Democrat Challenges Petition of Working Class Party
The Chicago Political Machine may be officially dead, but its ugly ghost continues to haunt this city.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the slew of petition challengers flooding the Chicago Board of Elections against candidates the incumbents find distasteful.
Democrat State Senator Celina Villanueva of the 12th District is challenging the petitions of Working Class Party candidate Jordan Villas.
When I heard about this I had a flashback to Mayor Richard Daley and his machine knocking off any independent or upstart challengers to their entrenched rule mired in corrupt acts like this. I remembered one particular name that The Chicago Reader Ben Joravsky would write about when reporting on Chicago election corruption - Michael Kasper, the lawyer tied to the machine who challenged many petitions of opponents of the machine. He could be behind this latest ballot challenge.
Except Senator Villanueva is not with the Chicago Machine, she was elected after the dark days of Mayors Richard Daley and Rahm Emanuel. In fact, she appears to be a progressive who was first backed and funded by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). But it seems she is not too keen on giving the voters in her district a choice, especially one whose platform is based only on representing the working class people on the southwest side, and not a dime from corporations or money interests.
If he can’t save his petition signatures, then he will be knocked off the ballot and Sen. Villanueva will have no opponent in the November election.
What is perhaps even more slimy is that the challenger of Jordan Villas, a FedEx delivery driver, is a name nobody would affiliate with corrupt machine politics - Jesus Emanuel Alvarez. Alvarez or ‘Manny’ is a name that was big in the news a few years ago when his father murdered his mother and shot his son in the leg. Manny lobbied to pass Karina’s Bill to seize guns from domestic abusers in Illinois. His father just passed away in prison last month.
This common machine tactic to challenge an opponent’s petitions is apparently being taken up by younger people interested in entering the political world. Manny Alvarez is 21, he was 18 when his father killed his mother and he is associated with Senator Villanueva’s campaign. Another 21-year-old Jeremy Rivera is challenging the petition signatures of Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Mayra Macias running for the Congress District 2 seat vacated by Rep Chuy Garcia. Kasper could be behind this too.
Young upstarts in politics apparently are cutting their chops, or ‘interning’ by challenging their masters’ opponents.
The system shuts out independent political parties like the Working Class Party by forcing them to collect far more petition signatures than the established Democrat or Republican parties. Jordan collected 2,823, twice the minimum amount he needed knowing that there could be a challenge, said Ed Hershey, a Lindblom High School teacher and Working Class Party candidate for Congressman in the 4th District. He said it is an expensive and arduous process when they challenge the petitions and they need to hire a lawyer to have a chance. This of course discourages working class people entering the political realm where big money interests rule.
Hershey and his Working Class Party will be on the ballot to win US Rep. Chuy Garcia’s seat as an independent because he earned 5 percent of the vote in the previous election which automatically placed him on the ballot. Garcia’s Chief of Staff Patty Garcia will be running and this fueled the anger of his opponents who said it is not fair to hand off his Congress seat to his selected heir. Two of his opponents - Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25 ward) and Mayra Macias petitions are also being challenged.
Hershey is no stranger to SW Side political intrigue. He ran for Alderman in the 25th Ward against disgraced Ald. Danny Solis in 2015 before he wore a wire for the feds to help convict the leader of Chicago Machine corruption Ed Burke, a former Alderman and head of the finance committee where he demanded bribes in order to award contracts in his ward. Hershey said he collected more than 3500 signatures when he only needed 473, knowing full well what could happen. He said Solis looked at his petitions and said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot.’ He didn’t challenge his petitions. Solis won his re-election, but later was forced out.
“The working class needs its own party,” Hershey said. “The democrats serve the corporate interests of the ruling class.”
Progressives entered the world of corrupt Chicago politics to help elect Harold Washington as the city’s first black mayor in 1983. The powerful alliance of labor activist Rudy Lozano and Chuy Garcia helped force a consent decree so that Mayor Washington could get some legislation passed that was being held up by mostly white machine aldermen like Ed Burke.
Hershey said their state senate candidate Jordan Villas collected 2823 signatures, but they could be in trouble. Word has it Machine Lawyer Michael Kasper is once again the wizard behind the curtain wielding his legal wand to eliminate challengers to the Chicago Democrats today. Kasper was the one who defended Rahm Emanuel when his residency was challenged before he ran for Mayor in 2011. They both worked for President Barack Obama. The Daley Machine backed Obama in Chicago before he became the first black U.S. President.
Hershey told the story of another ballot challenge against a Chicago teacher who ran for State Rep against CTU endorsed and former college and career counselor at Back of the Yards College Prep High School Aaron Ortiz in 2018. Ortiz was a young Chuy Garcia staffer before he won his state rep seat in the Back of the Yards area. Challenger Lupe Rivera had her petitions challenged by none other than Michael Kasper and how it was done was equally slimy. Ortiz’s challengers showed a fake photo of Lupe, who is a light-skinned Latina, and asked if that was the person who asked to sign her petition. After these people said no, Lupe returned to these signers in person and asked them once again if they remember signing her petition and they said yes. She survived the challenge after 7 to 8 weeks of running around and doing this nonsense that the Richard Daley Chicago Machine was once proud of.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The CTU has donated thousands of dollars to the State Senator Celina Villanueva campaign over the years. She first won her seat in 2020 for state senator, but had to run again after they redistricted her area. When Villanueva ran in 2020 she was not on the primary ballot for District 21. Instead it was Silvana Tabares and then Villanueva was apparently placed in her spot by the Democrat control committee in the general election and won, Hershey said. Tabares had no challenger in that primary.
Senator Villanueva, like Mayor Brandon Johnson, has most donations hailing from unions such as SEIU, Carpenters, Cook County College, IFT, CTU and the Chicago Land Operators Joint Labor Management PAC, a major political action committee that is a partnership between the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 and the construction companies that employ its workers.
Hershey said there were many frazzled faces at the Chicago Board of Elections this week when he and Jordan visited to contest the petition challenge. There were plenty of school board candidates having their petitions challenged, including CTU endorsed Debby Pope, Ed Bannon, Norma Rios Sierra, Michilla Blaise, Angel Velez, Hilario Dominguez, Jason Dones, Jitu Brown, Anusha Thotakura, Emma Lozano and Yesenia Lopez. Former Uptown Ald James Cappleman (46 ward) is challenging the petitions of CTU endorsed Karen Zaccor.
Billionaire Michael Sachs is funding many challengers to the CTU-endorsed candidates, and I bet a chunk of that money is being used to knock their opponents out of the race - the spirit of democracy and having a choice who to elect be damned.
“The system is really set against the working class,” Ed Hershey told me over an iced coffee at Holy Grounds Cafe at St. Paul Cathedral in Pilsen. “The working class needs to fight for its needs.”
And that fight starts before the election even begins.