So, I did end up voting yesterday. I had just enough time to run home after work (and boy are my legs tired!), vote, then run all the way back downtown to do my volunteering gig.
Who I vote for:
Mayor – Bob Fioretti – I’ve know of Fioretti for a while now as he used to be the alderman of my mom and aunt and my mom always had good things to say about him. I also really liked the answers he gave for the Chicago Tribune questionnaire. I am not at all upset that Chuy Garcia was able to force a run-off against Emmanuel and will gladly vote for him in the run-off.
Alderman – Ameya Pawar – This was a pretty easy call even though I didn’t know I was in the 47th ward until yesterday. They just changed the boundaries for this election. The guy who was running against Pawar seemed like a one issue candidate, that issue being fighting against density increases, which I am against. Also, Pawar has a very impressive background and as an added bonus is the first person of both Indian and Asian descent to serve on the City Council.
All the rest of the races were uncontested.
For the referendums, I voted ‘yes’ for all of them. The only one that I was kind of waffly about was the domestic violence treatment requirement for city employees. I am all for people who need help getting help, but I have some issues with employers demanding changes from employees for things that occur outside of work. Domestic violence is a serious enough topic, though, to let me see past my issues. Paid leave for workers was a no-brainer. The campaign finance reform offered is not my first choice of reform, but it’s at least a step in the right direction. Electing school board members I’m kind of neutral on. On one side, it seems like it may turn out to be yet another low information ballot item like judges, but on the other side, I like the idea of some sort of community control for our schools.
My main reason to be excited to vote for elected school boards comes from learning so much about how the last few rounds of school closings were handled – a board with really blatant conflict of interest issues that was completely disrespectful of the parents who showed up to support the schools their children were attended.
The fact that we have political appointees right now has meant we get a board with zero personal connection to CPS – no teachers, parents, administration. Instead wealthy donors who send their kids to private schools, suburbanites who don’t get neighborhood issues, charter school reps that haven’t been held to the same standards as public schools.
It’s a recipe for financial corruption, lack of accountability and disregard of the biggest challenges in the hardest areas. Which is the last thing a city with our kind of deepening socioeconomic inequalities and so much deeply entrenched segregation needs.
Very well said. I didn’t even think about that even though that’s one of the reasons I won’t vote for Rahm.