— Chicago Tribune | Alice Yin and Jake Sheridan —
On the last day for 2027 candidates to turn in their nominating petitions, mayoral hopefuls lugged in their stacks of signatures Monday with some personal flair.
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza brought with her a red cooler of chicken and pork tamales and a spork. Cardiologist Dr. Lisa Nee and her team strolled in wearing physician white coats.
Attorney William Quinlan came in over an hour after and took a shot at some of his rivals whom he recently sued: “To be clear … we’re just filing for one” office.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias and others are also running for reelection in their current posts this November, prompting a lawsuit from Quinlan that was dismissed this month. Quinlan has said he will appeal.
And leading off a late-day flood of candidates entering a lottery for the last spot on the ballot, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas took her own shot at Giannoulias, acknowledging her custom t-shirt was directed at him.
“No biceps, just brains,” it read in black, all-caps text. “Pappas mayor.”
Rounding out the end-of-filing crowd: entrepreneur Joe Holberg, Cook County Board of Review Commissioner George Cardenas, Chicago Flips Red co-founder Danielle Carter-Walters and former realtor Zoe Ma.
So as it stands, the Chicago mayoral race features 14 candidates. Mayor Brandon Johnson turned his sheets in Friday, forfeiting entry into the last-slot lottery, and other challengers went a week ago in a scramble for the first-spot lottery.
Mendoza, for her part, said she brought in over 26,000 signatures, putting her at the bottom of the pack so far. But she stressed it was quality, not quantity that matters.
“I always want to do things at the lowest cost and the maximum impact,” she told reporters inside the Loop Super Site. “That’s how I’m going to run this city.”
Candidates need a minimum of 12,500 valid signatures to get on the ballot, but most gather more than twice that to guard against petition challenges knocking them below the threshold. Mendoza on Monday would not say whether she would go after opponents’ nominating sheets, only answering, “Who knows? We’ll see.”
Also on Monday, Nee turned in 31,000 signatures while Quinlan turned in 26,000.
Last week saw Giannoulias turn in about 60,000 signatures, followed by U.S. Rep Mike Quigley with 42,000, lobbyist John Kelly at 36,000, Johnson at 33,000, Chicago Housing Authority Commissioner Matt Brewer at 32,000 and business Willie Wilson at 30,000.
Mendoza sought to wave away those concerns with her spork that she says is a contrast to candidates who are “bought and paid for.”
“The majority of the people in this city weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth; they were sporkers too,” she said. “Think of me like a human spork. I’m going to get to work, and I’m going to multitask.”
She displayed a moment of sentimentality when she dropped off her sheets, sighing, “It feels weird to not have my clipboard with me.” Then she continued offering her red cooler of tamales, asking election workers, Nee’s team and TV camera crews, “Chicken or pork?”
Nee said securing her 31,000 signatures was a difficult feat that made her believe the nominating petition process was outdated and “probably killed half of our Amazonian rainforest.” But it also informed her of what everyday Chicagoans want to see in City Hall, she said.
“It told us early on that people want something different,” Nee said. “They want less of a machine politick. They want less money in politics, and they want people that are really going to speak for them.”
Both Nee and Quinlan said they do not plan to challenge any candidate’s petitions. Quinlan echoed the call for reforming the signature-gathering process.
“I’ve lived it, breathed it,” Quinlan said. “This is a process that’s designed to get certain people in the office. It’s broken, and we’re trying to fix it.”
Quinlan repeated “first time” over and over as he meandered through the Super Site in order to stress that he was not a political insider. The former general counsel to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich responded “absolutely not” when asked whether he was concerned about his ties the disgraced leader.
“Rod Blagojevich was the first Democrat (elected governor) in 26 years, and the team that worked for him were terrific,” Quinlan said. “What Rod did personally and what he did beyond that, that’s something, but as far as the team, I’m proud of the people I worked with.”
Like their earlier counterparts, most late-Monday filers touted high numbers of signatures. Pappas said she had nearly 40,000 names, Holberg said 32,000 and Cardenas said 31,500.
Ma, who described herself as the city’s first Chinese American, Muslim and naturalized mayoral candidate, said she had 17,000 signatures, while Carter-Walters, the only candidate who publicly supports President Donald Trump, said she had over 13,000, making their candidacies notably vulnerable to signature challenges.
All five said they do not plan to challenge other candidates’ signatures, though Carter-Walters, wearing a bright red top to signal her Republican affiliation, added a warning.
“If they challenge me, I will challenge them, because I know that those are not organic signatures,” she said, pointing to not seeing any other candidates collecting signatures as evidence.
