Dirty politics and clean transit
Civic Update weighs in on the underhanded fights involved in Illinois ballot access absent political referees, and what it will take to finally park our cars and ride the bullet train to the future.
Poll position, ballot bribes, and dirty dollars: can anyone referee the crazy game of Chicago politics?
By Pastor
Politics is often described as a sport. The metaphor is appropriate, I suppose. Politics is highly competitive. There are rules that need to be followed. And there are professionals who have strategies about how to stretch the boundaries of those rules to create a competitive advantage for their team. But, one thing that is missing from the “sport” of politics: the referee, that person who pulls the combatants to the middle of the ring says, “Remember, we want a good, clean fight!”
You may have heard that newly re-elected Congressman Chuy Garcia is the “frontrunner” in the contest for mayor of Chicago. This widely-reported view is the outcome of an opinion survey conducted Nov. 10 to Nov. 17 by Impact Research, a consulting firm with deep connections to establishment Democrats. But what if I told you that the poll, which also showed incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot with 18 percent support, followed by former schools CEO Paul Vallas at 14 percent, was only one of the many games that campaigns play in the rough and tumble of intensely competitive elections?
One of the overlooked details of this news report is that the poll was commissioned by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, a union that previously endorsed Garcia and has committed $1 million to his campaign. When campaigns and their supporters release polls early in election cycles, it is important that reporters and other members of the interested public try to get a look at the entire poll, not just outcome information that the campaigns release. Often, the way the questions are asked in the poll can tell you a lot about the way respondents answered. The best political pollsters know just how to shape a survey in order to drive a narrative that will be beneficial to their client.
We don’t know for sure that this is the kind of poll that Garcia’s people put into the field. But the outcomes are extremely convenient, and without the release of the full poll, we can’t know for sure what kind of survey was conducted.
Games.
You probably read or saw on the news that former State Senator Rickey Hendon was secretly recorded on a phone call allegedly attempting to bribe Kevin Hobby to drop his challenge to nomination petitions filed by mayoral candidate and Hendon client Willie Wilson. Of course, Hendon denies any wrongdoing. Wilson, a Chicago businessman and philanthropist, released a statement saying that he “does not condone bribes.” But the nature of the call is undeniable. And while an audio recording of that kind of political gamesmanship is certainly newsworthy, it would be a mistake to assume that this kind of behavior is uncommon.
Many, if not most, of the successful campaigns in this city spend significant amounts of money in the petition gathering and challenge processes. Campaigns pay teams of mostly low-income workers by the signature to go out and collect the thousands of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. It is considered best practice to collect and file two to three times the number of signatures required to qualify for the ballot in order to deter or defeat a petition challenge. That’s because after nominating packets are filed, armies of paid workers flood into the Board of Election headquarters to comb through the petitions of rival candidates line-by-line with the goal of invalidating signatures based upon a number of allowable technicalities.
The large number of signatures needed to qualify, the inflated market at the grassroots, the professional legal services needed to help navigate the complex process and the regularity of Hendon-style “extracurricular activity” ensure that a system that is supposed to ensure a basic level of support for candidates before their name is certified to the ballot becomes a test of financial capacity instead. It gives an edge to the wealthy and well-connected over true grassroots candidates.
Games.
The money spent on making the ballot does not begin to approximate what candidates actually need to spend to get elected. Talk to anyone who has run for public office and they will tell you that one of the most important – and most difficult – parts of the process is raising the surprisingly large amount of money required to be successful. To put things into perspective, the 2019 mayoral race saw the top five candidates spend $6.9 million, $5.8 million, $4.4 million, $3.1 million, and $2.9 million, respectively. The average spending on an aldermanic race last cycle was more than $177,000.
The need to spend that kind of money on everything from campaign staff to television ads is no doubt the reason candidates do practically anything they can to raise support. Mayor Lightfoot’s supporters recently established an independent expenditure committee that seems designed to help the incumbent skirt campaign finance rules and take money from developers who do work with the city. She has also traveled as far as California to raise money from ideological supporters, who will likely not be directly impacted by the day-to-day decision making in Chicago’s City Hall. The mayor is on record cheerleading for the recently disgraced cryptocurrency billionaire, Sam Bankmon-Fried. SBF has also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Chuy Garcia.
Games.
In sports, we keep the game fair by making the rules public and having an impartial arbiter of those rules, the referee. Perhaps there was a time when a robust, free press could be counted on to fulfill this role. But the media today is increasingly captured by various ideologies. News outlets are stretched by a lack of resources. And too many in the fourth estate seem more interested in access to powerful people than accountability for them.
If we want a fair election, it may well fall to the broader community, to clergy and community leaders to call balls and strikes, and insert ourselves into the action when things get out of hand. It’s up to us to pay attention, to keep our people informed, and to demand accountability for violations of the rules and norms. We’re headed into the holidays and after the first of the year, this campaign is really going to heat up. Now would be a great time for us to remind the candidates who are contending to serve this city for the next four years that we want a good, clean fight.
The Round Up
Here are the stories that caught our eyes this week and what they mean for the weeks ahead.
Chicago taps brakes on gentrification with a tax on teardowns
Community organizers in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood have pushed back against the displacement of residents in the historically Latinx neighborhood using an innovative approach: imposing a $15,000 fee on developers seeking to bulldoze older buildings.
Older and newer buildings sit side by side at California Avenue and Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Photo credit: Taylor Glascock/Bloomberg
The collected fees accrue in a fund designated for a community land trust. Earlier this year, the trust sold its first property to an income-eligible homeowner for well below its appraised value and orders of magnitude lower than the typical million-dollar prices in the area.
Like other areas of Chicago, Logan Park has experienced gentrification, a term used to describe a phenomenon wherein a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, typically displacing the neighborhood’s less affluent residents in the process.
The city has also worked to add additional affordable housing in the form of accessory dwelling units, secondary, self-contained apartments, cottages, or small residential units located on a property that has a separate main, single-family home, duplex, or other residential unit. ADUs had previously been banned in the city.
The flameout of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has left scorch marks on Chicago’s burgeoning digital assets market. The company’s US-based exchange briefly headquartered in Chicago before abruptly moving to Miami and then closing up shop amid fraud charges and bankruptcy.
Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot welcomed FTX.US at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in May, touting both the economic potential of the exchange and its plans to fund charitable work in the city.
Crypto experts say the FTX debacle has set back the industry’s efforts to gain public trust, with many calling for more regulation of the market.
Pastor
covered the political implications of the FTX bankruptcy last month in the Civic Update, noting that Bankman-Fried boosted local politcians like Rep.-elect Jonathan Jackson, Rep.-elect Delia Ramirez and Rep. Chuy Garcia.We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops.
A Pilsen activist and a team of volunteers who have donated and set up winterized tents to shelter unhoused people in Chicago has met with city officials and gotten assurances the encampments will not be taken down.
A volunteer crew builds tents across the city. Photo credit: Andy Robledo
Andy Robledo has given away the tents for about a year, and thanks to community and volunteer support, has put up more than 100 tents in that time.
Robledo said that while the city has not condoned his efforts, officials have told him they will not take down the tents.
Chicago is investing $20 million in federal funding from the Chicago Recovery Plan into acquiring hotel-type facilities and another $20 million to improve existing shelters. The 2023 budget includes money to build a new low-barrier shelter, which will allow residents to come and go as they please.
Newsclips
Illinois' nonfatal opioid overdose rate among highest in U.S.
Jury awards Chicago police whistleblower nearly $1M
Chicago priest Michael Pfleger reinstated following latest accusation of sexual abuse against him
Illinois lags in energy efficiency despite new law
School news you can use
As Chicago schools go, so goes the city. Let’s hope there’s a fix for CPS finances
CPS spent $308 million on school technology since 2020. Now what?
City Council watch
Aldermen want to use COVID-19 relief money to give property tax loans to struggling Chicagoans
City Council OKs crackdown on illegal gun possession
Municipal race highlights
Vallas unveils crime-fighting plan to reverse ‘utter breakdown of law and order’
Can America finally hop aboard the 21st century?
By
If you’re like me, then you love to drive, hitting the open road with 200 horses under the hood and nothing between you and your destination but sheer determination and internal combustion.
If you’re like me, then you also hate everything else that goes along with driving: traffic and congestion, road construction, expensive vehicle maintenance, and reckless drivers threatening to end your trip and maybe even your life in a fiery crash.
A trio of local transportation-related headlines caught my attention this week and prompted the piece you’re reading. The Jane Byrne Interchange Project, finally nearing completion, has come in years behind schedule and well over budget. Meanwhile, the Chicago City Council earmarked funds for a major expansion of CTA’s Red Line, and CTA itself has moved forward with reconstruction plans to ease delays on its Blue Line.
Spending on highway infrastructure dwarfs train infrastructure spending. According to a study from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, for every one dollar the federal government invested in rail between 2007 and 2019, it spent three dollars on highways. And despite the fact that the United States boasts one of the most extensive networks of rail lines globally, this infrastructure largely moves freight, not passengers.
In the 20th century, as much of the rest of the industrialized world invested heavily in trains, the United States spent its public capital on personal transportation and air traffic infrastructure, leaving rail lines largely in the hands of private corporations. In 1971, the country embarked on a public ownership journey that began as an intended short-lived experiment, Amtrak, which nevertheless garnered enough support from riders to continue chugging along to the present day, albeit in a reduced capacity.
But massive new rail infrastructure spending, spurred by increased gas prices, public desire for an alternative to increasingly expensive and time-consuming air travel, and environmental concerns, has raised hopes that the United States might try to catch up with Europe and Asia when it comes to passenger rail travel.
While the country’s geography makes cross-country, high-speed rail unlikely in the near term, high population density corridors along the west coast, the northeast and the midwest offer greater prospects for a reliable, cost-effective and environmentally-sound alternative to cars and planes.
Meanwhile, post-COVID increases in remote work and spending on expanded light rail in the suburbs and urban environments offer a glimpse at a world less reliant on car culture. This can’t come fast enough, given the inexorable trend toward higher gas prices, punctuated though that has been in recent memory by the outlier of a lockdown-induced collapse in normal transportation patterns.
As Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs once wrote, “Cars are weird.” It’s strange for one person to drive a multi-ton contraption down a multi-billion dollar concrete and asphalt pathway every day, sometimes for hours on end, usually without compensation for our time and expense. It’s odd for each individual to need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase a vehicle, let alone the continued financial and environmental costs of gasoline, in an age when many meetings could be handled virtually from anywhere. It’s crazy to keep up this pace when rail transportation technology has advanced to the point where public mass transit is not only competitive but preferable in many cases.
You might object that I’m not accounting for the rural situation, where public transportation is a more difficult proposition. You might interject that you prefer to have your own vehicle and not to rely on public transportation. You could even find the entire idea of moving away from car culture to be a personal affront to your love of that culture.
I’ll reply to all those objections by saying, “I hear you and I understand.” The problems of car culture are mostly an urban phenomenon, and they will mostly be solved in that environment. I wouldn’t want to rely on today’s public transportation infrastructure, as I have had to do so at times and it’s quite a hassle. And as I mentioned above, I love my car, too.
But I’ll also counter with experiences you probably share of spending an inordinate amount of time circling your destination trying to find parking, or the sticker shock of a downtown garage. I’ll remind you of speed traps and fender benders. And I suspect you don’t get warm and fuzzy feelings when you think about paying your car insurance bill, nor remember fondly your last visit to the mechanic.
I’ll miss my car if car culture ever goes the way of the horse and buggy. But I won’t miss road rage. I won’t miss sitting for countless collective hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’ll happily get on a high-speed bullet train to the world of the future. I hope I’ll see you relaxing in the seat next to me.
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Excellent edition. Informative. Good to get behind the scenes. Still, as they say, no one's perfect. This verbal referee says YA BASTA CON "LATINX." BTW, does the word exist in Spanish?