Here in Chicago politics is a contact sport involving large contracts, lots of jobs, easy living and a lot of money. Among the most open practitioners of old style, smash-mouth Chicago politics still working in our fair town is hard-left Alderperson Helen Shiller. Ms. Shiller has been the target of some of our town’s finer journalists including the late, great Mike Royko and has lived to talk about it. It has been the opinion of many that Ms. Shiller has been able to stay in office through old-time vote stealing and voter roll-padding. It has not been a secret that during Ms. Shiller’s twenty-plus year tenure as Alderman that the ward government has encouraged the relocation of the state’s discharged psychiatric patients resulting in about 40% of the state’s psychiatric discharges ending up in the 46th Ward of Chicago. This in turn resulted in a large number of warehoused people and a large number of homeless shelters being set up in the ward. The warehoused people allow for easily induced voters, traditionally wine or currency, currently $5 seems to be the amount that we hear about as the cost of a vote. The homeless shelters allow for another type of vote fraud, phantom voters. Every homeless shelter in the 46th ward has voter registration numbers in the 95% to 100% range making those lost homeless people in Uptown among the best organized voters in the United States. The turnout from the shelters has also been well above any national average and has been rumored to be at nearly tyrant levels.
During the 1980s and into the 1990s Shiller was helped by her then sidekick Walter “Slim” Coleman, a Marxist hazard from Harvard who is now a Methodist Minister and is providing “sanctuary” to Elvira Arellano at his Aldalberto United Methodist Church here in Chicago. Slim helped Helen perfect the strong-arm fraudulent politics that has become the norm in the Uptown neighborhood. It really is a shame because the neighborhood has some very beautiful housing stock and it runs along the shore of Lake Michigan. Don’t even get me started on the confluence of gangs, heroin, shelters and the powers that be in Uptown. Let me put it this way, between McCormick Place and Waukegan, a distance of over 45 miles of lake shore the least expensive property near the lake is 7 ½ miles north of McCormick Place in Helen Shiller’s 46th ward. It has been common knowledge that for Uptown to get past its problems that there needs to be a political change in the 46th Ward.
Helen Shiller’s far left politics had her battling Mayor Daley early in his mayoral career; however Ms. Shiller has been co-opted by the Daley administration on a variety of fronts. For starters the Daley folks have gone after their foes in elections and Ms. Shiller has not been immune to those threats, especially as her ward has finally started to see some gentrification during the past decade; and of course there are the city contracts in each ward that every alderman has some say in. It is fair to say that even the leftist Helen Shiller is in the Daley camp and the mayor has endorsed her. For the first time in recent memory Shiller seems to have a serious challenger in James Cappleman and to the extent that you can get any news about a minor election this one is worth watching. For starters you have to take an occasional look at the hysterically named What the Helen blog that linked this afternoon to a post on the Buena Park Neighbors message board suggesting that Helen Shiller may be “campaigning” within 50 feet of a polling place, even if it is an “early voting” polling place I think that the same laws apply. The poster who witnessed what was likely a legal breach and inspired the title of this post also noticed some desperation in the Shiller campaign:
“My girlfriend and I went over to Truman to vote early for Cappleman, and guess who is wandering around the lobby just outside the voting area . . .The alderbeast herself Helen Shiller.
Then one of the poll watchers tells us Shiller was at her building earlier in the morning with doughnuts and coffee for the residents, while encouraging them to vote for her.
Talk about you desperate politician.
While we were voting there were only 5 people there and 4 of them were from my building and all voting for Cappleman, so I feel good about that.”
It is also worth noting that Alderman Shiller broke her contract with the League of Women Voters by using her campaign website and her official city website to link to a surreptitiously obtained video of a League debate. She claimed that she didn’t sign the contract or hear the spoken warnings before the debate and that her suit was at the cleaners, she got a flat tire, the sun was in her eyes… You get the idea. Anyways this should be an interesting race to watch and it looks like What the Helen will be a daily stop until after the elections. God help us if there is a recount.
Labels: 46th Ward, Cappleman, Chicago, Shiller, Uptown
