Two more candidates for Joliet City Council off April ballot

Two more candidates, who said they would have had to spend thousands of dollars to mount an effective defense to a challenge to their petitions, were kicked off the ballot for the April 1 city council election in Joliet on Monday.

“Illinois election law is bad,” candidate Jim Lanham said after being removed from the ballot. “It’s always in the favor of special interests and dirty money, and that’s what happened here today.”

The Joliet electoral board removed both Lanham and Marzell Richardson III from the ballot, although at times it appeared reluctant to do so.

Their ouster follows the removal of Larry Crawford from the ballot two weeks ago.

Their petitions were challenged by John Dillon, a former city employee and city union leader who also was chair of the Joliet Plan Commission until his term expired earlier this year.

Altogether, four candidates who filed to run in the April 1 election are now out.

Dillon also challenged the petitions of incumbent Councilman Cesar Guerrero, who dropped out of the race to instead run for supervisor at Joliet Township.

The hearing at times appeared to be a debate between whether state election laws created legal hurdles for ordinary citizens or set standards to keep unqualified candidates off the ballot.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Mayor Terry D’Arcy, who also chairs the electoral board, said repeatedly as he sought clarification on the rules governing petition challenges.

“We take no joy in this,” Larry Hug, a Joliet councilman on the electoral board, told the candidates removed from the ballot. “These are three candidates who have to abide by the rules and statutes.”

Richardson said he would have had to spend more than $5,000 to hire a notary public to verify that signatures he collected in the petitions he filed to run for office were legitimate.

“It’s OK,” Richardson said as it became apparent that the board would rule against him. “I understand. I’m not a lawyer. But I’ll know for next time. I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

Both Richardson and Lanham were ousted from the ballot for not having enough valid signatures, although Lanham contended signatures were incorrectly removed when examined by the Will County Clerk’s Office.

At times, he said, signatures were removed because like his own, they were signed “Jim Lanham” instead of “James Lanham.”

Richardson said he intended to run for council again.

Lanham and Crawford said they intended to run April 1 as write-in candidates.

Crawford contended that the electoral board was influenced by an out-of-town attorney hired by the city to advise them during the proceedings.

He described himself as a “neophyte” at a disadvantage in the legalistic rules governing who can run for elected office in local campaigns.

“As a neophyte, I recognize the shortcomings of what I submitted,” Crawford said.

But he criticized attorney Ross Secler’s participation as an advisor to the electoral board.

“Otherwise, there are going to be outsiders coming in and always telling us how to do Joliet business,” Crawford said. “I have a problem with that.”

Secler is an attorney with the Evergreen Park firm of OMFM, which provided legal services D’Arcy in his 2023 campaign for mayor.

Secler noted that city council members make important decisions on what residents pay in taxes as he pointed out that Crawford failed to file statements of candidacy and economic interests required of all candidates running for city council.

“These are simple things to be a candidate,” Secler said. “He didn’t file it until he got called out on it.”

The electoral board ruled Crawford off the ballot at a previous meeting and were making the decision official on Monday.

Attorney Karman Bains, representing Dillon, questioned the extent to which the electoral board was allowing Crawford to restate his case, suggesting it was looking for “loopholes” to vacate its previous decision.

“Mr. Crawford here is essentially relitigating,” Bains said. “I want the record to be clear that the decision has already been made.”

In the end, Bains and Dillon won their case, knocking off three, and arguably four, candidates off the ballot.

With the field narrowed, there are five candidates for the three at-large council positions that are elected city-wide.

They include incumbents Joe Clement and Jan Quillman, as well as Damon Zdunich, Glenda Wright-McCullum and Juan Moreno.