the actual Election Day to cast their ballots.

RECENT ELECTION CYCLES show that many people who care enough about an election actually use them. It may well be that the actual voter turnout on April 7 will be ridiculously low.

I suspect that many of the 66 percent of registered voters in Chicago who didn’t bother to cast a ballot back on the Feb. 24 municipal election date still won’t be motivated to act.

All I know is that if Rahm Emanuel gets re-elected mayor with a City Council consisting of a majority of sympathetic aldermen, there is bound to be some sort of clown who argues that the current mayor has a “mandate” to pursue his policies.

That’s nuts!

IT JUST MEANS that apathy prevails because people didn’t feel the opposition was vocal enough to justify much of a vote against the establishment. It doesn’t mean we love Rahm by any means. If Jesus Garcia can’t fully take advantage of that, then he doesn’t deserve a mayoral win by default.

There are also the suburbs, where the county clerk’s office issued a statement this week pointing out that 63 percent of the positions up for election in the suburbs have candidates running unopposed. That includes nine of 19 suburban mayors/village presidents.

Although in many cases, it should be noted that the suburban mayors were up for re-election in 2013 along with a portion of their city councils/village boards. This election is mostly for the remaining portions of aldermen/trustees.

Meaning you really have to be a political junkie of a respective municipality in order to get all worked up over who is running. I suspect many suburban residents won’t be.

THIS GOT REINFORCED in my mind last week when I got a long-overdue haircut and found out that the woman who cuts my hair (she conveniently works about one block from where I live) also is the regular hairstylist for a municipal candidate in my area.

She told me stories about how she had been cutting his hair since he was 7 years old (he’s now 30) and knew him very well, yet doubted she would be voting for him on Election Day.

“All I want to do is cut hair,” she told me, explaining she had never bothered to vote in her life and didn’t feel any need to start doing so now. The part of me who writes these commentaries here could come up with many theoretical reasons why she ought to be concerned.

Yet I have to admit her attitude probably is prevalent in our society because way too many of these candidates can’t give us a legitimate reason why we ought to support them. They ought to have to earn our support, rather than thinking they’re entitled to it!

  -30-

EXTRA: Electoral unpredictability; or looking to place political blame?

I found it intriguing Tuesday night to hear the allegations of how Republican operatives arranged for a batch of “robo-calls” to would-be polling place workers to cause enough confusion that many of those election judges didn’t show up at their posts on Election Day.

The end result was several polling places that opened late, confusion reigned, and some of those places remained open until as late as 9 p.m. to try to accommodate voters.

LANGDON NEAL OF the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners called the activity “malicious,” and said he suspects it was the Chicago and Cook County Republican parties that were responsible for such activity.

Although WTTW-TV reported that officials with both of those GOP organizations denied doing any such thing, in large part because they don’t have the kind of money it would take to successfully pull off such a scam.

Considering that local Republicans couldn’t even find token candidates to run for Cook County government posts (guess what, Tom Dart was re-elected sheriff with ease), they may be right on their inability to do something so sinister.

What it really comes down to is that this is another potential ground for someone to claim after the fact that they were cheated out of an election. Just as GOP operatives have been whining about machines in the voter booths that were improperly recording votes meant for Republican candidates as going for the Democratic challengers.

WHY WORRY ABOUT actually turning out the vote when you can accuse the opposition of cheating you out of what you think you’re entitled to!

What should we think of the election results, which are far from settled for governor as of when this is being written?

Especially in the early stages, the numbers that roll in don’t mean much.

Consider that with 1 percent of precincts’ votes counted, Republican Bruce Rauner led Gov. Pat Quinn 62 percent to 36 percent. But by the time another 1 percent was counted, the tally shifted to 58 percent for Quinn to 40 percent for Rauner.

QUINN SEEMS TO be holding a slight lead through the early stages, but this is a tally that could easily shift in the wee hours of Wednesday. We’ll have to wait and see.

In the campaign for U.S. Senate, the results were more predictable. Within the first half hour after most polling places were closed, news media organizations rushed to try to be the first to say that Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., had defeated Republican challenger James Oberweis.

They were basing that on exit polls, not actual vote tallies.

As evidenced by WGN-TV, which at 7:37 p.m. reported that Durbin won – even though their tallies showed that with 1 percent of the vote counted, Oberweis was leading Durbin 53 percent to 44 percent.

FOR HIS PART, Oberweis conceded defeat publicly at about 8:30 p.m., although he made sure to point out that it appeared Republicans would wind up with a majority overall in the U.S. Senate.

“For that, I’m very grateful,” Oberweis told those who gathered at one of his family’s dairy operations in suburban Glen Ellyn, while adding he plans to focus back on Springfield, where he still has two years remaining on his term as senator from suburban Sugar Grove.

I have to admit to getting a kick out of Oberweis’ Election Night tie – depicting an ice cream cone. His dairy does make some good ice cream.

But I have to confess to a groan upon hearing political pundit and Roosevelt University political science professor Paul Green speculate on WGN-TV about how Oberweis might challenge Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., in the 2016 Republican primary – saying, “He might throw his cone in on that one.”

  -30-

EXTRA: Quinn digs into political past

Gov. Pat Quinn made a batch of political appointments late Friday with the desire to maintain the status quo. But he may have dug into some dirt that could resurrect decades-old spats.

ZOLLAR: Back in her days of political relevance

The Illinois Gaming Board will continue to be run by Aaron Jaffe and Michael Holewinski – who will remain as chairman and vice-chair. Meanwhile, Shirley Madigan (the spouse of Illinois House Speaker Michael and mother of state Attorney General Lisa) will still be in charge of the Illinois Arts Council.

BUT THE GOVERNOR dug into the political past by a couple of decades in picking a new trustee for Chicago State University.

The vacant seat on the board of trustees for the very urban college on 95^th Street and King Drive will go to Nikki Zollar. She currently is president and CEO of Triad Custodial Services and president of SafeSpeed LLC.

But she has her political ties too. Under then-Gov. Jim Edgar, she was director of the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation. And before that, she was appointed back in the days of Mayor Harold Washington to be chairwoman of the city’s Board of Election Commissioners.

It was in those days that Zollar got her moment of political “fame,” although I have to confess to needing to look through the old newspaper clippings from the late 1980s because the specifics of how she got “dumped” on had slipped my mind.



Nikki Zollar's past ...

IT WAS LARGELY the internal squawking of board members who wanted to create alliances to ensure that they would always prevail. It was a load of petty politicking.

The end result of which was that Zollar became the target of an effort in which the election board’s chairman had much of its authority – including the authority to hire, fire, promote or transfer people – taken away from her.

... and future (possibly) ...

At the time, it was described as an effort by the enemies of then-4^th Ward Alderman Timothy Evans (now the Cook County Circuit Court chief judge) to take power away from anyone who might become an Evans ally (back in the days when Evans desired to be mayor himself). And yes, many of those “enemies” were people aligned with the then-new mayor, Richard M. Daley.

... political allies

All this happened in 1989, and Zollar didn’t exactly make any friends for herself with her actions in the 1990 election cycle; she threw her lot in with the Republicans! She backed GOP candidate Edgar and helped shift just enough of the African-American vote away from Democratic challenger Neil Hartigan that Edgar won.

EDGAR GAVE HER the reward of being director of one of the lesser state agencies. But after he departed the political scene 15 years ago, she hasn’t been anything in government since.

Until now, with Quinn being willing to turn to Zollar for a college trustee’s post. A comeback?

Or is this going to stir up a whole lot of memories that, until now, had receded into the past. The establishment Dems who didn’t want her having any authority because she might be opposed to Richard M., and the black pols who can’t comprehend her willingness to work with Republicans.

The squabbles that could arise – especially from the overly-politicized Chicago State U. board. It’s got all the potential to be ugly because Chicago political people have a knack of being able to hold a grudge; they don't forget who they hate -- even if they can't quite remember why they're displeased with the person to begin with!

  -30-

EXTRA: Oh, be quiet!

EMANUEL: He's in!

On the day before Christmas, Rahm Emanuel got the present of learning from the Board of Election Commissioners that he is an official candidate for mayor of Chicago in next year’s elections. Just a few hours later, opponent James Meeks made it known to the board that he was out.

Yet Meeks, the minister who presides over a significant South Side congregation and is following the Jason Plummer School of Politics when it comes to disclosing his income, seems to think he still has a say-so in terms of who replaces Richard M. Daley.

MEEKS, ALSO A state senator from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs, said he isn’t endorsing anyone. Yet he expects all the other African-American candidates to submit to a caucus of clergy, political people and black residents that will pick a single black candidate to run against Emanuel, Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle and all the other mayoral hopefuls.

Excuse me, but didn’t we just go through a process by which African-American religious and political people tried to anoint someone from among their ranks as the official black candidate for the Chicago mayoral campaign?

That process already rejected Meeks, and now that it seems his appeal is limited solely to the African-American population of the South Side, he has the nerve to think everybody has to submit to him so he can “pick” the new mayor?

With that kind of talk, Meeks is more delusional than those Chicago Cubs fans who think their favorite ballclub is a contender every season. This talk is more ridiculous than his statements that only black people should be considered as “minorities” when it comes to government hiring and contracts.

I HOPE REP. Danny Davis, D-Ill. (the mayoral hopeful who WAS chosen as the preferred black candidate) and former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun stick by their guns and don’t drop out. Heck, I hope that William “Dock” Walls stands firm and tells the reverend from Roseland where to shove it.

The sad aspect about this whole issue is that there is legitimacy to the idea of increased African-American political empowerment. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with wanting to work toward electing a black person as mayor of Chicago.

MEEKS: He's out!



It’s just too bad that the political people who were working toward this goal seem too inept when it comes to trying to build up a coalition of support behind a single candidate.

If the Chicago mayoral election of Feb. 22 turns into a runoff election on April 5 between Emanuel and former Chicago Public Schools executive Gery Chico, I’m sure that Meeks will claim some sort of racial wrongdoing has taken place. It’s just too bad that his first act in terms of trying to figure out why black candidates didn’t do better wasn’t to look in the mirror.

  -30-

We ought to be embarrassed, but we’re not. Election Bd hears nonsense galore

EMANUEL: Checking out his crawl space

Be honest. The last time a crawl space got this much attention on the Chicago news scene was some 30-plus years ago and bodies of young men and boys were being found underneath John Gacy’s house.

Nobody found nothing nearly as dramatic in the special crawl space that is part of the house that mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel hopes to move back into someday.

BUT IT WOUND up becoming part of the evidence offered up by people interested in showing that, yes, Emanuel did have some sentiment toward returning to Chicago and resuming his life here – he never even took several belongings with him to Washington.

He didn’t even get them off his property. They sat there locked away, although the couple that is renting the Emanuel residence and is supportive of the people who would like to bump Rahm from the ballot had tried arguing that they couldn’t find any Emanuel belongings in the basement.

I must admit to getting a kick out of the photograph the Chicago Sun-Times came up with of the crawl space – a whole lot of cardboard boxes and sealed plastic cases filled with various books and papers.

One item, in particular, caught my attention – a newsbox. Sure enough, Emanuel has a coin-operated box of the type that sits on many street corners and people dump a couple of quarters into in order to get a copy of the newspaper.

DOES THIS MEAN that Rahm secretly is one of these people who, when he appears on a newspaper’s front page in a prominent fashion, sticks a copy of that paper into the window of the newsbox so that he can “see” himself, looking all important/intelligent/sophisticated/etc.?

I’m going to remember that image the next time I hear Emanuel rant/rage/complain about the way he was covered by the news media on any particular issue.

It definitely goes further than those political people I have seen throughout the years who include in their offices the occasional newspaper front page in a mat and frame that gives big play to one of their Election Day victories, or some government achievement for which they can take significant credit.

So yes, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners is expected to issue some sort of ruling during the coming week, after having to sit through three days worth of questioning, much of which involved Emanuel himself having to dignify people whom I can envision him now plotting to crush – for the attempts at humiliation they tried to put him through.

IF ANYTHING, THE week went well for Emanuel because any serious legal points about the technicalities of residency that attorney Burton Odelson tried bringing up got lost in the mess from all the other objectors – including the people who tried to imply some sort of connection between Emanuel and the deaths of religious radicals at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas in 1993 (you remember, the ones that Timothy McVeigh claimed he was avenging when he blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City two years later?).

The overall impression given by the week’s activity is that the objections to Emanuel’s ballot status are coming from people who have political axes to grind, may have personal biases, or may just be a little nuts.

I noted the moment when one of Emanuel’s opponents asked him if he were an Israeli citizen or had ever served in Israel’s military.

That question didn’t shock me because I remember the people who asked it back in 2002 when Emanuel first ran for Congress. Some of the Polish Catholic types who wanted their ethnic sister, Nancy Kaszak, to advance to Washington tried making that very same charge.

ALL IT MEANS is that we shouldn’t be surprised to see some streams of anti-Semitism work their way into this campaign too. I’m mostly glad that people are recognizing such rhetoric for the nonsense-talk that it is, and are disregarding it.

Personally, I found this week’s set of hearings embarrassing because they gave the crackpots of our society too much of a forum to rant. They got legitimized, and I couldn’t help but notice how eager Fox News Channel at times was to try to dignify these people as somehow having a clue as to what is going on in life, because it would have meant many more indirect shots at President Barack Obama.

Fox was definitely eager to believe the claims of the family renting out the Emanuel home (the one we learned would have been willing to move out had Rahm paid them off with $100,000) that there was no stash of boxes.

Of course, those boxes turned out to be exactly where Emanuel said they would be. It truly gives our city’s public image a jolt of “pride” to see much official investigatory time and effort put into finding a stash of boxes that wound up including, among other things, the wedding dress worn by Emanuel’s wife.

I’D LIKE TO think we can move on beyond this elections board hearing. After all, the final decision about whether Emanuel will be on the Feb. 22 ballot will be made by an appeals court panel – if not the Supreme Court of Illinois itself.

Then, we can move to the next “crucial” date – June 30, 2011. That is the date that Emanuel’s lease in Washington expires, and also that the couple he rented his Ravenswood neighborhood house to has to leave by.

I wonder if they’ll be good and leave quietly, or make a scene and try to leave some sort of reminder about the mess we all have become aware of this past week?

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EXTRA: The candidates, for now

This is the “baker’s dozen-plus seven” list of people who still have delusions of becoming mayor of Chicago following the 2011 municipal elections.

Former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun

Former Public Schools/City Colleges chief Gery Chico

Rep. Danny Davis

Rev. Wilfredo DeJesus

City Clerk Miguel del Valle

Former White House Chief of Staff/Rep., Rahm Emanuel

M. Tricia Lee

Tyrone Carter

Jay Stone

Ryan Graves

Patricia Van Pelt Watkins

Fenton Patterson

Rob Halpin (a.k.a., the tenant who wouldn’t leave)

Rev./state Sen. James Meeks

Sen. (for one more week) Roland Burris

Frederick White

Tommy Hanson

John Hu

William “Dock” Walls

Howard Ray

AND THE REASON why some people want to believe that Tom Dart’s name isn’t on this list.

All I know is it will be interesting to see how aggressively the so-called “major” candidates decide to challenge the candidacies of the lesser-known names. I doubt that Jay “Mr. 280” Stone will be the only person who gets knocked off the list between now and the Feb. 22 election.

For what it’s worth, the first seven names on the list were the people who were on hand when the Chicago Board of Elections offices opened at 9 a.m. Nov. 15 to file their petitions. So they will be eligible for the lottery Dec. 1 to figure out who gets the top spot on the ballot’s laundry list of mayoral hopefuls.

Personally, I’m hoping Lee (whose YouTube video proclaims her to be a Bridgeport native and the quintessential Chicagoan) makes a mess of the well-laid-out strategies of experienced politicos by winning that ballot slot.

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92 days, and counting, until Election Day

To me, the final day of the time period for filing nominating petitions is always more interesting than the first day.

Admittedly, that first day always sees a mad rush of potential candidates or their aides (the would-be politicos wouldn’t want to risk catching a cold) waiting at the Elections Board office when it first opens that Monday morning – all in hopes of getting that first spot on the ballot.

THE DAYS IN between (which this time consisted of all of last week) usually attract the fringe candidates who didn’t get their nominating petitions in order by Monday morning.

So the fact that fringe mayoral candidates Tyrone Carter and Jay Stone filed on Tuesday and Thursday of last week ought to be reason enough to discount their chances (that, and the fact that Stone's petitions didn't even come close to the minimal support required to survive an electoral challenge). Even fringe candidate M. Tricia Lee managed to be ready to file for her spot on the Feb. 22 ballot by first thing Monday morning.

But it is that last day, which this year occurs today, that has the potential for intrigue.

Because there is always a serious candidate who decides to play the game of wanting to have his name appear last on the list of candidates running for a particular office. This year, it is the mayoral bid of Rev./state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, who is trying that gambit.

THE REVEREND COULD make a big splash IF he were to show up just before the Chicago Board of Elections offices were to close, and file his nominating petitions at the last possible second. But what if someone were to get stuck in traffic, and the reverend’s people were to show up just seconds after the office door were locked?

The death of a credible campaign on a fluke? It could happen.

Monday is the final day to file the nominating petitions that let someone run for the right to be the Big Man (or Woman) who walks these halls.



Or what if the reverend’s people show up late in the day and file, only to have someone else manage to slip in at the (literal) last minute to file their own nominating petitions for a ballot slot to run for mayor?

When I look at the list of nine people who as of the weekend had filed their nominating petitions to get on the mayoral ballot, I first notice the absence of the name Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins. She’s the woman who caught my Election Night attention earlier this month by having her radio campaign spots run over and over and over again on WBBM-AM radio, making themselves prominent among all the reports of Mark Kirk’s narrow victory for U.S. Senate, or Pat Quinn’s even closer win for Illinois governor.

I DON’T KNOW definitively what Van Pelt-Watkins is planning to do. Maybe she has given up. Or she may file those petitions and get herself a ballot slot. Could this be a race between the CEO and the pastor to see who can come in last?

And what about that guy who’s living in mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel’s house, is refusing to move out, and a couple of weeks ago tossed out hints that he may run his own campaign for mayor?

If he’s serious about that notion, he has to get those petitions in today – or else he’s as full of hot air as any other political dreamer.

I’m sure some people will be doing a body-watch for him to show up with nominating petitions, although I have to admit to not having too much interest in whether or not he runs.

IF HE DOES manage to get on the ballot, it would be just another fringe candidate on the mayoral ballot. We have enough of those (I’m sorry that I can’t take Stone’s mayoral bid more seriously, because not even his alderman father plans to support him), and I don’t think we need many more.

If there is a real story to that guy’s presence (I’m deliberately not naming him because I don’t want to publicize his ego any more than necessary), it would be to find out who put the idea of a mayoral bid into his head to begin with.

Just as I believe one story we reporter-types should be pursuing related to this mayoral campaign is to find out who is paying the bills that are accumulating related to the attempt to get the courts to knock Emanuel off the ballot on the grounds that he has not (according to the letter of the law) been a Chicago resident for a current-enough period to qualify for a political campaign this election cycle.

Thus far, we have heard about how attorney Burt Odelson and his legal colleague James Nally are handling this particular effort (claiming Emanuel gave up his Chicago residency when he went off to Washington to be President Barack Obama’s chief of staff for 20 months).

PROFESSIONALLY, I RESPECT the legal skills and the work of Odelson – who I have watched for just over two decades. He is an expert at election law, and he is good at getting things done for his clients.

But whose client is he in handling this particular case? I can’t envision he’s taking on this case pro bono just for his own curiosity, although I have heard him identified in recent weeks as being an “adviser” to Meeks’ campaign.

Who is paying the legal expenses for Odelson to work his hardest to knock off Emanuel, and what are the partisan leanings of those particular individuals?

In my mind, I can’t figure if it is just some conservative partisan who dreads the idea of Rahm-bo continuing to be politically relevant (the ideologues would want Emanuel to be unemployed and living on food stamps, so they could then label him a welfare cheat)?

OR ARE WE talking about someone who wants to clear the path for another of the mayoral hopefuls? Does the reverend want Emanuel out of the way so that this becomes the all-African-American political battle?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. I must admit to being more curious about learning those facts, rather than listening to the rhetorical nonsense that we’re going to hear in coming weeks from all the candidates as they try to convince us they deserve the chance to be the person who has to take the blame for being unable to resolve the fiscal mess that confronts city government these days.

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