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Welcome to The Deep Dish—Ballotpedia’s in-depth look at Chicago’s 2019 city elections.
This week, we're serving up the latest on challenges to candidates' petitions—one of which provided material for a new campaign ad. Also on the menu: a second raid of 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke's office and a deep dive into one of the most pressing issues Chicago's next mayor will face: pensions.
Note: We'll be taking a break next week, but don't worry—we'll return Jan. 3!
   
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Voters head to the polls Feb. 26, where they will select a new mayor and decide all 50 city council seats as well as choosing a treasurer and city clerk. For all offices on the ballot, runoff elections will be held April 2 for races in which no candidates receives more than 50 percent of the vote. All offices are nonpartisan and come with four-year terms.
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This week's news
Petition challenge hearings underway
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has begun finalizing the ballot by conducting hearings on challenges to candidates' petitions. Many of those challenges concern signatures candidates submitted with their filings (mayoral candidates need 12,500, and city council candidates need 473). Many of those objections came from fellow candidates.
Some quick stats:
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9 mayoral candidates face challenges. Hearings for most mayoral candidates were scheduled for this week.
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3 mayoral challenges were withdrawn—Jerry Joyce, Paul Vallas, and Toni Preckwinkle withdrew their challenges to the candidacies of Bill Daley, Garry McCarthy, and Susana Mendoza, respectively.
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4 incumbent aldermen (out of 45 seeking re-election) face petition challenges: 21st Ward Ald. Howard Brookins, 24th Ward Ald. Michael Scott Jr., 29th Ward Ald. Chris Taliaferro, and 45th Ward Ald. John Arena.
Unless challenges are dismissed, officials examine signatures or other relevant records before making a recommendation to the Board of Election Commissioners, which decides who's in and who's out.
Blast from the recent past: In 2011, Rahm Emanuel faced a challenge to his candidacy that went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, which ruled less than one month ahead of the election that Emanuel met residency requirements for mayoral candidates.
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Preckwinkle drops Mendoza challenge
On Wednesday, mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle dropped her challenge of fellow candidate Susana Mendoza's signatures. The announcement followed a statement from Mendoza's campaign saying the record exam underway at the board of elections put her past the 12,500 valid signature threshold.
In an ad released last Friday, Mendoza criticized Preckwinkle for challenging Mendoza’s petitions, as well as those of four other candidates.
Mendoza, currently state comptroller, said of Preckwinkle, "We have the highest-ranking woman in Democratic Cook County government politics, the boss of the party bosses, who in the year of the woman, in Trump's America, thinks that it's a good idea, that it's okay, to challenge the petitions of five women of color."
Preckwinkle is president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners and chair of the county Democratic Party.
Preckwinkle said in an interview last Friday, "The first hurdle that you have to overcome in order to be a candidate is to get sufficient signatures. … We turned in 60,000 signatures. We gathered them all across the city in all 50 wards. We had a diverse army of volunteers. If you can’t get yourself organized and have sufficient support across the city to get the required minimum number of signatures, how on earth can you govern?"
Mendoza turned in around 25,000 signatures. She announced her mayoral run after winning re-election as comptroller on Nov. 6.
The four candidates still facing challenges from Preckwinkle are Lori Lightfoot, Dorothy Brown, Catherine Brown D'Tycoon, and Conrein Hykes Clark.
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The week's forums
Last Thursday, the group Access Living hosted two forums with a total of 10 mayoral candidates focused on issues affecting residents with disabilities.
On Monday, the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce hosted a forum where eight candidates discussed economic development in Chicago's West Side.
Click here for more info on these and other forums.
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13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn withdraws challenge to opponent's candidacy
On Saturday, Chicago's 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn withdrew his challenge to the candidacy of David Krupa, a DePaul University student running against him.
Quinn's legal team filed 2,796 affidavits from residents revoking their signatures from Krupa's petitions. Krupa had turned in 1,703 signatures—1,093 fewer than the number of revocations Quinn’s team filed. City council candidates need 473 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Krupa and his election attorney, Michael Dorf, claimed the discrepancy was evidence of fraud on the part of Quinn and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D), who has been 13th Ward Democratic Committeeman since 1969 and shares a constituent services office with Quinn.
"It was very unethical from the start, and possibly criminal," Krupa said.
Quinn's campaign has not commented on Krupa's allegation.
In a statement about its withdrawal of the signature revocation affidavits, the Quinn campaign wrote, "(Voters) deserve the opportunity to reject him. … No one whose personal conduct and whose extreme agenda so offend the city of Chicago should have the opportunity to hide behind false claims of victimhood, but that’s no doubt what a politician like Mr. Krupa would attempt to do should he be removed from the ballot."
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Quick Bites
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Chicago was the only major U.S. city to lose population in recent years.
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Chicago's population peaked at 3.6 million in the 1950 census and was at 2.7 million in 2017.
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The black population peaked in 1980 at 1.2 million (of 3 million total pop.). In 2017, the black population was below 850,000.
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Chicago's 2017 racial demographics: 33 percent white, 31 percent black, 29 percent Hispanic or Latino
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14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke's offices raided a second time
The FBI raided Ald. Ed Burke's offices on Nov. 29 and again on Dec. 13. The reason for the raids remains unclear.
Burke, the longest-serving alderman in Chicago history, has been on the city council since 1969. He has faced opposition in elections only twice before: once in 1971 and again in 2007. He faces four challengers in 2019.
Burke said following the initial raid, "As you are aware, there have previously been several other investigations such as this. In every instance we cooperated fully. And in every instance nothing has been found."
Following the second raid, challenger Tanya Patino called on Burke to resign.
In between the two raids, the city council Progressive Caucus introduced an ordinance to transfer oversight of Chicago's $100 million-a-year workers' compensation program from the city council Finance Committee to the mayor. Burke is chairman of the Finance Committee.
The Chicago Sun-Times asked mayoral candidates whether they thought Burke should be stripped of his powers over the workers' comp program and whether the program should be transferred to the executive branch. Of the 14 candidates they interviewed, eight supported transferring to the executive branch and four said Burke should be stripped of his powers. See their full answers here.
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This week's deep dive
Pensions, proposals, & positions
The city of Chicago contributes to four public employee pension funds. In 2017, the city's unfunded pension liability—the amount needed to cover pension benefits minus the amount in the pension fund—was $28 billion. The four pension funds combined were 27 percent funded.
Based on recent changes to how the city's contributions are calculated, the city's annual contribution is projected to rise from $1 billion to $2.1 billion between 2018 and 2023.
And the next mayor will have to figure out very quickly how to pay for it.
Last week, outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel advanced proposals he thinks his successor should pursue to address the city's pension problem, including a constitutional amendment to end annual 3 percent benefit increases. And several candidates weighed in.
Woah, woah—let's back up a little:
In 1999, 3 percent annual benefit increases were established for two of the city's pension funds. The state Legislature passed a bill in 2014, supported by Emanuel, that would have ended annual 3 percent increases.
In 2016, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the law ending the 3 percent increases, ruling it violated the state constitution's clause that says pension benefits "shall not be diminished or impaired."
And that brings us to Emanuel's current proposal.
Emanuel has argued that those annual increases, called compounded cost-of-living adjustments, should be based on inflation, which has been lower than 3 percent in recent years. He wants the next mayor to push for a change to the state's constitution to make that annual increase adjustable.
Most (though not all) of the candidates from whom we found responses don't like Emanuel’s idea, arguing instead that pensioners should get what they've been promised.
For more on the city's pension issues and candidates' positions, click here.
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Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation
Through a partnership with the Interactivity Foundation and City Bureau, Ballotpedia is recruiting a diverse group of citizens from a sample of Chicago’s wards to participate in guided forums and discuss the key issues facing the city. The concerns and questions heard from these forums will be translated into a list of questions for candidates. All 2019 candidates running for election in the city of Chicago will be invited to respond to these questions, which will then be added into Ballotpedia’s in-depth coverage on Ballotpedia.org.
If you or someone you know is in Chicago and interested in participating in these discussions, email "Yes Chicago" to gundersen@interactivityfoundation.org or fill out the online intake form.
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