Linh Nguyen bounced from 2025 ballot for DeKalb mayor

DeKALB – DeKalb resident Linh Nguyen’s name will not appear on the April 1 ballot for mayor after the DeKalb Electoral Board ruled Tuesday she filed her papers outside of the window “required by law.”

The DeKalb Electoral Board ruled Tuesday in favor of an objection to Nguyen’s nomination papers. Nguyen was one of four who’ve said they intend to seek the DeKalb mayoral office in the spring 2025 consolidated election.

In a statement Tuesday, Nguyen said she plans to appeal the ruling.

“My team and I are disappointed but not surprised by this ruling,” Nguyen said in a news release. “My lawyer is reviewing the materials, and as of this moment we intend to appeal the electoral board’s decision. I want to make sure that the people of DeKalb have the right to choose!”

In the petition objection, DeKalb resident Albert William Vodden argued that Nguyen did not file her nomination papers in the time provided by law for an “independent” candidate for the office of the mayor in the city. He also alleged Nguyen’s papers had inconsistencies in the candidate’s legal name usage, according to the filing.

Nguyen’s Chicago-based lawyer Ed Mullen previously accused William Vodden’s filing of being a “strategic political move” aimed at ousting her candidacy chances. Mullen and Nguyen argued that she filed her nomination papers Oct. 25 with the local election authority as was necessary to comply with the election code. The filing window for city consolidated elections ran from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18.

Mullen said he was told otherwise, however.

“The intention was just to do it right,” Mullen said. “We called the DeKalb [County] clerk. We called the State Board of Elections. We were told this is the way to do it.”

The race for mayor may now be down to three unless Nguyen appeals the Electoral Board’s decision or runs as a write-in candidate. Incumbent mayor Cohen Barnes, 7th Ward Alderman John Walker and Northern Illinois University IT Department employee Kouame Sanan also filed papers for the seat.

Nguyen said she believes the Board had already made its decision before the hearing.

“As an immigrant and woman of color I am very aware that I am often held to a higher standard than others. My team was diligent about reviewing and following the election laws,” Nguyen, who is from Vietnam, said in a news release.

During the city’s Electoral Board hearing, Attorney Andrew Acker and William Vodden said they believe Nguyen should be disqualified for creating what they called an uneven playing field.

“If she is correct, then she has gotten a leg-up on all the other candidates submitting for nomination on the ballot,” Acker said. “Because the effect of it is, she gets first place on the ballot. That’s kind of an aggressive way to get right in there on the top of the ballot. But I believe that is improper.”

Mullen and Nguyen said they believe there are issues with the election code and that deviations are excusable as long as it doesn’t impact the integrity of the election.

“There’s no harm in her filing her petitions earlier,” Mullen said. “If you assume that she filed on the first day that she was allowed to file, it would go into a lottery. She does not expect to automatically be at the top of the pile because she filed at the nonpartisan period.”

Third Ward Alderman Tracy Smith, who also serves on the city’s Electoral Board, asked if the board’s ruling could spell jeopardy for other candidates for mayor and City Council who filed papers during the filing period from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18.

“Are we going to upend the other eight candidates that have now submitted?” Smith asked.

Mullen and Nguyen said in response that they believe the decision would be up to the Electoral Board.

“If an objection is raised, yes,” Mullen said. “The Board would hear the objection. So, you would decide that.”

City Attorney Matt Rose questioned if Sycamore is doing their elections wrong and what weight, if any, the Electoral Board should give to the history.

“The city of Sycamore, which borders us, has a managerial government and elects alderpersons by ward,” Rose said. “They have partisan elections where candidates run as independents. Are they doing it wrong, too?”

Mullen and Nguyen said that had it not been for the city adopting a referendum for a council-manager form of government, the city would not have a nonpartisan system.

“All we were trying to do is do it right,” Mullen said. “Not trying to upend anything just trying to comply with what we understood the law to be.”

In its final decision and order, the Board found that Nguyen’s “failure to file her nomination papers within the time required by law is a mandatory provision of the Election Code such that candidate’s name should not appear on the ballot for the office of mayor of the city,” according to the ruling.

The Board ruled further that the city has held partisan consolidated elections for its officers for over 30 years and is not aware of evidence that the city has held nonpartisan consolidated elections for its officers, according to the board’s final decision and order.

Rose said it would “mess up the whole scheme” for the Electoral Board to side with one candidate.

“Rules are rules, and the code is very specific about how you treat the order of ballot placement,” Rose said. “It doesn’t say anything about how you would treat it if it’s too early. It would mess up the whole scheme really of how to do it. Every other candidate out there, we have to respect their rights, too. This is the rules that they thought they would play by. I’m not aware of any real provisional law which would allow this Electoral Board to deviate from the statute, from the law and create its own equitable remedy even though we might really, really want to.”

William Vodden’s other objection over the candidate’s legal name usage was rendered moot.

This story was updated at 7:45 p.m. Nov. 19, 2024, with additional comments from Linh Nguyen.