Homeless Man Who Gathered Petitions For Meeks: I Had Help

By Chuck Sudo in News on Dec 2, 2010 4:00PM

Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown sat down and had a nice chat with Arthur Hardy, Jr. Hardy is the homeless man who allegedly gathered signatures for the mayoral campaigns of James Meeks and renter of Rahm Emanuel's home Rob Halpin.

We say allegedly because Hardy tells Brown that he only gathered a small portion of the signatures for the two.Instead, Hardy told Brown that, even though the signatures are legitimate, he passed the petitions out among other homeless folk to fill out. Hardy also said that he was hired to gather signatures from Bishop C.L. Sparks, who also runs a consulting business and was contracted by Meeks to circulate petitions.

Hardy told Brown it was Sparks who instructed him to sign all the petitions that swore the signatures were gathered in his presence. In case you're unaware, that's against the law. Sparks would only speak to Brown off-the-record, so one can only wonder what was said.