Carruthers campaign for Joliet council saved by old acquaintance, petition challenges fail

Joliet City Council candidate Michael Carruthers survived an attempt to toss him off the ballot when a woman whose signature was challenged showed up at a hearing Wednesday to testify that she indeed signed his petition.

Both Carruthers and Christopher Parker are headed for the April 4 city elections after the city electoral board upheld their petitions for candidacy.

Carruthers was on the verge of getting taken off the ballot as the board questioned the validity of the signature of Jeanetta Gordon on his nominating petitions. Tossing out Gordon’s signature would have left Carruthers one signature short of the 25 he needed.

But he put in a call to Gordon, who came to City Hall and saved the day.

“You were a big deal today,” Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who serves as chair of the electoral board, said to Gordon as the hearing wrapped up.

Carruthers was near tears when asked to comment about the outcome of the hearing.

“What you have to go through,” he said.

Gordon signed her name in front of the electoral board and even offered her driver’s license to prove she was the one who signed Carruthers’ petition.

Carruthers said he’s known Gordon at least 10 years, so it was not difficult to give her a call and ask her to come right over to City Hall. The board recessed for about a half-hour to give her time to show up.

His candidacy was being challenged by Kathy Spieler, a neighborhood advocate who also serves as a commissioner for the Housing Authority of Joliet.

Spieler said she was concerned about clean elections and contended that Carruthers nominating petitions had names of so many people outside of the District 5 seat that he is pursuing that he should be kept off the ballot.

Carruthers admitted many of the signatures were outside District 5, but said he had the 25 inside District 5 needed to satisfy the conditions for getting on the ballot.

The board, which also consisted of City Clerk Christa Desiderio and council member Jan Quillman, as the senior member of the council, went through a painstaking review of the signatures, double-checking their math at times, before concluding that it all came down to whether the signature for Gordon was valid.

They determined that 25 of the 50 signatures were not valid.

“I’m not comfortable because it’s so close,” Quillman said, suggesting the hearing be postponed so Gordon could testify.

Carruthers then offered to get Gordon on the phone and see how soon she could be there.

Gordon answered the call, arrived in about a half-hour, validated her signature and address, and it was over.

The ruling on Parker’s case was more clear-cut.

Board members voiced skepticism throughout the hearing of the challenge posed by William Ferguson, one of the District 4 candidates who filed the challenge to remove Parker from the District 4 ballot.

“Essentially, nothing was done correctly,” attorney Ryan Morton, who represented Ferguson, said of Parker’s petitions.

But board members did not buy the argument.

“I’m not sure what you think is lacking,” O’Dekirk said to Morton.

O’Dekirk questioned Ferguson’s motives in the challenge, noting he contended the petition form used by Parker was invalid but did not question the same form used by other candidates.

The form itself became a topic of debate, since it is handed out by the city clerk’s office to candidates seeking election. But city officials said it is the form provided by the State Board of Elections to be used for council races.

Desiderio recused herself from the Parker hearing because she was a subject of the challenge.

Council member Larry Hug replaced Desiderio and noted that despite the claim that Parker’s petition forms created confusion, there were no witnesses at the hearing claiming to have been confused.

“I see no fraud,” Hug said. “I see no deception. I see no confusion.”

Parker, when it was over, called it “a good day. I think it was a fair hearing.”