On December 24, the challenge to the petition of Willie Wilson was dropped. See this news story. The challenge concerned the February 2015 election for Mayor of Chicago. Incumbent Mayor Emanuel is running for re-election and his campaign had challenged the signatures of Willie Wilson, an African-American businessman. The law requires 12,500 signatures, and Wilson had submitted 47,000. The challenge had received considerable publicity.
It’g good to see May Rahm Emanuel come to his senses – and it still may be too late. Everyone knew what this was all about. Wilson was subject to take a good number of African-American voters from Emanuel, and he didn’t want to risk it.
Richard’s article says that Wilson is a wealthy businessman. Sometimes wealthy people are willing spend their own money on their elections efforts, and sometimes they are not. We’ll see just how serious Wilson is when he is required to reveal his campaign finances. If he won’t invest in his own race, then he deserves to lose. If he does invest, then I hope he at least gets into the Run-Off with Emanuel.
In the Run-Off, Wilson could pull an upset, and it wouldn’t upset me one little bit.
What percentage of the Chicago likely voters are black [including the well known Chicago graveyard voters] ???
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Nonpartisan App.V. for all executive/judicial offices.
Looked at some polling data on the Chicago Mayoral election, and Mr. Wilson is hardly showing. May be too early. He appears to have a good connection to the African-American community, and would be surprised they do not support him better than they are at this point.
But all local politics – being local – has its stories we outsiders are not aware of. As the election proceeds, we may learn why or why not, Mr. Wilson is not polling strongly at this point.