Quinn picking Vallas not really a shock

I’ll confess to being surprised when I heard Friday morning that it was the name “Paul Vallas” that would wind up appearing on the ballot for Democratic lieutenant governor nominee in next year’s state election cycle.

VALLAS: A political comeback?

Not that I should have been. Vallas, the one-time head of the Chicago Public Schools, has always been good for tossing out hints he’d like to be part of the local political system – even though he’s never held electoral office and was the guy who got beat by Rod Blagojevich back in the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

SO THE IDEA that Vallas would be willing to move back to metro Chicago (he’s a native of suburban Crestwood, and still has family living in the area) isn’t odd.

There’s also the fact that Quinn doesn’t seem capable of getting any conventional choices to run along with him come 2014.

The BIG names that have been tossed about are state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, and city Treasurer Stephanie Neely – both of whom have said they’re not interested. The general theory amongst political observers was that Quinn would want a black person paired up with him to appeal to the city’s and south suburban significant African-American vote.

But it honestly would not surprise me to learn that NOBODY of any significance currently in the city’s political structure wanted to be paired up with Quinn.

NOT SO MUCH because nobody wants their name associated too closely with Quinn. But because the post itself is one with no real duties – other than what Quinn wants done with it.

And it is the post that has a small circle of people who are outspoken in their belief that it should be abolished – just let the state attorney general be promoted to governor in the event that succession is needed!

QUINN: Does mid-90s CPS glory bolster gov?

So Quinn was going to have to come up with a politically oddball choice. Vallas probably is amongst the most conventional oddball he could possibly find.

What should we think?

I’M SURE SOME people are going to try to attack Vallas (and Quinn, by association) on the grounds that he doesn’t live in Illinois any longer. State law does say a candidate for statewide office must have lived in the state at least three years prior to the election in question.

And Vallas has made a national name for himself for the number of public school districts he has tried to reform – including Philadelphia and New Orleans, but most recently Bridgeport, Conn. Although that school board is loaded with people who are looking for excuses to dump him.

Which may mean Vallas is soon unemployed – and in need of a new job. Lieutenant governor, anyone?

The critics in Illinois will bash Vallas’ residency by claiming he doesn’t live here anymore. But it seems he never gave up his voter registration (and he does still have family living in the area).

HE ACTUALLY CAST ballots in the last two election cycles, as he kept a voter registration in suburban Palos Heights. Which won’t be enough to appease the ideologues. It makes me wonder if they’re already trying to hire election law expert Burt Odelson to represent their case in court. Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner is already saying Quinn is “running scared” by picking Paul.

But just as Odelson’s legal battle against Mayor Rahm Emanuel ultimately failed because the election residency laws are not as firm as some want to think, it may turn out to be the same for Vallas.

He gets to stay an Illinois resident for political purposes because he never gave up his registration. Now if someone could show he also was voting in other states’ elections, it would be a different issue. But I haven’t heard anyone make that allegation.

Although the Capitol Fax newsletter reported that Illinois State Board of Elections officials were saying the change in law that makes governors pick a running mate prior to the primary means everything may change. “There’s no way to determine an outcome of a scenario” like that, board Chairman Rupert Borgsmiller told the newsletter.

I DON’T KNOW how much Vallas really helps Quinn – he couldn’t even beat Blagojevich, who supposedly was the candidate in that 11-year-old election cycle who appealed to Democrats who lived outside of Chicago.

Vallas was regarded as “too Chicago” for Illinois to accept. Then again, Quinn gets hit with the same claim. If anything, this may bolster the Quinn/Vallas Chicago support to the point where it overcomes the vote from the rural parts of Illinois that definitely will favor a Republican challenger.

Which means Quinn has nothing to lose. And Vallas has everything to gain if the Democratic “top of the ticket” winds up prevailing against whichever candidate the Republicans pick to go for governor – an office they used to “own” (for 26 years, from James R. Thompson through George Ryan) until 2002.

If anything, the fact that Vallas contemplated in 2010 a Cook County Board president run as a Republican might hurt him more. Or at least make him look ridiculous. Although the fact that he never actually ran makes it like more of a tawdry rumor than anything else.

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One month remains ‘til Election Day

We’re exactly one month away from Election Day, and nine days away from the beginning of the time period in which people can start casting ballots for whom they want to be the Second City’s new mayor.

Yet we’re still going through the period in which we’re trying to determine whether or not Rahm Emanuel has a legitimate place on the ballot for the Feb. 22 municipal elections.

I’M SURE MOST people who are following this election cycle have already written it into their mindsets that this particular fight is over. Emanuel won. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said so. A Cook County judge has upheld that ruling.

When that decision came up for review before an Illinois appeals court panel earlier this week, the amount of attention it received was miniscule. I expect many people are figuring it’s just a matter of time before that panel upholds the circuit court ruling made earlier this month.

That’s why they’d rather talk about the fact that Carol Moseley-Braun’s fundraising skills stink (so bad that by some measures, Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins is better than the former senator), or the law enforcement endorsements picked up by Gery Chico.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to get a jolt at some point with some legal panel tossing a grenade into the mix and making the Emanuel campaign (which took on a further air of invincibility with a new Chicago Tribune-commissioned poll showing it with such a large lead, and trends indicating it may do well enough on Feb. 22 that there won’t be a need for an April 5 runoff election) have to squirm.

I FULLY EXPECT that Burt Odelson, the election law attorney who has taken on the actual legal work of this crusade of trying to get Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral aspirations kicked off the ballot for this election cycle, doesn’t mind in the least that the clock seems to be running down.

Because some people are treating the fact that the early voting centers will open on Jan. 31 (just nine days away) as evidence that the appeals process will have to wrap up – as though there isn’t any time to continue with them.

Actually, the appeals could drag out all the way until Election Day – with the possibility that people who cast their ballots at an early voting center for Emanuel will be casting their vote for an ineligible candidate.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Emanuel literally did get booted from the ballot at the last possible moment, yet somehow still managed to get more votes than any other candidate?

THE REASON THAT someone like Odelson wouldn’t mind the delay is that he probably would like it if the ruling that removes Rahm came at the last possible moment – so that Emanuel and the campaign would have minimal time to respond and try to find someone to overturn it.

In my time as a reporter-type person, I have covered electoral appeals that bounced back and forth, with a candidate continually being removed from, and restored to, the ballot, not knowing until the days just before the election itself whether the votes cast for that candidate would be valid.

I wonder if, in Odelson’s mind, his perfect scenario would be for the appellate court panel that spent about 45 minutes this week grilling attorneys for Rahm about residency requirements to ultimately come back some time this coming week and uphold the circuit court ruling.

Then, he would want the Illinois Supreme Court to spend some more time hearing his arguments, before also deciding to rule in Emanuel’s favor.

AT THAT POINT, the court of last chance would be the Supreme Court of the United States. There would have to be some sort of emergency motion granted for the nation’s high court to even bother with the case. Odelson would have to show somehow that federal laws are being violated by the court system in Illinois by not removing Rahm.

You and I may think it is a far stretch to claim such federal issues exist. Then again, I suspect the fact that it is “Rahm Emanuel” at stake means the court will find an excuse to claim federal issues, and will justify hearing the case.

My point being that it could be some time in mid-February before we reach some sort of ruling. What happens if Emanuel gets the boot at that point? Particularly if the ruling winds up being along politically partisan lines?

A large part of the reason why I personally have developed some respect for the idea of Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago is because I sense just how politically partisan the effort to remove him from the ballot has become.

EMANUEL GETTING ELECTED as mayor would screw up the partisan fantasies of those people who want to think that Rahm’s connections to Bill Clinton (senior adviser) and Barack Obama (chief of staff) should mean he should never hold any kind of public policy position again.

I see that the people who are most concerned about this issue have little interest in Chicago municipal government, or the city’s future.

Now I’m not necessarily saying that the U.S. Supreme Court, if given the chance to get involved in this matter, will rule against Rahm. Perhaps sense will prevail in the courtroom.

All I know is that I see this legal fight as a political front that should not be ignored. It’s not over. Anybody who gets all excited about the fact Emanuel has a huge poll lead just one month from Election Day should keep in mind the possible scenario in which it wouldn’t matter.

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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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