Once Upon a Time in Chicago Politics

From Hyde Park Progress. This blog talks about the comings and goings out of Hyde Park. Hyde Park as you know is the home neighborhood of our President (really he lives in Kenwood, but it's not much different in either location or character from Hyde Park so there's no big difference at all). Anyway this is a story about the race for Alderman in the 5th Ward which not only contains Hyde Park, but Woodlawn, Jackson Park Highlands and South Shore.

Anyway take this as a cautionary tale about the roadblocks if you seek to challenge an incumbent Alderman. Especially if a supporter owns significant real estate and that supporter offers some space to the challenger's campaign free of charge. This causes the incumbent to threaten to send in the city building inspectors for causing intimidation. Needless to say the incumbent one this round.

I suggest you read the entire tale. Although I will add this:

Her own campaign office was mere blocks away on 71st Street (and incidentally located in "Suite 2B" of the same address as her ward office, perhaps unnecessarily raising eyebrows about her compliance with section 9-25.1 of the Illinois Election Code, which forbids using ward resources for campaign purposes, but I digress).

The Cook County GOP made some noise about this a few years ago, actually!