June 5, 2019
"WHAT IFS...?" HAUNT DEB MELL AFTER 13-VOTE LOSS IN 33RD WARD
ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART
There is a difference between the adage that "all good things must come to an end," and the adage that "all things must end good."
For Alderman Deb Mell, losing her 33rd Ward runoff on April 2 by 13 votes out of 11,495 cast was not a good ending. Mell lost to democratic socialist Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez 5,754-5,741, thereby ending her 6-year tenure and the family dynasty's 44-year reign. Father Dick Mell was alderman from 1975 to 2013, and the ward's Democratic committeeman from 1976 to 2016, until he was defeated by 50 votes by Aaron Goldstein. Dick Mell lost 5,457-5,407 in the 2016 primary, with a turnout of 10,864.
"The anti-Mell floor kept getting higher and higher," Goldstein said, who added that Deb Mell lost not because she was an inept or incompetent alderman, but because enough voters finally concluded that they didn't want any more Mells.
"There was criticism that she was not a leader (in the council) on any issue. There was criticism that she delivered subpar constituent services. But it all came down to her surname," said Goldstein. "Voters had enough" of the Mells.
Goldstein also noted that ethnicity and demographics were also a factor. "There is a large and growing Hispanic population" in the ward, especially in the Albany Park and north Logan Square precincts. Those areas went heavily for Rodriguez Sanchez. Dick Mell, in the past, had built a ward wide precinct operation populated with state, county and city jobholders, most of whom were Hispanic. He had annual fund-raisers that drew more than 2,000 people. With his council clout, and his real or perceived statewide clout while son-in-law Rod Blagojevich was governor (2003-09), Mell got people jobs, and those people then reciprocated by working precincts and getting votes for Mell, his family and his endorsed candidates. Father Mell made Blagojevich a state representative in 1992 and congressman in 1996, and made Deb Mell state representative in 2008 and, when he resigned, alderman in 2013. When he quit, and then lost as committeeman, the Good Ship Mell foundered, and Deb Mell had a minimal precinct presence in 2019.
Mell championed equality issues while in Springfield, going out of state to get married to another woman before Illinois legalized same-sex marriage. But that was not relevant when it came to delivering ward services.
According to Goldstein, Mell had 15 mailings during the campaign, to Rodriguez Sanchez's eight, but not many of Mell's were negative. She did several postings on Facebook blasting her opponent as anti-police and a communist, but generally adhered to the ancient political strategy of not attacking an unknown opponent, as that only elevates the opponent's name recognition.
That, in hindsight, was a blunder. Mell's mailers touted her constituent service and ward improvements, but she tendered no plausible reason to vote AGAINST her opponent, such as Rodriguez Sanchez's support for the agenda of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, which includes rent control. Running an anti-tax hike, pro-capitalist campaign in 2019's environment was not a feasible option.
As a result, the ward's threadbare pro-Mell majority, as evidenced in 2015 by Deb Mell's 50.2 percent 4,103-2,779-1,289 primary win over two opponents, getting 18-votes beyond 50 percent, and avoiding a runoff, evolved over 4 years into a threadbare 2019 anti-Mell majority of 13 votes.
Warning signs were apparent. Bernie Sanders topped Hillary Clinton 7,873-5,199 in the 2016 Democratic primary and in this year's Feb. 26 municipal primary, Mell finished second with 4,515 votes, or 41.3 percent, to Rodriguez Sanchez's 4,598 and Katie Sieracki's 1,822 in a 10,935 turnout. The total anti-Mell vote was 6,220, or 58.7 percent. To win, Mell needed to either (1) increase the ward wide runoff turnout by close to 1,000, particularly in the Mell base of Ravenswood Manor, the upscale residential area east of Kedzie to the Chicago River, between Lawrence and Addison centered around Horner Park, which contains 12 precincts, or (2) depress turnout in the Hispanic-majority precincts west of Kedzie and in those south of Belmont. And she needed to get the preponderance of the Sieracki vote.
Mell actually did some of that. She had upped her 2015 vote by 412, from 4,103 to 4,515, but that still got her only 41.3 percent on Feb. 26. She also upped her April 2 runoff vote by 1,226, from 4,515 to 5,741, which means she likely got two-thirds of the Sieracki vote, and primary-to-runoff turnout spiked by 560 votes, from 10,935 to 11,495. But Rodriguez Sanchez, riding the crest of the Lori Lightfoot change wave, upped her vote by just over 8 percent, from 4,598 in the primary to 5,754 in the runoff, a pickup of 1,156 votes. Mell was a loyal but not an automatic supporter of the Emanuel administration during her tenure, bucking him on several budget and tax votes, but she was indelibly the "establishment," status quo candidate, so the 2019 elections were a referendum on her and her dad.
After Emanuel appointed her alderman, Deb Mell moved out of her father's Fullerton Avenue aldermanic/political office to a place up north, and tried to establish a separate identity. She declined to let Dick Mell make her the ward Democratic committeeman and she focused on ward services, and was non-political. (Except that one time when she zip tied herself to former Alderman John Arena during a minimum wage protest in front of a McDonald's and they both pretended that they were arrested for a photo op. They weren't).
All was well after the Emanuel appointment, but there was one huge problem. I think Deb Mell was not a good fit to be an alderman in the first place. She is serious and low-key, whereas dad was garrulous and voluble, and had a knack for promising anything and everything to anybody and everyone, especially jobs. Dick Mell was the man-in-charge, the go-to guy. Deb Mell was and is more like a bureaucrat. Dick Mell engendered loyalty and commitment and Deb Mell didn't. In short, Deb Mell was a good fit to be a state representative for life.
The 33rd Ward was carefully configured by Dick Mell's Rules Committee in the City Council's 2011 remap, adding two precincts from Albany Park and chopping out four mostly Hispanic precincts west of Kimball between Montrose and Irving Park. The ward extends from Foster to Diversey, west of the River, with the westernmost boundary being Lawndale. There are 28 precincts in the ward, and 27,834 registered voters, which indicates a large non-citizen electorate.
Of the ward's 28 precincts, on April 2 Mell won 13, five with over 60 percent. All 13 were in the Ravenswood Manor/Horner Park area, her father's longtime base. By comparison, Mell in 2015 won 22 of 28 precincts, when she faced CTU-endorsed teacher Tim Meegan and Annisa Wanat. Mell got 50 percent-plus in 13 precincts, and 40-50 percent in nine, while Meegan had a plurality in six. Of those 22 pro-Mell precincts, ten flipped to Rodriguez Sanchez on April 2, and one Meegan precinct flipped to Mell. Rodriguez Sanchez won 15 precincts, one with more than 70 percent, and four with more than 60 percent, all in the Hispanic-majority areas.
Mell spent about $374,171 from October onward, compared to her opponent's roughly $150,000, but her lackluster campaign eschewed the negativity employed by 40th Ward Alderman Pat O'Connor, who also lost his runoff to a democratic socialist.
"If only..." is the operative phrase. As a longtime political columnist, I can well understand Deb Mell's psychological angst. If one loses in a landslide, one feels pain and humiliation. If one loses by an amount roughly equivalent to one's fingers and toes, one feels a certain self-directed anger, self-loathing and intrinsic regret: What more could I have done? Why did I not do it? The torment is never-ending. Another question: Why didn't more people do more for me?
But the most salient question is: Where were Big Daddy's precinct troops when she needed them? Now they, he and she are gone.
IN ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT: The ongoing saga of who is going to replace state Senator John Mulroe (D-10) when he resigns this summer to become a judge has yet another wrinkle. Marty Durkan, the business agent for Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) has emerged as Mulroe's likely replacement. Durkan, who lives in Edison Park in the 41st Ward, was elected Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner in 2016, but was defeated in the 2018 primary by a candidate backed by state Representative Luis Arroyo (D-3), the 36th Ward Democratic committeeman. In retaliation, IUOE pumped a lot of money into 2019's 31st Ward aldermanic race, helping to defeat Arroyo-backed incumbent Millie Santiago. Durkan was preparing to run for the MWRD again in 2020. If he gets a senate seat, it will be a payback and pay-off to the IUOE, and it will clear the 2020 MWRD field.