Chicago voters are starting to get a glimpse at how the many candidates vying to be their next mayor are measuring up — literally — against one another.
Mayoral contenders wheeled in tall stacks of thousands of signatures, submitting them to election workers ready to size them up with wooden rulers at a Downtown office building Monday. It’s the start to the weeklong filing period for the February election that will help whittle down the crowded race for mayor by filtering out those who fail to collect the 12,500 valid signatures needed to make the ballot.
“It was a very heavy stack. They're quite heavy and (hefty),” said lobbyist John Kelly, who estimates he turned in roughly 36,000 signatures for his mayoral candidacy. “But we're over three times the amount of signatures that are necessary to be in this race.”
Candidates for mayor, city treasurer, and city clerk — all up for election in 2027 — often turn in double or triple the number of signatures needed to be safe from challenges to the validity of their petitions.
Businessman Willie Wilson said he’s going to challenge “everyone.”
“We're gonna look at everybody. We won't discriminate,” Wilson said with a smile as he turned in an estimated 35,000 signatures for his fourth self-funded run at the mayor’s office.
Candidates who turn in their signatures first thing Monday get entered into a lottery for the coveted first spot on the ballot. Others may wait to file on the last day, Oct. 26, for a chance at the last place on the ballot. It’s all to avoid being an overlooked name in the middle of a pack and reel in any uninformed voters who might check the easiest box.
Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza were absent Monday. A spokesperson for Mendoza said she will file on the last day, and Johnson’s team said he will file at some point after his annual budget address Wednesday.
The Chicago Board of Elections will certify all candidates on the ballot by Dec. 17.
All 50 aldermanic offices are also up for election. City Council incumbents, and their challengers, filed in to submit the 473 signatures they need to run.
“You could have a City Council session right now with all the folks in line,” said Matt Brewer, a commissioner on the Chicago Housing Authority board who is running for mayor.
Brewer submitted “over 32,000” signatures, many of which he said he collected himself “on subways, in neighborhoods, farmers markets.”
“We went all over the city, literally every corner of the city, all over the map, and the single most common theme was this desire for something more than politics as usual, and that's why everyone signed my petitions,” he said as an elections worker vetted his stack of signatures.
Surpassing all mayoral candidates so far is Alexi Giannoulias, who said he submitted 60,000 signatures Monday, from “across, I think, every single ward in the city of Chicago,” Giannoulias said.
“Barack Obama taught me that the way you run a campaign is the way you're likely to run an administration. So, doing everything — fundraising, petitions, volunteers, field offices, social — all that stuff is part of running good campaigns,” he said.
Giannoulias has also far outpaced his rivals in fundraising, with $19 million in the bank at the end of September.
The effort and cost of running for mayor was a hot topic, with candidate U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Chicago, noting: “having the most money” doesn’t mean you’ll win.
“What we've seen in recent elections is having the most money isn't the critical aspect here. Let's remember, in the last two races for mayor, the top two fundraisers lost,” he said.
