The Advantage Of The Incumbent
So the big debate for the 49th ward was on WTTW Monday night. Does anyone have a link to the episode? All I can find is the description from WTTW, I would be very interested to see Moore’s reaction to Marshfield being brought up.
Another issue that came up was fundraising. So there are a number of documents that all the people running for office in Illinois need to file. They are available online (search for city: Chicago, state: IL, year: 2007, office: Alderman, district: 49, all others: all) One of the interesting things is that you need to say where all your money comes from. This also means that we all get to see how much money the different candidates have.
As of the end of last year Adams pulled in $13k, Ginderske got $12k, and Gordon is in the lead with $30k. These all seem like reasonable numbers for a ward with 60,000 people. That should cover signs, posters, and with some donations in kind, that should be able to completely plaster the neighborhood with dead trees. But then we get to the incumbent. Apparently the reporting requirements are greater for greater sums of money. I might be reading this wrong, but it looks like Moore pulled in a half a million dollars! Holy crap! With that kind of money who needs TIFs and SSAs, just have the Citizens for Joe Moore pay for it all! I mean that is completely out of control, that is not only more than all the other candidates combined, that is ten times more than all the other candidates combined! If there is a runoff (which I believe there will be) I will need to give a donation to the contender just on principle!
So let’s see who gives money to Joe (click on itemized to follow along, Web 2 dorks don’t use permalinks, don’t they know the whole purpose of the in-tar-web is to be linked by bloggers?)… Well the first 5k is developers, then we get some local businesses. I’m a local business and I didn’t give my money, is that bad? Some downtown union gave him 5 grand. I’m sure those union members would be happy to know where their hard earned money goes. I wonder who all these people that don’t live in Chicago are.
Oh… wait. I did give him money. Looks like my developers pitched into the kitty. Oh well. They gave what appears to be the smallest amount that developers are allowed to give. I guess that’s why they couldn’t get the zoning variance they wanted. Heh.
Update: The BHoRP points out a newspaper article on this topic. Also the sun times endorses Moore.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:14
You are not reading that wrong. Moore raised $500,000 in the last period.
We have a tape of the WTTW thing, which we unfortunately only have the technology to display on VCR in our office. We may get it into an mpeg, hopefully ASAP (wanna help?). However, you’re welcome to stop by the campaign office and have a look at the tape. Call ahead, since we might be out flyering. (773) 338-3643. Otherwise, pretty much anytime would be okay.