Will Election ’19 create lasting grudge between Preckwinkle, Mendoza?

It was 1992, and Bill Lipinski and Marty Russo wound up having to run against each other for a seat in Congress – the Republican-drawn boundaries for that decade wound up pitting the two in a head-to-head brawl.

MENDOZA: Prevailing in fight thus far

Lipinski of the Southwest Side and Russo of south suburban Cook County actually had a reputation as political colleagues who also shared a friendship. Yet that election cycle saw the two engage in such hard-core politicking that the friendship did not survive Lipinski’s eventual victory.

SO IT CERTAINLY wouldn’t be unheard of if tensions arise sufficiently that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza wind up despising each other by the time Feb. 26 (Election Day) arrives.

Preckwinkle and Mendoza, of course, are among the nearly two dozen people with dreams of becoming Chicago’s new mayor. Preckwinkle is showing just how hard-core a politician her time as county board president and alderman have made her – she’s trying to get Mendoza kicked off the ballot.

Because the perception is that Preckwinkle and Mendoza could be the two most legitimate candidates. Preckwinkle’s chances benefit if Mendoza is removed from the political equation.

But the investigators looking into Toni’s allegations that Mendoza’s nominating petitions had way too many invalid signatures of support to be legitimate are finding that they’re not anywhere near as flawed as she’d have us believe them to be.

NOT THAT MENDOZA is totally in the clear. A hearing officer may have dismissed one of Preckwinkle’s allegations, but three other charges are still pending. An Elections Board hearing officer is giving the Preckwinkle campaign a chance to produce evidence to back up her claims against Mendoza.

Another hearing is scheduled for Sunday, and eventually the Elections Board will render a ruling. Which is going to wind up in court – with Mendoza fighting for survival if she gets kicked off the ballot, and Preckwinkle battling if Susana survives.

I found it interesting to learn that the hearing officer dismissed the charges related to a pattern of fraudulent behavior by the Mendoza campaign. If any legitimacy had been found, it could be the basis of criminal charges against the campaign.

PRECKWINKLE: Playing hardball politics

Meaning that any of the continuing allegations are likely to be pure partisan politics. Considering that Election Day is purely political, that’s natural. But it’s not like anybody’s in danger of going to jail because of any of this.

IF ANYTHING, THE challenge process is about political harassment. Because all of the time and money that Mendoza has had to spend on defending herself and justifying her presence on the ballot is taken away from efforts she could have engaged in to try to convince people that she ought to cast their mayoral vote for her.

Considering that she had to wait until after her Election Day victory for Illinois comptroller before she could start campaigning for Chicago mayor, she already had a strike against her.

Build up enough strikes, and you could wind up taking down the Mendoza campaign before she can make it to a run-off election come April 2.

The Eddies, both Burke … 

Which means Preckwinkle is playing hard-ball. She’s engaging in tactics that are bound to create hard feelings. Are these bound to turn the Preckwinkle/Mendoza relationship into one of political people who wind up despising each other? Of course, Mendoza isn’t the only person Preckwinkle is playing politics with – she’s already said she’ll fire the police superintendent AND greatly restrict long-time Alderman Edward Burke when she becomes mayor.

NOT THAT SUCH tactics would be unheard of. It’s not uncommon for people in politics to detest each other when they think nobody’s paying attention. In fact, that may be the reality that many people don’t understand when they complain about too many Democrats in government.

… and Johnston, could face Toni's wrath

The Democratic establishment has so many cliques that can’t stand each other. They’re nowhere near as united as Republicans are.

In fact, I once had a Republican political operative explain to me that all these cliques are the very reason it was pointless to try to cooperate with Democrats.

Although I’ve also heard some speculate that the Preckwinkle/Mendoza rivalry that is developing could very well be what costs both of them a serious chance of winning – and what could wind up giving us Mayor Daley III.

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Down to 21; how few candidates will remain by the time it is all over

The “it” is the process by which we put together the ballot of candidates who we’ll get to choose from come Feb. 26 for who gets to succeed Rahm Emanuel as mayor of the city of Chicago.

Whose face will fill the blank come May inauguration?

Much attention was paid the past week to the candidates who actually came forth with nominating petitions seeking a spot on the mayoral ballot.

THERE ONCE WAS a time when some 40 or so people were talking about running for mayor. The Monday deadline for filing nominating petitions came and went with 21 people actually taking the step forward.

Yet in all honesty, I’ll be shocked if more than a half-dozen of them actually make it all the way to Election Day.

There are bound to be candidates who come to the realization before then that their mayoral aspirations are pure fantasy. Then there also will be those who will wind up feeling crushed – as though the “gods” of politics are conspiring against them to keep us from casting a vote for them.

I don’t doubt that every single one of the 21 who filed nominating petitions is convinced that they’re the only logical choice for mayor, and that everybody else would be doing themselves and the public at-large a whole lot of good if they’d only drop out.

MENDOZA: Could she fall short of backers?

THE PART OF the political process we’re now entering is the “challenges.” As in having their supporters file objections to their opponents – contending they didn’t meet the bare minimum requirement of 12,500 valid signatures of support for their candidacy from Chicago residents who happen to be registered to vote.

The fear of getting knocked off is what causes candidates to go overboard and come up with so many more signatures than necessary. Because invariably, somebody is going to get a signature from a suburban resident who just happened to be in the city at the time a campaign worker got their autograph.

Either that, or someone is going to think it incredibly funny to sign themselves as “Mickey Mouse” or “Donald Trump” or some other nonsense name. Which taints the nominating petition as a whole!

ENYIA: Kicked off ballot just for kicks?

Candidates now are looking for ways to kick their opponents off the ballot so as to boost their own chances of achieving political victory and being the one who takes the oath of office for mayor come May.

I WON’T BE surprised if candidate Amara Enyia winds up finding herself spending significant amounts of time fighting off a challenge. She’s the candidate who has gotten attention and money from rap music entertainers, and who claims she has more than 62,000 signatures of support.

Which actually is just more than the 60,000 or so that Toni Preckwinkle gathered for her mayoral bid.

I don’t doubt that the political geeks who specialize in this type of duty would love the chance to show that Enyia’s signatures are so tainted that she deserves to be booted from the ballot.

Even if she does remain through to Election Day, she could wind up spending her time with attorneys her campaign really can’t afford trying to justify her political existence. Which is actually a common tactic for dealing with fringe candidates who might have something serious to say. Neutralize them into oblivion!!!

I’M GOING TO be interesting in seeing how the candidacy of Susana Mendoza turns out. Because she started gathering mayoral petition signatures so late (she had to spend time getting re-elected as Illinois comptroller first), she only submitted some 25,000.

How many petitions do you figure he signed?

Could the same political geeks who pick apart Enyia wind up knocking off enough of Mendoza’s supporters to make her ineligible to run for mayor? Thereby reducing the number of legitimate mayoral candidates on the ballot.

Because the reality is the “law” with regards to ballot access is vague as to what exactly an invalid signature is. Basically, it is whatever the challenger says it is, and it becomes up to the would-be candidate to prove they didn’t do something wrong.

Definitely a process intended to weed out the no-names and bring us down to a manageable number of candidates from whom to vote – even if the end result is that we wind up with the same old names on the ballot every single election cycle.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For now, the ballot (in alphabetical order) includes Catherine Brown D’Tycoon, Dorothy Brown, Gery Chico, William Daley, Amara Enyia, Bob Fioretti, LaShawn Ford, Ja’Mal Green, Conrien Hykes Clark, Jerry Joyce, John Kozlar, Lori Lightfoot, Sandra Mallory, Richard Mayers, Garry McCarthy, Susana Mendoza, Toni Preckwinkle, Neal Sales-Griffin, Paul Vallas, Roger Washington and Willie Wilson.

Chicago mayoral pack to whittle its way down to more manageable pack

The days of having 30 to 40 people claiming they’re candidates for the post of Mayor of the city of Chicago are soon to be through.

Chicago's next mayor will be, … who knows?

Next Monday is the deadline for candidates for the Feb. 26 municipal elections to file their nominating petitions to even get on the ballot, and we’re going to learn how many of those people were politically incompetent enough that they couldn’t get the 12,500 signatures of support needed to qualify.

WE’RE GOING TO see how many of the so-called candidates of earlier this year will not even be a factor in the final discussion over who should replace Rahm Emanuel in the mayor’s office.

If anything, I gained some respect earlier this week when I learned that Troy LaRaviere, head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, was giving up his campaign before it even began.

He was honest enough to admit he couldn’t get a sufficient number of signatures of support, thereby making any effort to run for mayor an exercise in futility.

Of course, he’ll probably be remembered in this election cycle as the guy whose farewell to the campaign season was to take a pot shot at entertainer Kanye West – who apparently reached out early on to the LaRaviere camp with thoughts of publicly supporting him.

LaRAVIERE: First to see jolt of reality

WEST, OF COURSE, is one of several entertainers who are now backing the mayoral dreams of Amara Enyia, an experienced public policy professional who has never actually run for office herself.

LaRaviere let it be known he couldn’t accept West’s support because the man’s too friendly with President Donald Trump (remember that goofy Oval Office meeting between the two of a few weeks ago?).

The trick of anticipating the upcoming week is to figure out how many of the mayoral dreamers will come to their senses before the Nov. 26 deadline. Of course, people with political aspirations usually are delusional enough to think so highly of themselves they can’t see their own flaws.

So we may get a lot of them fighting for a ballot space, just so they can take 1 percent or so of the vote come the end of February.

FIORETTI: Latest with mayoral dreams

TAKE ROBERT FIORETTI – the one-time outspoken alderman who has since run for mayor and Cook County Board president. He let it be known this week he’s getting into the mayoral mix again.

I understand that having a political post is more interesting for a legal-minded person than having a mere law practice. Yet Fioretti comes across these days as somebody who runs for office because he needs a job! Not necessarily because he has ideas beneficial to our society at-large.

So Fioretti is working these days, as are other candidates, in gathering the necessary petition signatures to qualify. By Fioretti’s admission, he’s trying to gain some 30,000 signatures, because he knows the political powers-that-be are capable of having their people come up with ways to disqualify signatures so as to void them out.

Time for a new 'Mayor' Daley, … 

It may even turn out that some of those who do file their petitions next week will be unable to actually appear on the ballot.

PERSONALLY, I’M GOING to find it interesting how many of the candidates who have been talking up the mayor’s race for months on end will be amongst those who qualify. Will Rahm Emanuel turn out to be correct when he said upon his own announcement he would not seek re-election that Chicago’s next mayor wasn’t even in the race yet?

Implying that people like former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas were kidding themselves, and that the rest of the dozens of mayoral dreamers were truly delusional.

… or is Chicago ready for Mendoza's youth

Will this really become a campaign dominated by the big-time political names of Daley (as in William), Chico (as in Gery) and Preckwinkle (as in Toni)? With the real question becoming whether the kid (as in 46-year-old Susana Mendoza) can do enough to get herself taken seriously. Or whether Willie Wilson attracts any political support outside of a few select political precincts on the South and West sides?

There’s a lot of uncertainty be settled between now and April 2 – the date of the run-off election likely to be needed. I wonder if the only certainty now is the appropriateness of the election so close to April Fool’s Day. We may wind up feeling like the election results are a practical joke on all of us.

  -30-

Ego brought down to Earth – Stroger to seek water district, not county president

Todd Stroger, the one-time state legislator and alderman who will forevermore be remembered for his stint as Cook County Board president and his effort to raise the county portion of the sales tax, will go about thinking to himself that he could have been re-elected to that post – IF ONLY.

STROGER: Water dist., sted of president

Stroger on Facebook this weekend was boasting of the Sunday night campaign event where his nominating petition circulators would gather together the results of their work.

THAT WOULD ALLOW Stroger himself (or more likely some flunk on his behalf) to file the petitions Monday to get him a place on the ballot for county board president come the March 20 Democratic primary.

But instead, Stroger on Monday decided to instead file the nominating petitions he had originally collected to get himself on the ballot for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

Which under typical circumstances could be considered a government post of some significance – one that would allow Stroger to go around thinking of himself as a government official. Rather than a political has-been – which is what he’s been in recent years.

Stroger aides were honest in admitting he was unable to get enough signatures of support to get himself a place on the ballot with just over 8,200 valid signatures of support. There wasn’t enough time, since he only began his county board president talk just over a week ago.

WHEREAS HE HAD been using the past several months to gather signatures for the ballot slot for the water district.

If Stroger had gone ahead and sought the county board president post, there’s a very good chance that his petitions would have had the appearance of a rush job; as in sloppy and flawed.

It happens, particularly since the rules governing the process are so vague that who’s to say what will ultimately be determined to be a flawed signature.

PRECKWINKLE: One less primary challenger

Meaning it would have been likely that some supporter of incumbent Toni Preckwinkle would have filed a challenge to Stroger – and he likely would have suffered the ignominious embarrassment of being kicked off the ballot!

IT’S MORE LIKELY that his water district petitions are more legally sound and less likely to be challenged.

Although it’s always possible that someone motivated by spite will go ahead and challenge Stroger’s water district candidacy on the grounds that he had a hell of a lot of nerve to think he could run against Preckwinkle.

If that line of logic sounds incredibly petty and absurd, keep in mind we’re talking about electoral politics. It’s all about the egos for these people.

Including for Stroger, who probably has some resentment that voters dumped on him for his sales tax initiative that was meant to stabilize the county government finances – but instead caused resentment because the increase in the county portion of the sales tax caused the overall tax in Chicago to exceed 10 percent.

THEN AGAIN, THERE are others for whom Stroger’s real offense was being picked by his father, the late John Stroger, to succeed him as county board president.

Todd may have been a one-time state legislator and alderman, but the people who were somehow willing to accept all the generations of Daleys, Madigans, Cullertons, Lipinskis, etc., who have been a part of the local government scene were somehow unable to accept it when the Stroger family tried to follow suit.

John Stroger must settle for county hospital named in his honor, rather than being a political family like the Daleys

I don’t doubt that a Stroger candidacy for Cook County Board president would have drawn a certain amount of negative energy. He would have been a long-shot to win, regardless of what he thinks about Preckwinkle and her ‘pop tax’ effort to balance the county budget.

Although I wonder if his couple of weeks as a Preckwinkle challenger will merely elevate Todd’s profile to the point where the people who eight years ago chanted “Don’t Vote for the Son” as their mantra will suddenly take an interest in the water district race to ensure he doesn’t win that seat either.

  -30-

It’s about time – ’18 election cycle’s “put up-or-shut up” moment arrives

Friday was the day retail fanatics felt compelled to queue up outside of their favorite stores in search of particularly-good sales for holiday shopping.

Never-was gubernatorial candidate Ameya Pawar will have counterparts following this week's nominating petition filing period.

Monday will see similar lines of political geeks – candidates in some cases, their operatives in others. Although those lines will be at Illinois State Board of Elections offices, as it’s finally time for people wanting to run for political office to file the nominating petitions to gain themselves spots on the March 20 primary ballots.

FOR ALL THOSE people who have been going about throwing out hints that they want to be candidates for electoral office, they’re going to have to show the required support levels indicating they’re deserving of a ballot slot.

Between 8 a.m. Monday and 5 p.m. Dec. 4 (a.k.a., next Monday), the candidates will file their petitions showing signatures of support from people indicating they’d actually vote for this person.

Now I know some people think this is unfair – they think it ought to be easier to actually get on the ballot. Let everybody on the ballot (they’d say); let the voters decide on Election Day.

Yet I think there is too much clutter in these early stages, and candidates for office ought to be capable of defending their ballot existence by showing some support.

JUST THINK THAT there are about eight people saying they want to be the Democrat running next year for Illinois governor and for state attorney general.

DAIBER: Will he continue to exist?

Most of us can’t even come close to naming all of them, and the only people who truly want all of them hanging around are the ones interested in causing political confusion.

As in the only way they can win is if enough people cast votes for them without knowing who they’re supporting. Which may sound ludicrous, but does anyone seriously think Mark Fairchild or Janice Hart would have won Democratic primaries back in 1986 based on their merits?

Yes, those are the two followers of Lyndon LaRouche who managed to win that year’s gubernatorial and Illinois secretary of state primaries, with voters not realizing their tie to the would-be presidential hopeful that some consider more fascist than Democrat.

MY POINT IS that there have been people trying to talk themselves up as candidates even though there’s really no evidence anybody wants them or would support them.

RAOUL: How many opponents will remain?

As for one-time gubernatorial hopeful Ameya Pawar who came to the realization a few weeks ago he couldn’t win the Democratic primary, he’s alone. Although it’s quite possible that many of the other seven people who think they’re going to be running for the office will fail to meet the standard to get on the ballot.

Their campaigns will end before they even began. Will Bob Daiber (the regional schools superintendent from the part of Illinois down near St. Louis) still be around?

Or will this officially become a less-cluttered J.B. Pritzker/Chris Kennedy political brawl? We’ll see come next week.

JUST AS MOST of us likely can’t even come close to naming all of the Illinois attorney general dreamers on the Democratic side. If a few of them disappear before ever becoming official, it will be more comprehensible to the electorate.

STROGER: Will he have valid signatures?

It will be the same for many other political offices. Personally, I’m curious to see the Democratic primary for Cook County Board president, where Toni Preckwinkle has two challengers talking up long-shot campaigns against her.

But Todd Stroger has only declared himself a candidate as of last week. Can he truly produce nominating petitions with enough valid signatures of support by this week?

Anything’s possible, but I’m sure that Preckwinkle operatives are counting on Stroger doing a sloppy-enough job that they can challenge his petitions and keep him off the ballot that way. Which means the serious politicking can get underway following this coming week, rather than the stupid speculation we've been engaging in up to this point.

  -30-

Just over 80 days away ‘til Election Day (already?!?), at least for some of us

We’ve barely finished the “Election cycle from Hell” (or so it felt like), and yet we’re already coming up on the next set of government posts for which we’ll be asked to cast ballots.

At least some of us will be.

IT’S TRUE. THERE will be positions up for grabs within various units of government. Most of them will be decided on April 4, although in places where a primary election is a necessity, that will occur on Feb. 28.

Not that most of us will give these elections much thought.

Because, by and large, these are municipal elections, and they’re not even complete.

For many suburban communities that have their local government entities split their city councils/village boards/whatever call themselves so that half of them got elected to four-year terms in 2015 – with the other half to be chosen this year.

TO MAKE IT more confusing, it will vary from municipality to municipality as to their chief executive (their mayor, village president, town chief or whatever) is up for grabs.

In some suburbs, their local bosses will be picked this year. In others, it was already picked and this is just to fill out the local village board. Candidates seeking to be on an April 4 ballot will have to declare their candidacies beginning Monday – with nominating petitions needing to be filed by Dec. 19.

In short, one will have to check our your specific town to see if there’s anybody even up for re-election. Or your local school boards, which usually manage to pick the same hacks over and over regardless if they know anything about education issues. In many cases, the chances are that the incumbents will run unopposed. We’ll know more come the Christmas holiday.

There are a lot of long-term suburban mayors because usually there’s nobody else interested in holding the position, Heck, in some cases the mayor/village president/whatever is merely a part-time post that only pays a token salary to cover a few expenses – and the person usually has a real job by day.

BEING THE MAYOR usually means cutting some ribbons at public ceremonies, and being the guy who gets to wield the gavel at council meetings.

In some cases, the daily operations of the local government is actually run by a government professional that carries a title of village administrator or city manager or something like that. With the difference in titles being the degree to which the professional has the authority to hire people without needing the formal approval of the part-time elected officials.

These are always low-turnout elections. The 70.65 percent voter turnout we saw last month in Illinois (about 75 percent in Cook County) for president will be a mere fantasy come February and April – we’ll be lucky if 20 percent of the register voters bother to show up to cast ballots.

Many people who live in suburbs don’t have the slightest clue who their local government officials are. And when it comes to the city, this is an election cycle we’ll get to sit out.

WE CHOSE RAHM Emanuel and all 50 aldermen back in 2015. So we in Chicago will be spared a certain level of nonsense. The campaign rhetoric will be restricted to positions that most people probably won’t have a clue what it is they really do to justify their existence.

Which is probably a break that city residents need to help us recover from the recently-completed election cycle.

After all, we turned out strong in Chicago proper and gave overwhelming support to Hillary Clinton’s presidential dreams – with some parts of Chicago giving as little as 2 percent voter support to President-elect Donald J. Trump. Only to find out that it wasn’t enough to ensure her Election Day victory.

Besides, we’ll get a nasty enough electoral fight that will come soon enough in 2018 when we have to decide on a governor for Illinois and all the other statewide Constitutional offices – without the added attraction of a U.S. Senate seat or presidential race to draw out voters to the polling places.

  -30-

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

If he hadn’t been a guru, of sorts, to the New York baseball scene, Yogi Berra could have had a career as a political observer to our local officials – perhaps the guy whispering his words of wisdom into their ears.

The Tao of Yogi?

Because that particular Berra-ism about declaring victory too soon is one that perhaps the people trying to lead a movement to change the way we draw our political boundaries should have learned a long time ago.

I STILL REMEMBER reading the reports about how the movement (calling itself Yes for Independent Maps) was crowing a month ago when they submitted nominating petitions that demand the issue be put on the ballots for the Nov. 4 elections in the form of a referendum question.

Let the people decide. “Yes,” or “no.” They had 532,264 signatures of support that they filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections

That is well in excess of the minimum number of signatures needed in order to actually get an initiative on the ballot across the state. They won. They declared victory. They made smug statements about how this, alone, showed the moral high-ground and desirability of their cause.

There was no way they could be stopped now!!!

READING THOSE ACCOUNTS, I recalled thinking they were premature in declaring victory. Way too cocky, as a matter of fact. Somebody was going to wind up eating some serious crow.

Which is what seems to be happening now.

Reports this week indicate that the State Board of Elections is finding that the 532,264 signature figure is off, way off.

Yogi 'plays' better on TV than most pols

For one thing, the elections board says it counted all the signatures, and only came up with 507,467. Which is still well ahead of the 298,400 valid signatures required this year (it’s based on voter turnout in recent election cycles, so it changes) to succeed.

BUT …

The state Elections Board handles the process by doing a thorough review of a randomly-selected share of petitions.

Petitions containing 25,375 signatures were scrutinized – and 11,568 signatures were found to be legitimate. That’s less than half!

At this rate, the petition drive is going to turn out to have produced a lot of junk (that’s a lot of times that “Mickey Mouse” signed his name to these documents). May 31 isn’t only the deadline for the General Assembly to conduct its business. The end of the month (actually, May 30, the last business date, since May 31 is a Saturday) is when the process must be completed.

SO UNLESS SOMETHING shifts dramatically in the next week or so, this is going to wind up being a failed effort.

Like many pols, son followed him into family 'business'

Admittedly, the Yes for Independent Maps group is trying to fight back, although their route seems to be one more of whining about the review process being “hasty,” and the Chicago Tribune reporting about “personal advances” made by state Elections board officials to the group’s official watchers.

It sounds like this could be a cause that falls by the wayside. Which doesn’t surprise me because the whole process of nominating petitions is such a subjective one. There is so much leeway by officials to declare what is, and isn’t, valid.

Nobody should presume this is over until they actually walk into their polling place and see the question printed on their ballots.

IT MAY COME across that I’m enjoying this lesson in political reality being taught to the Yes for Independent Maps group – which at times behaves in ways that make it seem more like a cause funded by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner so he can have something to talk about, rather than an actual concern for the issue.

Yogi comes equipped w/ his own 'yes' men

It’s actually funded in part by Chicago Cubs part-owner Tom Ricketts (he gave $50,000 back in March). Which makes me wonder why he’s not focusing more on his ball club.

Perhaps Yogi could come to Chicago and give the Wrigley Field set some advice on what constitutes a real winning ball club (he would know, 14 World Series appearances, with 10 of them on the victorious side).

Although reading through the various lists of Yogi-isms, I came across another one that I suspect many of our local political people would find applicable – “Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”

  -30-

Chicago GOP better be serious if they REALLY want to challenge Madigan

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, has a challenger for his legislative seat on the Southwest Side. Well, sort of.

MADIGAN: Picking his own opponent?!?

When all the nominating petitions were submitted to the Illinois State Board of Elections, it seems that Terrence Goggin filed to run for the Legislature as a Republican. He wants to take on Madigan come the November general election.

SORT OF. GOGGIN has made similar challenges in the past. It seems he’s one of these people who likes to run for office. He has delusions of winning. But doesn’t actually have any kind of organization behind him.

There are many such people scattered all across the city. For them, the big decision is whether to use the otherwise blank Republican side of the ballot to get themselves in the election, or whether to run a token challenge in the Democratic primary.

Either way, they’re going to lose.

In Goggin’s case, there is suspicion that he is just a name that is being used by Madigan’s political operation to take up a ballot spot, perhaps to throw a wrench into the mechanism any real Republican might try to use to challenge Madigan from even getting into the Legislature – let alone being named House “speaker” for another two years.

IN FACT, IT is why the Republican Party in Chicago is trying to challenge Goggin’s nominating petitions. On its face, they’re looking to kick off the ballot one of their own. It sounds odd, but only if you think that electoral politics is all about what it appears to be on the surface.

The reality is that the Republicans don’t have a real candidate to challenge Madigan. Not now. And, likely, not later this year.

But they want the March primaries to come and go with no one winning the Republican nomination.

Is their challenge worthwhile?

If that happens, then the GOP operatives next spring would be permitted to just pick someone to be on the November general election ballot. Someone of their choosing.

IT WOULD BE a token challenge, just like any challenge that Goggin would put up. But at least it would be someone they want.

They can’t just appoint a candidate to take on Madigan if someone actually comes forth.

Which is why we’re going to see in coming weeks the efforts to scour through Goggin’s nominating petitions to knock off so many signatures of support that he becomes ineligible.

The Capitol Fax newsletter on Thursday reported about how some of the signatures look a little funky – as in they look like one person might have signed multiple times. Not that anybody should start pulling a “Captain Renault” routine and claim to be “shocked, shocked” to find that a nominating petition could be less than 100 percent legitimate.

NOW I DON’T have any evidence as to whether the Coggin petitions are, or are not, legitimate. Although my experience in viewing nominating petitions is that any candidates’ signatures of support can be found to have flaws – depending on how rigid a legal standard is applied.

Personally, I just don’t think it matters much whether the “Republican” challenger to Madigan come November is Coggin or someone else.

The 13^th Ward on the Southwest Side that provides the bulk of Madigan’s Illinois House district is one that will overwhelmingly support him.

Meaning, it’s very possible that the Republican fight to knock Coggin off the ballot so they can pick someone could easily result in the GOP getting a candidate who’s just as weak and a “no-name.”

THIS WHOLE COGGIN challenge could wind up being a waste of time with no worthwhile end result – almost as lame as the whole “Dump Madigan” theme that Republicans tried for all elective posts in the 2012 election cycle.

At least that one was intellectually honest in that it conceded that Madigan was a power player within the whole Democratic Party – and we realized from the election results that a majority of voters aren’t bothered by that fact.

  -30-

Petition flaws; a campaign fatal error

RUTHERFORD: Cleaning up mistakes?

Remember Alice Palmer?

I don't know if Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Rutherford does. But his actions of late indicate he doesn't want to suffer her same political fate.

FOR RUTHERFORD IS the candidate who realized his nominating petitions, the documents that are meant to officially get himself a spot on the GOP primary ballot come March, were flawed enough that he could have been kicked off.

His campaign could have died before ever taking place – and Republican-leaning voters would have had to pick between the trio of William Brady, Kirk Dillard and Bruce Rauner.

The state treasurer who served in the Legislature for nearly two decades representing the Pontiac area would not have been a presence on the ballot.

Now his circumstances are far different from those of Palmer – the one-time state legislator from the South Side who would up getting tripped up (and kicked off the ballot) when she tried seeking re-election in the 1996 election cycle.

PALMER’S PROBLEMS AROSE when she got dreams of running for Congress. She wanted a promotion. But it became apparent to her during the campaign cycle that her chances of actually winning were nil.

So just before the deadline for filing nominating petitions, she changed her mind and went for re-election. Which required a whole new set of petitions – the others had people supporting her for Congress, NOT the state Senate.

But because they were put together on the rush to meet a deadline, they were sloppy. There were flaws. Enough flaws that she didn’t have enough valid signatures of support.

PALMER: Historic gaffe

Now had there been politeness and courtesy, no one would have brought up these flaws. If no one challenges the petitions, they automatically become legitimate – regardless of the flaws.

BUT THEY WERE challenged, the flaws were found, and Palmer got kicked off the ballot. She never again held elective office. That is how a community activist named Barack Obama began the 12-year trek that wound up at the White House.

It seems Rutherford’s own petitions had flaws – ones even his most ardent backers acknowledged. We just know that the Republican opposition would have ganged up on him to get a credible candidate knocked off the ballot.

Anything to make their own campaign effort easier.

OBAMA: Took advantage of a fluke?

Which is why the Rutherford campaign these days, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, is taking it upon themselves to circulate all-new nominating petitions – which did not include a notarized statement specifying when the petitions had actually been circulated.

THAT’S EXACTLY THE kind of technicality that election law attorneys love to exploit to knock around the opposition.

For Rutherford’s sake, let’s hope that none of his people are feeling particularly rushed. Because that could lead to further errors of sloppiness that could still harm him.

My guess is that Rutherford’s petitions (in whatever form they get submitted to the Illinois State Board of Elections) are going to be scrutinized to the “n’th” degree by people looking for anything they can try to claim is a flaw.

The outcome, if a flaw is found, can be worth the legal battles and hurt feelings – although I can’t say I see any of the GOP gubernatorial dreamers as anyone with potential to become president come 2028.

I DOUBT THAT history will repeat itself in quite that way.

Although it does seem odd that a petition flaw would occur this time, since there were also questions about the nominating petitions that put Mitt Romney on the ballots in Illinois for U.S. president.

ROMNEY: Didn't learn from mistake?

The only reason there weren’t serious challenges to that (which would have been embarrassing to the Romney campaign if it couldn’t get on all 50 states’ ballots) was because of potential for flaws in the petitions of opponent Rick Santorum.

Both sides ultimately decided to “play nice” and not pursue the issue. That won’t happen again if anybody thinks Rutherford is vulnerable to a technicality that could undo him before the voters get a chance to.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: It strikes me as being quite pathetic that the people most willing to denounce Barack Obama for using flawed petitions to eliminate his opposition are the same ones who would eagerly have pounced on Dan Rutherford petition flaws to undo his campaign if it would gain them an ideological ally.