Aldermanic candidates in Chicago fill out questionnaires issued by organized labor, business organizations, and newspaper editorial boards. They debate about crime and budgets, pensions and parks, the schools and the potholes. But for all of the policy positions they stake out, it's worth remembering that for many voters a candidate's connection to the community -- and to them -- looms large when it comes time to cast a ballot. And this seems especially true for a position like alderman, in a city where council members "are so much of a part of neighborhood life that Chicago is the only city where local politicos are more prominent than statewide officeholder, and even congressmen," as Ed McClelland recently wrote. This dynamic seemed to be playing out today among some voters in the 41st Ward on Chicago's far Northwest Side, where Mary O'Connor and Maurita Gavin are campaigning for the City Council seat Ald. Brian Doherty will give this spring.
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That’s the number of dollars each of the estimated 100,000 votes cast
during the run-off elections (as of 4 p.m. Tuesday) will 
Ald. Bernard
Stone and challenger Debra Silvertstein were neck-in-neck in votes at Precinct 41 during the February elections for the 50th Ward aldermanic
seat. The precinct, inside Congregation Ezras Israel on the Far North Side, had the biggest voter turnout with 368
ballots casted the first time around. Incumbent Stone got 34.51 percent of the those votes
and Silverstein got 35.87 percent. There was a similar divide amongst the
hurried lunch-time crowd of voters today.
In the sleek lobby of a highrise in the heart of Lincoln Park, only three people in the first hour of voting came to cast their ballots, according to a volunteer for Tim Egan, a candidate running against Michele Smith for the open seat in Chicago's 43rd Ward. It was here at polling Precinct 14 that Smith got 62.39 percent of the votes in the February election, her best showing in the ward.