-By Warner Todd Huston
Alderman Pat Levar of Chicago’s 45th Ward served six terms on the city council but announced last November that his health was bad enough that he didn’t want to run for his seat again and would retire. This announcement started a mad scramble for someone to fill his seat.
The powers that be decided that Marina Yolanda Faz-Huppert, a union operative, would be the anointed one to take Levar’s seat. But the elections proved that those “powers” are not as all powerful as they must have imagined because Faz-Huppert ended up getting the lowest vote count among the leaders of a crowded field.
The biggest vote getter was Chicago Police Lt. John Garrido with John Arena coming in second and these top two vote getters will head to a runoff election on April 5th.
Final Results
John Garrido: 32.49%
John Arena: 22.63%
Marina Yolanda Faz-Huppert: 19.45%
Michael Fitzgerald Ward: 10.39%
Anna Klocek: 7.54%
Don Blair: 6.12%
Bruno Bellissimo: 1.37%
Quite a few runoffs will be occurring this year, too. Runoffs are scheduled for the 6th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 20th, 24th, 25th, 36th, 38th, 41st, 43rd, 45th, 46th and 50th wards. Ten of these wards feature incumbents facing runoffs, interestingly enough.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.