More Top Picks Best Lightweight Rain Pants
Incumbents were leading challengers in two North Chicago City Council races, according to unofficial election returns posted Tuesday night.
Independent incumbent Ald. Torrance Markham, 5th, had 54 percent of the vote in his matchup with Democratic challenger Kenneth Smith with four of four precincts reporting. And Democratic Ald. Ernest Fisher, 1st, had 61 percent of the vote against challenger Terry Harris, an independent with two of two precincts reporting..
There were four City Council seats up for grabs on the ballot this year.
Ald. Carl Evans, 3rd, ran unopposed on the Democratic line. The three other incumbents were facing challengers, including Ald. Kathy January, 7th, who was forced to run as a write-in candidate after her opponent, Paula Carballido, successfully challenged her nomination papers.
Carballido’s objection was that January’s nomination petition listed her address as in the city of North Chicago, although her residence has a postal address of Great Lakes. Great Lakes, which has its own post office and ZIP code, is in the corporate limits of North Chicago, and January did mention Great Lakes in her street address.
But the North Chicago Municipal Officers Electoral Board — consisting of Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr., City Clerk Lori Collins and Ald. Ernest Fisher, 1st — voted 2-1 in Carballido’s favor, ruling that January “created voter confusion by listing a ‘North Chicago’ address on her petition sheets, instead of her ‘Great Lakes’ residence address.” Collins cast the dissenting vote.
Carballido, 34, who works at Skokie Valley Laundry and Dry Cleaners in Highwood, is running as an independent.
Unofficial returns before 8 p.m. Tuesday showed Carballido only receiving one vote. Write-in candidates were not included in the totals. Archived election results show that only 13 votes were cast in the race for 7th Ward alderman in 2013, all of them for January, who ran unopposed.
Smith is a photographer and an assistant pastor at Mount Moriah Christian Center in Waukegan. Markham is a pastor, as well.
Fisher, who was the city’s first black police officer and eventually became its first black police chief in 1983, was first appointed to the City Council in 1994 and was elected the next year.
Rockingham, who was first elected in 2005, ran against two registered write-in candidates, Charles Allen January Jr. and Anthony D. Coleman. Charles Allen January is married to Kathy January. Collins was running unopposed for re-election as clerk, and incumbent Treasurer Kenneth Robinson was also running unchallenged. Rockingham, Collins and Robinson were all running as Democrats.
Twitter @lucashammill