There’s a peculiar tango being danced in the 32nd Ward committeeman’s race.
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After Waguespack won last spring, edging out the remnants of the 32nd Ward organization formerly controlled by Dan Rostenkowski and retiring committeeman Terry Gabinski, supporters in the know urged him to run for the position. But soon after being sworn in, Waguespack announced that he had no plans to. “I wanted to focus on the job I had just been elected to do, and I didn’t want to have to deal with running another campaign,” he says.
Almost immediately, Fritchey began preparing to run. It wasn’t the first time: in 2004, after Gabinski announced that he was stepping down and tapped Matlak as his replacement, Fritchey astonished many by bucking the machine and jumping into the race himself. That little foray ended after a back-room meeting brokered by Mayor Daley. Matlak and Fritchey both withdrew, and Gabinski wound up filling the post for another term.
The Madigan connection has led some in Waguespack’s camp to express concern that Fritchey might use the committeeman’s post to promote machine-minded hacks. But the big scuttlebutt in the ward is that Fritchey’s angling to get himself slated for Illinois attorney general when Lisa Madigan, the speaker’s daughter, leaves the post to run for governor.
Now Fritchey has pulled out the oldest trick in the book, challenging Romanelli’s nominating petitions on the grounds that some of the signers didn’t live in the ward and that other signatures were fraudulent. “I’ve always been a big proponent of open access to the ballot,” says Fritchey. “I would not be challenging him on a technicality. But a review of his signatures shows that 80 percent of them are bad. It shows a reckless effort.”
“I’m still endorsing John,” he says, but “anyone who wants to run should be allowed to run.”v
