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Welcome to The Deep Dish—Ballotpedia’s in-depth look at Chicago’s 2019 city elections.
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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
Cash-on-hand figures are in for mayoral candidates
Quarterly reports are in, giving us an update on how much money mayoral campaigns spent throughout 2018 and how much they had in the bank to begin the new year. Reports were due Tuesday and include expenditures and cash-on-hand figures through Dec. 31.
The top five fundraisers—Daley, Preckwinkle, Chico, Mendoza, and McCarthy— all aired TV ads in January. Spending figures on those ad buys aren’t included in the figures above. Ad buys from the Chico ($1 million) and Preckwinkle ($750,000) campaigns are the largest ad expenditures for which data is currently available.
Also not included in the cash-on-hand column is money raised between Dec. 31 and Jan. 15.
Amara Enyia’s fundraising total nearly tripled Tuesday when her campaign received a $400,000 donation from Chance the Rapper. The SEIU contributed another $500,000 to Toni Preckwinkle in January.
The quarterly reports, then, aren’t perfectly up to date. But they offer a better sense of the campaigns’ financial states heading into the race’s final month.
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Down to two outstanding petition challenges in mayoral race
Petition challenges against mayoral candidates Dorothy Brown and Neal Sáles-Griffin remain to be decided. Once they are, the final field of candidates will be set.
Willie Wilson dropped his challenge of Brown's petitions Tuesday, but Toni Preckwinkle's challenge is ongoing.
Wilson is the sole challenger of Griffin's petitions, though he said he is considering whether to drop that challenge. Griffin's hearing was scheduled for Thursday morning.
On Saturday, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners rejected Wilson's challenge against La Shawn Ford, meaning 13 mayoral candidates had qualified for the ballot so far.
Twenty-one candidates filed to run for mayor by the Nov. 26 deadline. As of Wednesday, the board had removed five candidates from the running, and one candidate—Ja'Mal Green—withdrew from the race.
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13 candidates participate in first televised mayoral forum
On Jan. 10, WGN hosted the first televised mayoral forum of the 2019 race.
All candidates in the race except two—Toni Preckwinkle and Neal Sáles-Griffin—attended. Jerry Joyce joined the second half.
The forum took place a week after Ald. Ed Burke's federal extortion charge. That event framed several of the questions posed to candidates, including whether elected officials should be prohibited from earning outside income, whether Burke should resign from the city council, and whether there should be term limits for aldermen. (See last week's Deep Dish for more on the extortion charge.)
All candidates present agreed on banning outside income for elected officials and instituting term limits for aldermen. They split on whether Burke should resign.
Other topics discussed during the forum included school and teacher pension funding, crime reduction, improving relations between police and communities, whether there should be a city casino, and legalization of recreational marijuana.
Watch the mayoral forum here.
Want information on other forums that have taken place? We've compiled a bunch here.
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Chicago Tribune editorial board interviews mayoral candidates
The Chicago Tribune editorial board began interviewing the 15 mayoral candidates Tuesday as part of its endorsement process. The board interviewed one group of five candidates Tuesday and another group of five Wednesday, with the last five candidates scheduled to meet with the board Thursday afternoon.
The Tribune has live-streamed the interviews on its Facebook page and published videos of them here.
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Quick Bites
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When Chicago became a city in 1837, it had 6 wards and 10 aldermen.
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As the boundaries of the city expanded and the population grew, the number of wards and aldermen increased. By 1900, the city had 35 wards and 70 aldermen.
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In 1923, the city was divided into 50 wards represented by 50 aldermen.
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Wards are redistricted after the federal census every 10 years. As of the 2010 census, an average of 54,000 people lived in each ward.
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Chicago's three longest-serving aldermen facing challenges
Chicago's three longest-serving aldermen—Ed Burke (14th Ward), Patrick O'Connor (40th Ward), and Joe Moore (49th Ward)—face challengers in 2019. It’s a rare occurrence for two of them.
Since his first election to the council in 1969, Burke has faced opposition three times (1971, 2007, and 2019), and run unopposed 10 times. Moore and O'Connor each had an opponent in 2015. O'Connor faced challengers from his first election in 1983 through 1991, followed by five unopposed elections. Moore has faced opponents each election cycle, including 1991, when he was first elected.
Burke had four challengers until Jan. 11, when Jose Luis Torrez dropped his bid to become co-chairman of candidate Tanya Patiño's campaign. Torrez said that "[t]he current political landscape is about building unity in the 14th ward and building a coalition against the corruption brought upon by Ed Burke." Irene Corral and Jaime Guzman are the other candidates.
Candidates in the 40th and 49th Ward races received endorsements from a new PAC called Brand New Council, which aims to elect young progressives to the city council. The group endorsed André Vasquez (49th) and Maria Hadden (40th).
O'Connor faces four challengers: Dianne Daleiden, Maggie O'Keefe, Ugo Okere, and Vasquez. Moore's two challengers are Hadden and Bill Morton.
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This week's deep dive
WTH is a TIF?
Tax increment financing (TIF) might be among the most boring-sounding phrases you've ever heard, but it's a hot topic in Chicago’s mayoral and city council races.
TIF involves using a portion of property tax revenue to fund development projects in certain parts of the city. In 2017, 31 percent ($660 million) of total property taxes collected by the city went to the TIF program.
A number of governing bodies, including the Chicago City Council, decide what areas of the city will be designated TIF districts. Once an area is so designated, any property tax revenue it generates above the amount it did when it became a TIF district goes into a TIF fund. Money in that fund must be used toward development projects in that TIF district.
Development means a lot of different things: infrastructure projects like new roads or repaired bridges, the construction of a new building for a company's offices, a new park, a repaired school building, and more. Check out how the city has categorized its TIF commitments in recent years below.
So what's the debate?
Much of the debate about tax increment financing revolves around the following questions, which proponents and opponents of the way the program has been implemented answer differently:
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Are TIF districts being designated in places that need the boost in development funding?
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Would private development projects be able to go forward without public financing from the program?
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How does TIF affect tax-funded bodies like Chicago Public Schools?
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Is there enough transparency and accountability around the ways TIF funds are spent?
We've provided a more detailed explainer of Chicago’s TIF program as part of our race coverage. Click here to view it.
To read mayoral candidates' positions on TIF from the Chicago Sun-Times, click here.
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Candidate survey reply of the week
Ballotpedia's Chicago candidate survey was created through our partnership with the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Interactivity Foundation, and City Bureau, as well as insights from more than one hundred diverse citizens living throughout Chicago’s wards.
What are your proposals for supporting children before and after school? What would be your ideal after school programs?
"We need to fully fund programs like After School Matters so kids can get some exercise or exposure to the arts before they head home. I know that for my first-grader, the school day is long and he physically needs exercise focused programs to unwind."
- Pete DeMay, candidate for Chicago City Council, 12th Ward
Read all of DeMay's responses →
Chicago candidate? Fill out the survey and you may be featured here.
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