Final candidates forum for 47

Sounding hopeful and surprisingly united, three candidates to replace Democratic boss Eugene Schulter on the City Council closed the last of three community forums Wednesday.

“It’s a perpetual learning process,” Green Party candidate Matt Reichel told The Bulldog. “We’re still six days out. It will be the longest six days of the campaign.”

Reichel is among a handful of Green backed candidates in the municipal election. He told the crowd at Lake View High School that he expected at least 15 new aldermen in the new city council.

“The best organized ground campaign is going to win,” Reichel predicted. “Unfortunately the machine has a big advantage in that area.”

Tom Jacks, whose self-funded campaign caught the imagination of some voters as he described refusing any contributions so that he would be in debt to no one, expressed frustration with Chicago politics.

“I learned about the old way of Chicago politics,” Jacks said. Jacks had to withstand a challenge to his candidacy by the machine. He said the ballot issue was designed to keep incumbents in office.

“Challengers have a hard time. Over 100 people withdrew or were removed from the ballot,” he noted.

Reichel, who was also challenged, echoed concern about ballot access. The unsuccessful challenge to his campaign had wasted days of his life he said.

Jacks hoped that Wednesday next week “the voters of the ward made a choice not to support an anointed successor for alderman.”

“The city needs new solutions. It needs outside people to evaluate problems because otherwise the problems won’t change,” Jacks said.

“I’ve talked to thousands of people” in the campaign, independent Democrat Ameya Pawar said. “They want to provide their input and their voice to solve our problems.”

Pawar said he would be out again on Wednesday working the ward. If he won he would be working to develop the Ward Council, a theme of involving the community Pawar has made a mainstay of his campaign.

If he lost Pawar looked forward to working with the new alderman to shape policy. “I hope to be a partner with the alderman,” he said.

Reichel said Wednesday would be busy for him as well. “We get busy organizing the ward organization” if we win, he said.

Tom O’Donnell, the machine candidate, did not show at the forum. It was the second of three forums he had skipped.

Ameya Pawar is an advertiser on The Bulldog.

Related posts:

1. Pawar out raising O’Donnell in final days
2. Surprise filing: O’Donnell in 47th
3. Reichel: O’Donnell a weak candidate;
4. 47th Ward Petitions available online

Tags: 2011, 47th Ward, Ameya Pawar, Chicago, election, Illinois, Matt Reichel, politics, Tom Jacks, Tom O'Donnell

This entry was posted on February 17, 2011 at 5:08 am and is filed under Local Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.