How did I miss this???

I was checking out The Capitol Fax Blog in a post from April 6 and the post talks about vote-buying in the Chicago City Council runoffs to be held later this month.

It springboards off the news about 43 Ward Aldermanic candidate Michele Smith's beer for votes scheme. Well I don't know what to say about that. I don't even know if it's even true. Well let's look at what this means though...

A flier circulated by Smith's campaign for a party last Saturday at a West Armitage tavern advertised a $5 drink special for attendees holding early voting receipts.

That constitutes vote-buying, a felony, said Daley, who has filed a complaint with the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Not so fast, said Smith, a former federal prosecutor. While she admits it was a screw-up on the part of a well-intentioned young staffer, she insists she caught the mistake before anything illegal happened. The party went on, but no one was asked to show their voting stubs to buy drinks, she said.

"We were just trying to have a party," Smith said. "We weren't trying to do anything else."

The flap was triggered after several Lincoln Park residents shared the flier with Daley's camp, spokesman Tom Bowen said.

Smith did not see the flier before it was released because "whenever it went out was a day or two after my mother died. I wasn't there."

Two of Daley's staffers dropped by the party and, in affidavits filed this week with the state's attorney's office, said they saw two women ask about the drink special and show their early voting receipts.

You certainly need to be careful about stunts in a town where the incumbents will knock you off the ballot because you failed to file a receipt in your petitions. Now let's head back down to the south side of Chicago. This may not exactly be vote buying but it just makes things interesting.

Also mentioned in this post is the race for 21st Ward alderman as the incumbent Howard Brookins is fighting to maintain his seat on the City Council against a union backed challenger, Leroy Jones. Apparently a campaign supporter owns two McDonald's (or Micky D's if you prefer) but he doesn't even have his business offices there but in the suburbs according to Chicagoist...

But the most important business leader to help Howard Brookins so far is Phil Douglas, franchisee of two McDonald's locations in the 21st Ward (even though his business offices are located 1951 Bernice Rd, in Lansing). He is generously offering free hotcakes to people that bring in early voting receipts (along with a flier making the rounds in the 21st Ward). According to the person who spoke with us at the campaign headquarters (who refused to give a name) this is a "campaign contribution" from a business leader in the community who supports Brookins. Calls to the business office went unreturned.

Also from the Capitol Fax are examples of flyers that Brookins is distributing taking shots at the local union leaders with pictures of where they live or at least the type of building they live in and his union backed opponent. It looks pretty good too.