STRANGER THAN FICTION . . .
Tippecanoe and Pat Quinn, too! If history repeats itself, former Gov. Pat Quinn should have no trouble gathering 50,000 referendum signatures in the next two months in an effort to set a two termlimit on Chicago’s mayoral office. Why? In 1976, Quinn wheeled a canoe containing 635,158 signatures up the State Capitol steps to defeat a 100- year- old law enabling state legislators to get paid two years in advance!
“On their first day in office, legislators used to stampede to the state treasurer’s office to get their entire annual paycheck in advance of a single day’s work,” said Quinn, who credits the late WGN Radio legend Wally Phillips with “helping us spread the word of our citizen petition drive by having us on his show 12 times!”
† The nightmare: “The State Board of Elections told us all 635,158 signatures had to be filed in one book . . . and that was 28,000 pages,” said Quinn.
“So a WGN Radio listener who happened to be an engineer advised to bind up 1,000 pages at a time and then take airplane cable to loop it through all the bound pages.”
† The transport: “Then we built a 30- foot- long canoe on wheels and hauled it through town and up the steps of the State Capitol to file it at the secretary of state’s office. We painted the canoe red, white and blue in honor of the bicentennial that year.”
† The pot shot: “Although we got booed by the state Legislature, they knew the jig was up due to the voluminous petition response . . . so they passed a law killing the old legislation before a referendum could be held.”
Although Quinn is a fervent believer in populist petition drives, he denies this referendum is being sought only to put Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is running for his third term in office, out of the running if the referendum succeeds this November.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” he said.