December 21, 2022
"LOW-INFORMATION" VOTERS ARE KEY IN 38TH, 45TH WARD ALDERMANIC RACES
Second best is not the best, but in the upcoming 38th and 45th ward aldermanic contests it means being better – by getting more votes -- than all the rest. It’s all about being the runner-up on Feb. 28 so as to get into and win the April 4 aldermanic runoff.
It’s also about transforming “low-information voters” into “high-information voters. It’s often said that ignorance is bliss.
Politicians crave such blissfulness. They love low info voters because they can be swayed, presuming they vote at all, by simplistic platitudes which are packed misinformation and/or disinformation. More knowledgeable voters are more problematic and a harder sell. LIVs have a casual interest in politics, have a minimal knowledge of the performance of their elected officials, and vote based on what little they know. The more knowledgeable , conversely, are more intense and vote based on what they do know. The split is usually about 50/50.
The unfolding Chicago 38th and 45th ward races are all about who gets the biggest chunk of low-info voters while holding on to their already-committed high-info voters. It’s not about whether the wards’ controversial incumbents – Nick Sposato (38th) and Jim Gardiner (45th) – will get re-elected outright on Feb. 28. Each has five opponents. It’s tough to get the requisite 50 percent in a multi-candidate field. Each will draw 40-45 percent-plus. Of the two aldermen, Gardiner is the less popular, especially detested by the Far Left.
Feb. 28 is all about which challenger in each ward can claim the largest portion of the anti-Sposato and anti-Gardiner vote, which will be 48-58 percent in their ward. Each challenger has a niche, meaning some base of appeal among family, friends, neighbors and/or ideological adherents. Their names are listed in the adjoining chart. Each will get a minimal vote. Turnout was 9,349 in the 2019 primary in the 38th Ward, when Sposato was unopposed, and 14,858 in the 45th Ward, when Gardiner won with 50.7 percent (7,570 votes) over former Alderman John Arena, avoiding a runoff by 141 votes. So exceeding a cumulative 7,600 votes is the challengers’ magic number.
45TH WARD: “Nobody on the Left” will vote for Gardiner, said Megan Mathias, an attorney who has been campaigning for 20 months and has raised $110,000. That is true. “One in 4 (voters) view him (Gardiner) with absolute contempt,” she added. Those are the knowledgeable voters.
The ward’s “progressive”/Woke base is in the 40-45 percent range. Arena got 5,387- votes in 2019, or 36.2 percent. Kim Foxx got 3,581 votes in the 2020 Democratic primary, or 31.1 percent, and in the 2020 election, Foxx got 10,535 votes in the ward and Joe Biden 18,272. The bulk of the Leftist vote is in the south end, in parts of Portage Park and Old Irving.
In 2019, Arena won seven of the ward’s 48 precincts, all south of Montrose. Inasmuch as Arena won by 30 votes in 2011 and by 1,225 in 2015 it is clear that his in-your-face Leftist brand had diminished appeal in Jefferson Park and Gladstone Park. His 2019 vote was down by 3,106 from 2015. Arena’s Portage Park home was remapped into the 38th Ward, but his brand lingers among fans of People’s Fabric, an online political blog. And United Working Families (UWF), the political front for CTU and SEIU Healthcare, will pour money behind whoever faces Gardiner in the runoff.
Gardiner comes into 2019 with some heavy personal baggage but a rock-solid political base. He is a firefighter-on-leave. He is outspokenly pro-police. Donald Trump got 8,309 votes in 2020, or 32.1 percent. Pat O’Brien (R), Foxx’s opponent, got 13,275, or 51.1 percent. Officer John Garrido, from Gladstone Park, lost by just 30 and 1,225 votes in his 2 races. The remap chopped out Independence Park precincts and added five from Edgebrook.
Gardiner got 5,559 votes when he ran for Democratic committeeperson in 2020, getting 51.4 percent. So the conservative/pro-Gardiner base in the ward is around 45 percent, or 6,000 votes. Gardiner, who has raised $240,000, said his polling showed positive job approval, but he didn’t share the numbers.
Gardiner got into a scrape mid-summer 2021 when he used misogynistic language to berate an aide of another alderman in a text and spoke in a derogatory manner about women.
He apologized, but some voters will remember. Gardiner hopes that his base will view the incident as just part of the city’s rough-and-tumble politics, where etiquette is a rarity.
The aldermanic race is non-partisan, not a primary (D) where knowledgeable voters dominate. The candidates from the Left are Santoya, Ernst, Suh, Mathias at center-Left, then Tomic and Gardiner on the Right. If Gardiner finishes in the low 40s and Mathias comes in at 20 percent-plus, then Gardiner is a goner. If Gardiner is in the high 40s and his foe is Suh or Santoya, one of whom gets 20 percent of the Left vote, then the alderman has a path to victory.
38TH WARD: An alderman’s job is basically that of a ward housekeeper, insuring that city services maintain/improve quality of life. But social issue advocacy is now the norm, and it creates the opportunity to posture and pontificate so as to expand the voters base. Abortion access is not an issue germane to the City Council. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision gave each state, not each city, the power to regulate or ban.
Nevertheless, the council couldn’t resist the opportunity. It passed a resolution in mid-2022 commending the state legislature for the 2019 Reproduction Protection Act, which codified Roe v. Wade in Illinois. And then it passed the Bodily Autonomy Ordinance, a law which forbids city agencies and Chicago abortion providers from notifying authorities in the home state of a patient which banned all abortions (like Indiana). Sposato voted against BOTH.
“I am against abortion,” said Sposato, “for moral reasons,” although he made it clear that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, the mother’s health and any child abnormality, and the morning-after pill. “It’s an issue,” said Ed Bannon, one of five candidates running against Sposato, especially among the high information voters. “When I knock on doors, at least one in 4 (voters) mention that to me.” Both Bannon, a former Arena staffer, and Cynthia Santos, a state Pollution Control Board member, are pro-choice.
A second issue which reportedly bifurcates the voters is allegedly Sposato’s health. He has multiple sclerosis and is wheelchair-bound. At a Dec. 12 Bridge School LSC meeting Santos appeared and, according to Sposato’s chief-of-staff and LSC community representative Katherine Blonski, she said at the public comment portion that “unlike the current alderman, I will get around.” Blonski reportedly then shouted “that’s not true.”
There are seven LSCs in the 38th Ward, five of which are elementary, and each meets monthly. And there are seven 16th District police beats in the ward, each with a CAPS beat that meets bi-monthly. “I attend almost all of them,” said Sposato. “I’ve never seen Bannon or Santos at any of them.” Sposato, a firefighter on-leave, also attends pro-police rallies and charitable events and collects donations for food banks and pet rescues.
Sposato was first elected in 2011, defeating alderman John Rice in the runoff with 56 percent in the old 36th Ward. The council then merged the north half of the 36th Ward with the 38th Ward, where Tim Cullerton was alderman, so as to create a new Latino ward (which was won by Gil Villegas). It was expected that Cullerton would beat Sposato in 2015, but Cullerton retired and, in a 7-candidate field, Sposato won the primary with 53.5 percent. “I avoided a runoff,” he said.
Outlook: Sposato is a competent, respected and visible alderman with $280,000 on-hand. So going out on a limb, I predict he will get 51-52 percent on Feb. 28.
Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com
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