Tomorrow's the Final Vote For Replacing Rahm

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Apr 6, 2009 6:00PM

And then there were three...In about 36 hours, residents of the Fifth U.S. Congressional District will finally know who their new congressman (or congresswoman) will be. Tomorrow's vote to replace Rahm Emanuel, now ensconced in the White House as Obama's Chief-of-Staff, comes after months of official and unofficial campaigning and the field has been whittled down from 20+ to three candidates: Democratic candidate Mike Quigley, Republican Candidate Rosanna Pulido, and Green Party candidate Matt Reichel. Everyone under the sun expects Cook County Commissioner (and avid Red Wings hater) Quigley to take the seat and we admit that we expect the same. It'll be interesting to see if turn-out is as low for tomorrow's vote as it was for the primary vote (17 percent). And while Pulido and Reichel have high hopes of an upset, Quigley's fundraising advantage over them ($600,000 compared to Pulido's $16,000 and Reichel's $2,000) gives him the edge. That is, as long as his supporters turn out to vote.

But the Fifth CD Race isn't the only vote going on in the city. Residents of Precinct 36 in the 19th Ward are also voting on whether or not they want to continue "the prohibition of the sale at retail of alcoholic liquor" in the annexed area. On November 4, the measure passed by a vote of 121-102, but it was discovered that there was a mistake in ballot codes during early voting and that some people outside the annex area received ballots with this issue by mistake. A court order [PDF] ruled the results void, necessitating tomorrow's special vote.

Voting will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. for both issues. Check here to find the nearest polling place if you live in one of the eligible areas or check here for a complete list of polling places [PDF]. And, as always, consult the Chicago Board of Elections for any further questions.

In case you need a refresher of the Fifth CD candidates, here's what we had to say before the primary.

Mike Quigley
Endorsed by the Sun-Times, Mike Quigley is known as a key player in a group of reform-minded commissioners once known as the Four Horsemen of the Cook County Board. In 2003, Quigley and commissioners Forrest Claypool, Larry Sufferdin and Tony Peraica successfully garnered enough votes on the county board to shoot down then-President John Strogers’s proposed budget, which called for tax hikes. It was the first time in 30 years that the board voted against the president’s proposed budget. However, that alliance experienced a number of fractures that included Quigley voting for President Todd Strogers’s 2007 budget. Some of Quigley’s opponents in the fifth congressional race have tried to paint Quigley as a stooge for Stroger, but Quigley was a vocal opponent to Stroger’s 2008 budget that called for a controversial sales tax increase.

Rosanna Pulido
Rosanna Pulido, the Chicago latina best known for founding the Illinois Minuteman Project seems like a counter-point to the Democrats running to replace Barack Obama's Chief of Staff. Besides vehemently opposing illegal immigration, she's a strong supporter of gun rights and fervently opposes abortion. In fact, those three issues seem to define her platform. With the state GOP weak politically and still deeply mired in political infighting, the Republican side of the race hasn't attracted nearly as much attention as the Democratic field has. It also hasn't garnered the level of support or endorsements that Democrats have, although Pulido is consistently a favorite of activists and bloggers on the right.

Matt Reichel
Green Party candidate and Chicago native Matt Reichel graduated fromthe University of Illinois in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in political science. In the years after college, Reichel worked as a peace activist, organizing for Student Peace Action Illinois, which opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004 he moved to Paris, France to pursue a master's degree. While abroad, he worked on several political causes, including the movement to vote "non" on the European Constitution. He also wrote for several left-leaning publications, including CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Spectrezine. When he returned to the US in 2007, he moved to Las Vegas to work on Dennis Kucinich's presidential bid, and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio to work on the congressman's re-election campaign. At 27 he is the youngest of the candidates in the race, and argues that he has a fresh perspective on the issues that face congress today, and that his background as an activist and journalist give him a "track record... of consistent progressivism."