Cabal civil war?
College kid beats back the Chicago machine and Boss Madigan blinks
DePaul University freshman David Krupa scored an impressive victory in Chicago politics on Saturday: Boss Madigan — the most powerful Democrat in Illinois — backed out of a challenge to Krupa’s candidacy for alderman in the Southwest Side’s 13th Ward.
“I am truly humbled to be the first candidate on the ballot to challenge the 13th Ward since 1991,” Krupa, 19, told me at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners offices on Saturday. “This is a huge defeat for (Michael) Madigan’s organization, and the beginning of the end of boss politics.”
So, the college kid is on the ballot, in a faceoff with Boss Madigan’s silent toady, the bendable Ald. Marty Quinn.
A few political guys mumbled privately that Madigan must be so angry that he might as well fill a burlap bag of the severed heads of a few of his precinct captains and hang them from the statue of the giant Indian on 63rd Street as a warning to all.
“He’s got to be so pissed off,” said a political guy who knows Madigan. “I can’t even think what’s on his mind.”
The feds?
This David and Goliath story went national after my first column on this last week, a saga of machine political overkill that failed, with thousands of false and felonious affidavits possibly carrying felony perjury charges, and Chicago Democrats trying to avoid answering questions about it lest they anger the boss.
Krupa needed 473 valid signatures of ward residents to get on the ballot. He filed 1,729 signatures with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. He earlier said he filed 1,703 but missed a page of signatures.
A crew of mysterious political workers — perhaps they were Buddhist monks, or the gentle sun people known as the Eloi, or maybe Madigan precinct captains — filed 2,796 petitions of revocation of signature. That means 2,796 ward residents filed legal affidavits that they wanted their signatures taken off Krupa’s petitions.
The Madigan men filed 187 affidavits of revocation matching Krupa signatures. But Dorf, a progressive who’d done election work for the late Mayor Harold Washington and former President Barack Obama, put in a Freedom of Information Act request asking the board to give him all the revocations affidavits that were filed.
All 2,796 of them.
“And that’s where the fraud comes in, that’s where the felonies come in,” Dorf said. “Almost 2,800 affidavits were filed. But only 1,726 people signed petitions for Krupa. And of the 2,800 affidavits, the 13th Ward could only find 187 signatures that matched.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-chicago-13th-ward-alderman-election-kass-20181215-story,amp.html