With the Christmas season upon us, Chicago Democrats will get in the spirit by dropping into the mud and doing a little wrestling, eye-gouging included.
That’s twice as many as the 12,500 signatures a mayoral candidate needs to make the ballot. But the rule of thumb is a candidate needs at least three times the required number to survive a petition challenge.
The new law neglected to stipulate a signature requirement. So a lawyer for the board of elections decided the board should require 25,000 on the grounds that—oh, he had his convoluted reasons.
One of those candidates was Rafael Chagin, a part-time telephone solicitor who said he was running for mayor to “stand up for the common man.”
Over the years, I’ve written many columns about how the system largely protects incumbents. Generally, I get a response from defenders of the status quo along the lines of—hey, man, rules are rules, and if challengers can’t follow the rules, they don’t deserve to get elected.
At the same time, Solis was also challenged for not putting the correct title of the office he was running for on his economic disclosure statement. (He wrote “City of Chicago” instead of “alderman of the 25th Ward”—apparently, it was a rough year for Danny in his ballot access filing.)
