For the past few months Bob Bank has been looking for votes as he challenges the incumbent in the March 16 election for Democratic committeeman of the 45th Ward, Thomas Lyons. In retrospect, Bank wonders if he should have spent more time challenging Lyons’s lawyer, Tom Jaconetty, who’s trying to get Bank removed from the ballot. “Jaconetty’s tying me in knots with this case,” he says. “It’s classic machine tactics–he’s trying to divert all my time and energy from campaigning against Lyons.”
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Yet Lyons and Levar have stayed in power because they run a disciplined, well-financed organization. In last year’s aldermanic election four candidates filed to run against Levar. Two were eventually knocked off the ballot after Jaconetty challenged their petitions. “The leading challenger was Pete Conway, who got about a third of the vote,” says Bank. “That’s pretty good for a first-time candidate. I wanted Pete to run for committeeman, because you have to build on your momentum.”
But Conway declined to run, so into the race jumped Bank, a real estate salesman and longtime community activist who helped organize the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association. “The thought of Lyons going unchallenged just eats away at me,” he says. “I figured we can’t give them a pass.”
Then another obstacle appeared. On December 24 Slywczuk, Boyke, and a ward resident named William Paulson filed a challenge with the Board of Elections, asking that Bank be bounced from the ballot. Their lawyer was Jaconetty, who’s made a name for himself as perhaps the sharpest of all the sharp election-law tacticians working on behalf of the party regulars, the entrenched incumbents whose loyalty to Mayor Daley is unswerving.
On hearing that Lyons was trying to knock off an opponent, a rival election-law lawyer said, “Let me guess who’s the lawyer–Jaconetty, right? The master’s up to his old tricks. He’s gonna tie that poor guy up in all sorts of legal gobbledygook. He’ll quote everything from the state election manual to the holy scriptures if he has to. If he loses the first round he’ll appeal. And [Bank] will spend all of his time stuck in court instead of out on the street campaigning.”
Bank and Ernst countered in their brief that it would be redundant to write “Democratic” in the box indicating the office he’s seeking, because another box at the top of the nominating petition asks for party affiliation. “In the section for office I wrote ‘ward committeeman,’” Bank says, “under the section of district I wrote ’45th Ward of the city of Chicago Cook County, state of Illinois,’ and under the section for party I wrote ‘Democrat.’ It’s obvious I’m running for Democratic committeeman of the 45th Ward, so give me a break already.”
