Runoff Ordered for Vital Seat in Chicago

The Chicago Board of Elections Thursday ordered a runoff election for a bitterly contested City Council seat that will determine which political faction here holds the reins of power.

The decision means an instant replay of the contentious campaign between Luis V. Gutierrez, who is backed by Mayor Harold Washington, and Manuel Torres, who is backed by Democratic boss Edward Vrdolyak.

Gutierrez appeared to have won the seat by 20 votes in the March 18 special election. That victory had been upheld in six different court cases. But Thursday a board of canvassers, at the direction of the Board of Elections, considered whether 10 uncounted write-in ballots, some of which had turned up three weeks after the election, were valid. The canvassers’ 3-2 vote to allow the ballots dropped Gutierrez’s victory margin below the 50% plus one vote required to avoid a runoff election.

‘Chicago Politics at Its Worst’

“This is Chicago politics at its worst,” said Jerold S. Solovy, an election law authority who represented Gutierrez. “They stole the election in public . . . . We won in court six times and then had the election stolen by a kangaroo administrative body.”

Gutierrez said he had evidence that in some voting precincts, more ballots were counted than there were ballot applications.

“We have never seen any evidence of that,” said Tom Leach, elections board spokesman. “That’s a campaign charge and it’s not true.”

Leach said that the write-in ballots found April 3 locked in boxes of elections material had been secure since election night in a Board of Elections warehouse.

The special election last March in seven of the city’s 50 City Council wards was ordered by a federal judge who found that a 1980 ward map denied blacks and Latinos fair representation on the council.

Potential Political Watershed

The election was seen as a potential political watershed. It offered Washington, the city’s first black chief executive, his first opportunity to control the City Council since his election in 1983. But the election ended in chaos. Candidates backed by Washington won two seats and those backed by Vrdolyak won three, giving the Democratic boss 25 City Council votes to Washington’s 23. The outcome of two other contests, including the Gutierrez-Torres match, awaits the April 29 runoff.

If candidates loyal to Washington win both seats, the City Council will be divided 25 to 25 and the mayor will be able to cast the tie-breaking vote. A Washington-backed candidate is believed to be a certain winner in one runoff, leaving control of the council to voters in the 26th Ward where Gutierrez and Torres have refired their campaigns.

Their first match, distinguished by alleged shootings, beatings and the discovery of a bomb at the Torres campaign office, was one of the most violent in recent Chicago political history.