All candidates for Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson’s old seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners are poised to survive legal challenges and stay on the ballot.
However, it’s not clear how many Democratic candidates will end up challenging U.S. Representative Danny Davis (D-7).
Three candidates filed to run for Johnson’s old seat. Zerlina Smith-Members and incumbent Tara Stamps are running for the Democratic Party nomination, with the winner facing Libertarian Party candidate James Humay in the general election.
Davis is facing off against Kina Collins, who challenged him in 2020 and 2022, earning a respectable 45% of the vote to Davis’ 52% the second time. Other candidates who filed to run for the Democratic primary included Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, former Democratic Party campaign operative Kouri Marshall, teacher Nikhil Bhatia and Rhonda Sherrod. Chad Koppie is running as a Republican.
All three candidates vying for the county board seat faced objections. The Cook County Electoral Board has voted to keep Stamps and Humay on the ballot, and Frank Tedesso, the hearing officer overseeing the Smith-Members case, recommended keeping her on the ballot as well, finding that she had enough valid signatures to keep her above the legal minimum.
All 7th congressional district Democratic candidates except Conyears-Ervin faced objections. On Jan. 5, Chicago Board of Election Commissioners voted to remove Sherrod because she submitted fewer signatures than legally required, and Davis remained on the ballot after the objection against him was withdrawn, But Marshall’s, Collins’ and Bhatia’s cases still haven’t been ruled on as of Jan. 8.
When candidates run for a political office, any registered voter within the district they are running for can challenge their candidacy. They usually try to invalidate enough signatures on the nominating petitions to put the candidate below the legally required minimum, but some objections get more elaborate.
Cook County Board
When Johnson gave up his seat on the county board, Smith-Members and Stamps were among the six finalists who vied to be appointed to his seat until the 2024 election. Both candidates said at the time that if they weren’t selected, they would run to serve the remaining two years of his term.
Smith-Members’ husband, Antoine Members, filed objections against Stamps and Humay. On Jan. 4, the Cook County Electoral Board unanimously voted to throw out both objections because they didn’t follow the proper legally required format and because Members didn’t show up for any of the hearings on the objections.
Latrice Whitfield, of Oak Park, filed an objection against Smith-Members. In addition to challenging signatures, she argued that the way the petitions were labeled should get all the signatures thrown out. The signature sheets stated that Smith-Members was seeking a full term rather than a half-term.
During the Dec. 26, 2023 hearing, Smith-Members’ attorney, Andrew Finko, argued that, since the 1st District seat is the only Cook County Board seat being contested, there is no chance that the voters might be confused about what his client is running for. Tedesso sided with Finko.
During the Jan. 5 hearing, Whitfield’s attorney Steve Fine argued that the fact that the county election officials struck 75% of Smith-Members’ signatures, and the fact that many sheets Smith-Members notarized continued clearly fake names like “Cheeseburger” suggested a “pattern of fraud” and asked that the board hold a hearing. Finko responded by arguing that Fine failed to prove fraud, and that election officials shouldn’t be considering it because it wasn’t part of Whitfield’s original complainant.
“The strongest concern for me is due process,” he said. “This was coming out of the left field.”
Fine responded that the allegations of fraud came out of the issues they raised in the original objection and argued that the evidence was too strong for the election board to dismiss altogether.
“The board has a duty to voters to sort through the evidence and give voters an opportunity to have a fair election, to have qualified candidates appear on the ballot,” he said.
Tedesso said that from what Fine presented, he saw no evidence “that there’s actually fraud involved, and not just sloppy canvasing work.” Since he didn’t find other arguments persuasive, he said he would recommend keeping Smith-Members on the ballot.
“Next time, plead in your original petition when you have that many objections,” Tedesso added.
The electoral board will still need to vote on the issue.
Smith-Members said that she was looking forward to campaigning against Stamps.
“I’m a fighter and I’m going to continue to fight for democracy and the right leadership,” she said.
7th Congressional District
Davis, whose district includes much of the West Side and west suburban Oak Park and Forest Park, is serving his 13th term in Congress. He flirted with not running this time, only to change his mind. Conyears-Ervin, who said she would only run if Davis didn’t, stayed in the race.
Emma Jean Robinson, of Austin, and Kathy Davis, of East Garfield Park, filed objections against every candidate who filed to run in the Democratic primary except Conyears-Ervin. Robinson previously filed objections against three candidates who challenged Conyears-Ervin’s husband, Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), when he ran for reelection in 2023.
The duo objected to Davis’ statement of candidacy, arguing that it wasn’t properly filled out – only to withdraw their challenge Dec. 28. With Sherrod, they pointed to the fact that she only submitted 809 signatures – 12 signatures fewer than the legal minimum. For the other candidates, they filed the standard invalid signatures objections.
Hearing officer Mathias Delort found the objection against Sherrod to be valid. She appealed the recommendation, but didn’t show up at the Jan. 5 board of elections meeting to make her case, leading the board to rule against her.
Sherrod didn’t respond to a request for comment by the deadline.
Marshall told this publication that, as of Jan. 5, the election board kept enough signatures to put him 10% above the legal minimum, so he was confident that he would prevail. But he said that he was frustrated with the entire process.
“It’s very undemocratic,” Marshall said. “I think we should be focusing of inclusion; this is a process that has excluded so many people.”
The primary election will take place March 19, and the general election will take place Nov. 5.
