Aides to Cook County Board president candidate Richard Phelan proclaimed Sunday that their candidate`s nominating petitions will withstand an opponent`s challenge and predicted the matter would be resolved by the end of the week.
The pronouncement capped a weekend of campaigning by candidates for local, state and federal offices just a little more than two months before the March 20 primary election.
Enough of the 13,391 signatures on Phelan`s petitions will have been considered by the end of the week for the board to make a decision, predicted campaign aides to Phelan and one of his challengers, State Sen. Ted Lechowicz (D-Chicago).
By that time, Phelan also probably will have decided if he will stay in the race following the recent death of his wife, according to his campaign manager, Eric Adelstein.
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Phelan staff members said that nearly half of the signatures on nominating petitions considered as of Sunday had been found valid, and they charged that the Chicago Board of Elections is helping Lechowicz, the Cook County Democrats` slated candidate.
Phelan`s supporters said they are confident that examination teams will validate the minimum of 6,520 signatures needed to keep him on the ballot, despite Lechowicz`s challenge that more than half of the signatures were forged or belonged to unregistered voters.
But Lechowicz campaign officials claimed Sunday their challenges of city voters` signatures were being sustained at a daily rate of at least 60 percent. Challenges of 4,575 signatures had been upheld as of Sunday, Lechowicz attorney Michael Lavelle said.
Phelan supporters reported that only 3,800 challenges had been upheld by election officials as of Sunday. Teams of clerks and representatives from both camps were to continue this week to consider signatures one by one, checking city and county voter lists for address listings and voter registration.
Representatives for both campaigns agreed that at least 35 percent of the signatures on Phelan`s petitions remained to be examined.
”He is not waiting for the outcome of this to make his decision,”
Adelstein said of Phelan. ”If he decides he wants to be on the ballot, we know he will be.”
Meanwhile, Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43rd), seeking to unseat veteran U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates in the March Democratic primary, proposed Sunday that Congress enact legislation providing universal health care coverage for all children aged 6 and under.
Likening the plan to the Head Start program in education, Eisendrath said the health coverage would provide an early foundation of wellness for all children, particularly those in poor families.
Eisendrath believes his measure would reduce the number of parents of young children seeking care in often overburdened emergency rooms because they would be able to pay for treatment from doctors.
The costs for this would come from reallocating federal health resources, Eisendrath said.
He criticized Yates in particular and Congress in general for failing to solve the nation`s health care problems.
Speaking for Yates, Dr. Marvin Rosner, an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Medical School, said health care is not simply a federal concern. States, counties and cities must also pay for medical care, and they have not, Rosner said.
Rosner called Eisendrath`s charges ”irresponsible.” He criticized Congress but has backed no health legislation in the council, Rosner said.
In a bit of earthier weekend campaigning, the gubernatorial candidate who speaks of state government as a hog feeding at the taxpayer trough greeted voters Saturday in Booth 25 of the swine shed at the Kane County Fairgrounds. ”How appropriate,” said Robert Marshall, a 47-year-old physician who lives in Du Page County. ”I want to trim the fat.”
Marshall is the anti-tax activist who`s taking on Secretary of State Jim Edgar and Steven Baer, executive director of the United Republican Fund, in the Republican primary.
The admitted underdog is making his run after he lost a 1988 election for state representative and about six months after he was elected a trustee for the Village of Burr Ridge. He has his medical offices in west suburban Berwyn.