The Deep Dish: December 6, 2018

December 6, 2018

Here's your slice of Chicago's 2019 elections    Welcome to The Deep Dish—Ballotpedia’s in-depth look at Chicago’s 2019 city elections. This week, we're digging into the latest news in the races and giving you a sneak peek of our historical dive into Chicago's mayoral office. As is typical in Chicago elections, several candidates for each office on the ballot face challenges to their petition signatures. Challenges had to be filed by Monday. The Chicago Board of Elections will review challenged petitions over the next several weeks. Candidates who do not have the required number of valid signatures will be removed from the ballot.           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. Up for the (signature) challenge? Mayoral, treasurer, and city clerk candidates needed to submit 12,500 signatures by Nov. 26 from Chicago voters along with their candidate filings. City council candidates needed to submit 473 signatures from voters within their wards. Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen said campaigns looking to challenge fellow candidates' signatures have been "trying to determine whether or not there's a registered voter at that address, whether they're in the proper ward if it's for an aldermanic office, whether their signature's authentic or whether they're registered at all." At least 13 of the 16 total challenges against mayoral candidate petitions were filed on behalf of fellow candidates (as third parties often file challenges, it’s not clear whether the three remaining challenges are linked to candidates). Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's campaign is challenging the petitions of D'Tycoon, Clark, Mendoza, Brown, and Lightfoot. Businessman Willie Wilson's campaign is challenging petitions from Brown, Sales-Griffin, Ford, Washington, and Green. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas is challenging D'Tycoon's and McCarthy's petitions. Attorney Jeremiah Joyce Jr. filed against Bill Daley's petitions. Of 21 mayoral candidates who filed to run by the Nov. 26 deadline, 12 face challenges to their petition signatures: Dorothy Brown (Cook County Circuit Court clerk) Conrein Hykes Clark (Haines Elementary School volunteer) Bill Daley (former U.S. Commerce secretary) Catherine Brown D'Tycoon (activist) La Shawn Ford (state representative, District 8) Ja'Mal Green (activist) Neal Sales-Griffin (tech entrepreneur) Lori Lightfoot (former Chicago Police Board president) Richard Mayers (no campaign website/social media accounts found) Garry McCarthy (former Chicago police superintendent) Susana Mendoza (Illinois comptroller) Roger L. Washington (police officer) Dozens of city council candidates are facing petition challenges as well. More than 200 candidates filed to run for city council, which has 50 seats representing Chicago's 50 wards. In the treasurer's race, state Rep. Melissa Conyears-Ervin and 47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar are challenging each other's petitions. Conyears-Ervin also filed a challenge against CPA Peter Gariepy, the third candidate in the open-seat race. Petitions of all three candidates running for city clerk, including incumbent Anna Valencia, are being challenged. Mayoral race campaign finances Via Illinois Sunshine, here are recent fundraising figures for 13 candidates for whom information is available: Quick Bites Of 21 candidates running for mayor, 11 have never held public office. Of the 10 candidates who have served in public office, 5 were elected and 5 were appointed. Backgrounds of non-officeholder candidates include activism, business, law enforcement, and legal professions. In other news The FBI raided the offices of Ald. Ed Burke Thursday. The reasons for the raid were not disclosed. Burke, who represents the city’s 14th Ward and is the longest-serving alderman in Chicago history, faces four challengers in his re-election bid. In 10 of the last 11 elections, Burke ran unopposed. He last faced an opponent in 2007. Burke chairs the city Finance Committee. Saying he's been investigated before, Burke told reporters, "In every instance we cooperated fully. … And in every instance nothing has been found. So once again we will be cooperating fully and I am completely confident that at the end of the day nothing will be found amiss in this instance either." 14th Ward candidate Tanya Patino said of the investigation, "It could be his blatant disregard for campaign electioneering laws or a myriad of other disgraceful and unethical behavior that he has displayed during his 50 years in office." Jaime Guzman, another challenger, said Burke should resign, adding, "It’s not the first time Ed Burke has been investigated or implicated. This goes way back to the early 80’s." Chicago's mayor on the national stage Due to Chicago’s size and the strength of its Democratic Party organization, its mayors have exerted political influence well beyond the city’s borders. The following is just a taste of the ways in which the city's leaders have demonstrated their national political significance throughout history: Anton Cermak, elected mayor in 1931, was an influential campaigner for Franklin D. Roosevelt in Cook County, which FDR won along with the 1932 presidential election. Cermak met with Roosevelt in Miami ahead of the inauguration to discuss Roosevelt's appointments and New Deal funding for Chicago. Cermak was shot in a failed assassination attempt on FDR and died weeks later. In 1960, Mayor Richard J. Daley campaigned for John F. Kennedy (D) during his presidential bid. Daley was also the chair of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, which History.com referred to as "the strongest political organization in the country." Kennedy won Illinois' delegates at the party nominating convention and the state's electoral votes in the general election. In 1960, Illinois had 27 electoral votes—the fourth-highest share of any state. Harold Washington rose to prominence in the U.S. Conference of Mayors during his single full mayoral term and took a leading role in the national debate on federal funding to cities. Washington was set to host the Conference's annual meeting in 1988, but he died shortly after his re-election in 1987. In Conference speeches, he criticized then-President Ronald Reagan's (R) budget policy, which reduced federal funding to cities in an effort to cut the federal deficit. See our page on the mayoral race for more on the national significance of the office.   You're invited: 2019 Chicago Community Discussion Project 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.

Archive

2018

• The Deep Dish: December 20, 2018
• The Deep Dish: December 13, 2018
• The Deep Dish: November 29, 2018