The Deep Dish: March 7, 2019

March 7, 2019

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 serving up a breakdown of Lightfoot and Preckwinkle's new TV ads and recent interviews, in which they criticize each other's backgrounds. Also, a look at where Lightfoot and Preckwinkle's support was concentrated in the Feb. 26 election—and where else they need to gain support in the runoff. And don't miss our 47th Ward council runoff race spotlight. We're also introducing a new feature this week: "Lightfoot v. Preckwinkle on the issues." Each week, we'll highlight a policy issue and show you how the candidates differ. First up: ethics reform.         Chicago will hold runoff elections for mayor, several city council seats, and city treasurer on April 2. A general election was held February 26. Races in which no candidate received a majority of the vote went to runoffs. All offices are nonpartisan and come with four-year terms. Click here for more information on how to register   This week's news How to vote Early voting at the Loop Super Site begins March 15. Early voting locations in all 50 wards open March 18 and will remain open through April 1, the day before the runoff election. Chicago voters may use any early voting site in the city. Voter registration will also be available at early voting locations. Click here for addresses and hours. If you'd like to vote by mail, click here to download a mail-in ballot application. Note the following advice from the Chicago board of elections: "Apply by March 20 to ensure enough time to receive and return your ballot by Election Day. The legal deadline for the Board to receive an application is 5 p.m. March 28, but that may not provide you with enough time to receive and return your ballot by Election Day." If you didn't vote in the Feb. 26 election, you can still vote in the runoffs!   First runoff ads, interviews: Candidates criticize backgrounds Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle began airing TV ads March 1 with each candidate presenting herself as the progressive choice in the race. Lightfoot says she's seen people struggling with rising rent, underfunded schools, and gun violence. "This election is about demanding an independent, accountable City Hall that serves the people, not the political machine," Lightfoot says. Lightfoot tied Preckwinkle and other competitors to Ald. Ed Burke in the run-up to the Feb. 26 election. Burke was charged with attempted extortion Jan. 2. Lightfoot has since contrasted herself to Preckwinkle by saying, "I did not aspire to climb the ranks of the Cook County Democratic Party to be the party boss." Preckwinkle responded to Lightfoot's criticisms, saying she has a progressive record as a former alderman and as Cook County board president. Preckwinkle says she has brought that progressivism to the Cook County Democratic Party, of which she is chair. Preckwinkle's ad calls Lightfoot, a former senior equity partner with the law firm Mayer Brown, a wealthy corporate lawyer who defended a bank being sued for racial discrimination, "overruled investigators to justify police shootings," and worked for Republican politicians. (This Chicago Tribune piece gives some background.) Preckwinkle also criticized Lightfoot for giving $200,000 to her own campaign. Lightfoot said of the donation criticism, "If Toni Preckwinkle and her people think they’re gonna try to demonize me for being a kid from a working class family who did well, I’ll have that fight all day long." She criticized Preckwinkle's opposition ad as divisive. Preckwinkle has also criticized Lightfoot for having accepted appointments from Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Richard M. Daley, contrasting this with her own record in elected office. Emanuel appointed Lightfoot to the Chicago Police Board and the Police Accountability Task Force. Daley appointed her to positions on the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, Department of Procurement Services, and the police department Office of Professional Standards. Lightfoot said she is proud of the work she did in the city departments. First televised runoff debate Thursday Lightfoot and Preckwinkle will appear on NBC 5 March 7 at 6 p.m. CST. Check it out here. Where candidates need to pick up votes The Chicago Tribune mapped which mayoral candidates received the most votes in each ward. Lightfoot won the northeast wards. Preckwinkle's wins were mostly concentrated in the southeast. Lightfoot won 11 wards to Preckwinkle's five. Citywide, Lightfoot received 17.5 percent of the vote to Preckwinkle's 16 percent Feb. 26. Bill Daley won eight wards split between the downtown area and the northwest. In seven of the eight wards he won, Lightfoot placed second. Daley finished third with 14.8 percent of the vote. Willie Wilson, who placed fourth with 10.6 percent, won 14 wards in the city's South and West Sides. In each of those wards, Preckwinkle placed second and Lightfoot, third. Wilson said he'd announce a runoff endorsement Friday. Decision Desk HQ provided precinct-level election result maps overlaid with demographic information. Its maps show Lightfoot received the most votes in primarily white, college-educated areas of the city. Preckwinkle and Wilson took largely African-American areas. Susana Mendoza's support was concentrated in Latino areas. Daley's ward wins didn't have as clear-cut a demographic link. Check out Decision Desk's maps here. Quick Bites According to the most recent figures from the Chicago elections board, 35 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the Feb. 26 elections. In the 2015 city general elections, 34 percent turned out. The mayor's race went to a runoff that year, and runoff election turnout was 41 percent. 2011's general elections featured an open mayoral race and saw 43 percent turn out. Turnout was historically lowest for 2007's general election at 33 percent and highest in 1983, hitting 82 percent. City council race updates As of Wednesday, there were at least 13 council races heading to runoffs, nine of them including incumbents. The other four are open races. Runoffs will take place in: Ward 5 Ward 16 Ward 20 (open) Ward 21 Ward 25 (open) Ward 30 Ward 31 Ward 33 Ward 39 (open) Ward 40 Ward 43 Ward 46 Ward 47 (open) There were 4 uncalled races in which incumbents were less than 1 percentage point above or below the threshold for avoiding a runoff. Whether incumbents win outright or head to runoffs will hinge on mail-in ballots. The Daily Line reported the Chicago elections board began counting 13,843 additional ballots Friday. The board can continue counting mail-in ballots through March 12, so long as they were postmarked by election day (Feb. 26). Results will be certified March 13. The uncalled races are: Ward 6 (incumbent Roderick Sawyer) Ward 12 (incumbent George Cardenas) Ward 15 (incumbent Raymond Lopez) Ward 26 (incumbent Roberto Maldonado) On Feb. 26, 3 incumbent aldermen lost their re-election bids: 1st Ward Ald. Joe Moreno 45th Ward Ald. John Arena 49th Ward Ald. Joseph Moore We'll keep you posted on council race results as more mail-in ballots are counted. Lightfoot v. Preckwinkle on the issues In this section of The Deep Dish, we'll highlight policy areas where Lightfoot and Preckwinkle differ. Click here to learn more about major issues in the race and where the candidates stand. Ward spotlight: The 47th Each week, we'll feature an interesting city council runoff race. Welcome to the 47th Ward. It's the home of current Mayor Rahm Emanuel and is represented by Ald. Ameya Pawar, who term-limited himself on the council and is now running for city treasurer. The open race attracted nine candidates. Matt Martin and Michael Negron were the top two vote-getters Feb. 26, with 39 percent and 21 percent respectively. They will appear in the April 2 runoff. Martin works in the Illinois Attorney General's office as a civil rights attorney. He was involved in drafting the consent decree, a recently approved plan to reform Chicago's police department with federal oversight. Martin also served on Pawar's Zoning Advisory Council. Martin says he's running "because we need to ensure that our neighborhoods have affordable housing, our schools are fully funded, and our police department gets badly needed reform." Negron was Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) staffer on the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, worked in the Obama administration, and served as Mayor Emanuel's chief of policy from 2013 to 2018. Negron says he's running "to ensure that families in the 47th Ward can continue to thrive here with safe, walkable streets, easy access to public transit, strong public schools, and vibrant parks and recreational spaces." The 47th Ward Democratic Organization endorsed three candidates ahead of Feb. 26: Martin, Negron, and social worker Eileen Dordek. The Chicago Tribune endorsed Martin, while the Chicago Sun-Times backed Negron. The 47th Ward includes parts of Roscoe Village, North Center, Lincoln Square, and Ravenswood. Martin and Negron both responded to Ballotpedia's Chicago candidate survey. Here are their  responses to the question:  What’s your opinion on tax increment financing (a program that funds development using any additional property tax revenue that results from an increase in appraised property values)? What, if any, changes would you make to the use of TIF? "Approximately $660 million of city property taxes go directly into TIFs, many of which aren’t located in 'blighted areas,' as was the original intent of TIFs. As a result, money is being siphoned away from infrastructure, schools, and pensions, and, too often, is dedicated instead to developments that are not a priority for our communities. TIFs are not an efficient or effective means of improving city infrastructure and should be phased out as soon as possible. We should not provide developers with taxpayer money to line their pockets with new developments, especially those that lack a large set aside for affordable housing. On City Council, I would support the Cardenas-Garza TIF surplus ordinance, the TIF reform ordinance brought forth by the Progressive Caucus, and an ordinance to require aldermen and women to post up-to-date information about the location and amount of money distributed by any TIFs in their wards." — Matt Martin, candidate Chicago City Council, 47th Ward Read all of Martin's responses → "TIF has an important role when it comes to investing in infrastructure, schools, parks, workforce training, and small business improvements. This role is amplified when you take into account the State of Illinois’s failure to pass an infrastructure plan for nearly 10 years. At the same time, more transparency and accountability are needed in the city’s TIF program and the program must not become a slush fund for large corporations. As alderman, I will advocate for the next mayor to make more information about the TIF program available to the public, going beyond the existing TIF portal by making it more user-friendly and offering information about potential uses under consideration but not yet formally proposed. Moreover, large projects like the Lincoln Yards TIF must allow for sufficient time for robust public discussion. I will also only use the diminishing TIF funds in my ward on infrastructure, schools, and small business projects and advocate for a similar approach citywide. And I support robust, annual surplus declarations to return TIF dollars to the taxing bodies." — Michael Negron, candidate Chicago City Council, 47th Ward Read all of Negron's responses → Our 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. Chicago candidate? Fill out the survey and one of your responses may be featured in next week's issue. Correction from last week's issue We apologize for a mistake in last week's issue, which featured a chart with election results. The number of votes reported for each candidate was multiplied by 100 (e.g., 9,000,000 instead of 90,000 votes). We corrected the graph on the on-site version of last week's issue here.

Archive

2019

• The Deep Dish: April 3, 2019
• The Deep Dish: March 28, 2019
• The Deep Dish: March 21, 2019
• The Deep Dish: March 14, 2019
• The Deep Dish: February 27, 2019
• The Deep Dish: February 21, 2019
• The Deep Dish: February 14, 2019
• The Deep Dish: February 7, 2019
• The Deep Dish: January 31, 2019
• The Deep Dish: January 24, 2019
• The Deep Dish: January 17, 2019
• The Deep Dish: January 10, 2019
• The Deep Dish: January 3, 2019

2018

• The Deep Dish: December 20, 2018
• The Deep Dish: December 13, 2018
• The Deep Dish: December 6, 2018
• The Deep Dish: November 29, 2018