Second choice likely to be important in upcoming mayoral campaign

Will April 2 be a runoff between Preckwinkle … 

The 2019 election cycle – the one in which Chicagoans will be asked to pick a new mayor – is truly going to be unique. Because for most would-be voters, it’s going to be more likely that one’s second choice is the one that ultimately will prevail.

The candidate field is now down to 14 people with dreams that they someday will be the one who gets to call themselves “Mr. (or Madame) Mayor.”

… and Mayor Daley III?

WHICH MAKES IT oh so likely that no one will take a majority vote come Feb. 26. It will result in a run-off election between the top two vote getters come April 2.

Heck, a most recent poll by the We Ask America group (and paid for by the Chicago Sun-Times) says no one has more than 13 percent support, and there are several candidates who barely show up at 2 or 3 percent support.

It means that when people go to their polling place at the end of February (or to their early voting center), they’d better have a good idea of a backup candidate. The person they can bring themselves to support even if their fantasy mayoral hopeful winds up being one of the schmoes who finishes too low to qualify for the run-off.

CHICO: Does Gery have momentum?

Which also means the key factor in determining who will prevail may well be which candidates have such intense voter support bases that they’re convinced it has to be their guy (or gal), or nobody at all!

WILL THE KIND of people who want Willie Wilson, the black millionaire, to be mayor (only 9 percent support for a fourth place finish, according to the poll) find the thought of anybody else winning to be so repulsive that they wind up not voting in the April run-off?

WILSON: Will his supporters consider anyone else?

Or go to the other extreme. Are the kind of people who want to envision some law-and-order type candidate who’d cast votes for former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy (3.7 percent for a seventh place finish, the poll says) willing to bother voting at all?

MENDOZA:Can she beat only Toni?

Anything is possible, particularly since there already are a significant number of people who haven’t made up their minds yet who to cast a ballot for.

Literally, the poll shows just over one-quarter of potential voters don’t know yet who they’ll vote for. And they are going to decide the outcome. Because right now, it’s really too close to call.

THIS WE ASK America poll has a 3.88 percent margin of error – with the Toni Preckwinkle and Bill Daley campaigns on top, but with only a 0.6 percent difference between them.

And Gery Chico, along with Wilson, also fall within that margin of error compared to Preckwinkle.

Meaning we essentially have a four-way tie for the top slot, with Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s mayoral bid being only slightly behind.

The same poll went so far as to say that if a run-off somehow comes down to a Preckwinkle/Mendoza brawl (the one that many political geeks deep down are hoping for), it becomes a Mendoza “victory.

BUT THE LONG-SHOT could be if Mendoza even finishes first or second come Feb. 26.

LIGHTFOOT: Lingering near the bottom

My original guess was that all the infighting that is now taking place will result in candidates knocking each other out of the running – and that we could wind up with a third incarnation of “Mayor Daley” in charge of Chicago municipal government.

Even though Chico, at 9.3 percent and third place, is going around spewing thoughts that he has the momentum that will see him be the guy who ultimately prevails.

Then, there’s Lori Lightfoot, the former Assistant U.S. Attorney and head of the Chicago Police Board, who has tried to claim her candidacy deserves respect because she got in the running way back before Rahm Emanuel decided not to try for re-election. Lightfoot is ninth, with 2.8 percent voter support – which is better than the 0.9 percent support that former Alderman Robert Fioretti is drawing these days.

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