Accusations, objections fly in City Council race

By Andre Salles asalles@!stmedianetwork.com Dec 3, 2010 10:55PM

AURORA — How do you know election season is upon us once again? The accusations
and petition objections start flying, as candidates (and one non-candidate) work to get
each other thrown off the ballot.
Eleven candidates have filed petitions for April’s City Council elections, vying for six
open seats. Dec. 1 was the last day to file objections to those petitions, and the Aurora
Election Commission logged four, all filed on the last day.
Half of those were handed in by Peggy Hicks, a community activist with a long record of
non-profit work. But on Friday, after the objection deadline, Hicks noticed that many of
at-large candidate and real estate lawyer Judd Lofchie’s petitions were notarized by
Maricela Rodriguez, an Aurora notary public and district manager with PLS Financial
Services.
Hicks had seen Rodriguez’s name in the news lately — she’s at the center of a forgery
accusation levied at two Chicago mayoral hopefuls, Rob Halpin and James Meeks.
According to a Chicago Sun-Times report, Rodriguez’s signature and seal appears on
more than 400 petition sheets for Halpin and Meeks, sheets she says she never signed.
Twenty-eight of Lofchie’s petition sheets — a total of 274 signatures — bear a seal and
signature that purports to be Rodriguez’s. Hicks said some of the signatures on Lofchie’s
petitions don’t seem to match each other.
Barbara Wolf, vice president of marketing for PLS Financial, forwarded on a genuine
Rodriguez signature and seal, which was also printed in the Sun-Times. Signatures on
Lofchie’s petitions were forwarded to Rodriguez’s employers Friday evening, but no
opinion on their authenticity was returned by press time.
Lofchie said he hired several homeless people to help circulate his petitions. (The founder
of Chicago Streetwise, Lofchie has a long history of working with the homeless.) Nine
people, including Lofchie himself, collected signatures for sheets that bear Rodriguez’s
seal and signature, and Lofchie said he drove his helpers to the PLS currency exchange
on Lake Street and watched Rodriguez notarize the petitions.
“She did them, charged me $1 a sheet and handed them back,” Lofchie said.
Lofchie said he did the right thing, and noted that he doesn’t always sign his name the
same way every time either. But Hicks is concerned that something isn’t quite right.
Rodriguez’s signatures are not the substance of her official objection to Lofchie’s
petitions. Rather, she says Lofchie did not follow the exact rules for formatting and filling
out those petition sheets.
Lofchie himself filed an objection to At-Large Alderman Richard Irvin’s petitions, saying
it is against the law for a notary to sign and seal petition sheets for his own candidacy. In
a strongly worded press release, Lofchie said Irvin notarize d 383 of the 1164 signatures
he turned in, and said Irvin, an attorney, could be found guilty of “official misconduct.”
The notary law does prohibit a notary from acknowledging any instrument to which he or
she is a party. But Irvin said since he did not circulate any of the petitions he notarized,
he was not a party to any of them. The transaction, he says, occurs between the circulator
and the notary.
And, Irvin pointed out, Lofchie did the same thing — he notarized five of his petition
sheets, representing 67 signatures.
Lofchie said he had begun notarizing his own petitions before being advised not to do so
by the State Board of Elections. He thought he had removed all the signatures he’d
notarized, he said, but must have missed some.
“It’s one thing to make a mistake and be a novice,” he said, “it’s another to do nearly 400
of them.”
Hicks also objected to at-large candidate Matt Harrington, saying he has not been an
Aurora resident for the required one year prior to the election. According to election law,
Harrington must have lived at his Aurora address, listed as 3201 Andover Drive, since at
least Feb. 22 of this year.
Hicks points out a letter written by Harrington in March, when he was a candidate for the
9th District State House seat in Chicago. And Chicago voting records also show
Harrington pulling a ballot in the Feb. 2 primary. At the time, he was registered at 200 N.
Jefferson St. in Chicago.
Harrington said he moved to Aurora in November of 2009, and has a signed agreement
with his girlfriend to prove it. He is paying his share of the mortgage on the Andover
Drive house, he said, and has documents that will show it.

He voted in Chicago, he said, because he couldn’t change his residency in time, although
he is now registered to vote in Aurora.

The final objection was filed by Sixth Ward Alderman Mike Saville against his opponent,
business owner Isaac Count De Money Wilson. Saville objected to Wilson’s name,
pointing out change-of-name forms filed with the Aurora Election Commission in 2009,
although Wilson says “Count De Money” is his real middle name, given at birth.

Saville also pointed out several instances in which he believes Wilson did not follow
election code, including listing an incorrect date on his paperwork. Only 43 of the 83
signatures Wilson filed are valid, Saville says, below the 51 needed to get on the ballot.

On Monday at 5 p.m., the Election Commission board will meet to set hearing dates for
the four objections. The hearings will likely be conducted in the next few weeks, Election
Commission Director Linda Fechner said. Should any of the objections stand, the
candidates objected to will be removed from the ballot.
The election is slated for April 5.