Joliet electoral board holds hearing on objections to City Council candidates

The Joliet electoral board on Tuesday started a unique hearing in which a single objector is trying to remove nearly half the candidates from the ballot in the upcoming City Council election.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” candidate Jim Lanham said after the hearing. “They’re challenging my own signature. That’s how desperate they are.”

Lanham is one of four candidates who will defend his nominating petitions when the electoral board meets again on Dec. 11.

The others are incumbent Councilman Cesar Guerrero, Marzell L. Richardson III and Larry Crawford.

They are among nine candidates who have filed to run in the April 1 election for the city’s three at-large council seats.

The petition challenges were filed by John Dillon, a retired city public works employee who also was a union chief before his retirement and afterwards was chair of the city Plan Commission before his term recently expired.

Dillon was represented Tuesday by attorney Karman Bains, who stated the objections to each of the four candidates at the hearing.

The candidates, who did not have attorneys, will respond to the challenges at the next hearing but commented on them after the Tuesday proceedings.

“They challenged my aunt and grandmother,” said Richardson, owner of a downtown restaurant who said he closed his business early Tuesday to come to the hearing,

Richardson’s business decision reflected the kind of unexpected demands on their time that candidates can encounter when running for public office.

“I closed down to be here because this is important to me,” he said. “I say let the people decide who they want.”

Dillon last week said he filed the challenges because the four candidates did not file the required number of signatures to be on the ballot.

Each of the candidates, however, did file the 158 required signatures, although Bains in stating his objections questioned the validity of signatures.

The process of challenging the petitions, which candidates must file to get on the ballot, can be a technical one.

Bains noted that candidates failed to state in their petitions that they will be running in Kendall County as well as Will County. The city of Joliet stretches into Kendall County.

“It seems that the objectors make objections to exclude qualified candidates. I’m really concerned with the spirit of the process.”

—   Larry Crawford, candidate for Joliet City Council

“It’s very confusing,” Richardson said, noting that the forms used to file for election does not provide space for listing multiple counties. “It doesn’t say counties. It says county.”

Lanham noted that other candidates whose petitions went unchallenged did not include Kendall County.

Crawford questioned the process, saying it appeared to be geared to legal technicalities.

“It seems that the objectors make objections to exclude qualified candidates,” Crawford said. “I’m really concerned with the spirit of the process.”

Crawford also said the process appeared to favor incumbents more familiar with the technical issues that could lead to objections to a candidate’s petitions.

Guerrero, the one incumbent tied up on the objections, seemed to take it in stride.

“This is the electoral process at work,” Guerrero said after the hearing,

The at-large council members represent the entire city, while the council’s five district council members represent specific areas of Joliet. Because of the citywide scope of the at-large council seat, the election tends to attract a large number of candidates.

Besides Guerrero, the other two at-large incumbent council members, Jan Quilman and Joe Clement, also have filed for the election.

The other three candidates who filed are Damon Zdunich, Juan Moreno, and Glenda Wright-McCullum.