It looks like business as usual up in the 48th Ward. Just two weeks before the filing deadline for February’s Democratic primary, state senator Carol Ronen resigned her seat, opening the way for a handpicked successor to assume her office.
One candidate did. Within a couple days of Ronen’s announcement, political fund-raiser Heather Steans, scion of a prominent North Shore family, had her petition sheets printed and volunteers out gathering signatures. Ronen (who didn’t return calls for comment) immediately endorsed her, as did Congressman Jan Schakowsky.
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Local independents, including Lawrence, banded behind Elder. In just one week they gathered about 1,600 signatures, and on Monday, November 5, Elder drove to Springfield to file them. But the Edgewater regulars have another political tradition: the use of election law technicalities to throw candidates off the ballot. Mary Ann Smith ran unopposed in last February’s aldermanic election because she knocked off three opponents—Lawrence among them.
A railroad buff who used to build model trains in his basement as a child, Payne says the idea for the Gray Line came to him one day in the mid-90s, when he was sitting in traffic in South Shore, near the intersection of 71st and Jeffery. “It was a very congested Saturday at about one o’clock in the afternoon,” he says. “The community was bustling, but the Metra commuter station on 71st was sitting abandoned. Nobody was using it. Two trains came in, one going north, the other going south. No one got on, no one got off. And I thought, what a ridiculous waste. This is an asset to our community—let’s use it.”
Payne’s proposal at least has the potential to remedy this and help seed economic development in south-side neighborhoods. “You’d think they’d be interested if only because of the Olympics,” says Payne. “I’ll keep pushing, though.” v
