Dems backing outsiders denied voter data
Even in the Orwellian world of Chicago Democratic politics, all committeemen are created equally, getting elected by the party’s voters.
But not all committeemen are treated equally, say the few who aren’t in lock-step with bosses Mike Madigan and Joe Berrios in next month’s primary election.
Take how zealously the Illinois and Cook County party leaders are clinging to the vital campaign resource known as the voter file. Several committeemen who refuse to toe the party line in some primary contests complain that the bosses have denied them highly useful data on the voting histories of Chicagoans in state House districts where challengers threaten the favorites of Madigan and Berrios.
John Arena, the alderman and Democratic committeeman for the 45th Ward, says Berrios recently told him he could not get the voter file because his ward organization is “not endorsing the full slate.”
It’s a slate that includes state Rep. Maria Antonia “Toni” Berrios. She’s one of Joe Berrios’ three offspring (the other two being aides in the county assessor’s office that their dad leads).
Arena’s 45th Ward Democrats and some other ward organizations have strayed from the rest of the party flock to support challenger Will Guzzardi, who nearly unseated Toni Berrios in the last election and now is getting help from the Chicago Teachers Union.
Some committeemen who asked for and were denied the voter file also broke ranks with the bosses to support Nancy Schiavone against newly appointed state Rep. Jaime Andrade. He’s a longtime loyalist in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward Democratic organization who replaced Mell’s daughter Deb in the General Assembly when she left Springfield to take dad’s longtime seat at the City Council.
The nine-member executive committee of the 45th Ward Democrats interviewed all the candidates and simply preferred Guzzardi and Schiavone over Toni Berrios and Andrade, Arena says.
“The leadership should not have the right to tell me how to run my ward organization,” says Arena, a rookie alderman who also has been reluctant to follow Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s commands on many issues. “We pay dues to the party. That justifies access to the voter file.”
When Arena contacted the county party boss about the voter file, he says, “I was told directly by Berrios that he was concerned we would use it for non-endorsed candidates.”
“It’s all on Joe Berrios,” adds Ric Munoz, the 22nd Ward alderman and committeeman.
But Scott Cisek, the executive director for the county party organization that Berrios chairs, sought to shift all blame for the voter-file flap to Madigan, the state House speaker and leader of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
Berrios had given the data to committeemen for years after getting it from a group made up by chairmen of the Democratic party organizations in all 102 of the state’s counties. Now, Cisek says, the data instead is obtained by the state party and controlled by it.
“We don’t have it,” Cisek said Tuesday. “Madigan has it. Madigan has cut off everybody, including Joe Berrios.”
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown confirmed that responsibility for the voter file was taken over by the state party at the start of this year and that only incumbents endorsed by the party would get access.
“The file is used to help elect incumbents,” Brown said. “That’s what we do. That’s what we understand the policy to have been. I don’t know who’s doing what, but the aldermen are not even on the ballot.”
The closely intertwined interests of Joe Berrios and Madigan — and the status of Toni Berrios as a party-endorsed incumbent — make it impossible to believe Joe Berrios is not very content with Madigan’s decision to keep a stranglehold on the voter data.
The voter file is prized because it allows campaigns to target the people who are most likely to vote in the March 18 primary. With only so many volunteers willing to go door-to-door on bitterly cold days, campaigns want to know which doorbells they are better off directing canvassers to ring.
Scott Waguespack, the 32nd Ward’s alderman and committeeman, said access should be automatic for elected party leaders in all of Chicago’s 50 wards and the 30 suburban Cook County townships.
Besides Guzzardi, Waguespack also is helping a challenger to state Rep. Derrick Smith, the Chicago Democrat who’s endorsed by Madigan despite a federal corruption case. On Feb. 7, Madigan’s Democratic Majority political fund contributed $1,500 worth of voter data to Smith, who claims he’s not guilty of bribery.
“It’s not fair to be forced to support an indicted incumbent,” Waguespack said. “Not everybody should be forced to jump behind candidates like that.”
Jay Travis, who’s challenging Democratic state Rep. Christian Mitchell of Chicago, says getting enough signatures to appear on the primary ballot should have qualified her to get a copy of the voter file. She ran into reality when her campaign asked the state Democratic Party for help.
In an e-mail that Travis shared with the Chicago Sun-Times, a state party official told her campaign manager, “Please be advised that your request for access to Vote-Builder for Jhatoyn ‘Jay’ Travis during the 2014 primary cycle has been denied due to: Challenging an incumbent.”
The Madigan aide invited the Travis campaign to buy the data for itself.
“This is just a clear example of how these entrenched political interests want to protect incumbents,” Travis said. “It’s very much undemocratic.”
It may well be undemocratic. But it’s hardly un-Democratic in a party where Joe Berrios and Mike Madigan know that controlling information about voters’ past tendencies is essential to ensuring their own future.