Entries associated with the tag "12th Ward":

The other day I wrote about how 12th Ward alderman George Cardenas hadn't raised a single buck in the first half of 2008, according to his most recent campaign filings, even though he'd brought in tens of thousands in the two reporting periods before this one.

Monday he told me it had nothing to do with the official end of the Hispanic Democratic Organization, which had helped him win his seat--twice.

“I don’t have any relatives on the payroll, and I’ve been here, what, five, six years?”

Five.

“I don’t have anybody on the city payroll, the county payroll, nothing. I didn’t come here to get something. I came to try to do something for the community.”

And it’s not that he couldn’t have raised more money the first half of the year; he just decided not to.

“I think a lot of businesses don’t like to fund political candidates,” he said. “A lot of people ask, ‘So what does he do with that money?’”

Still, it is unusual for an alderman or any elected official to stop fund-raising altogether. “We did raise a little,” Cardenas said. “We had one small event.”

But the records he submitted to the state election board say he didn’t get any contributions. None.

“My accountant will probably have to send in a correction.”

Cardenas said he actually asked people not to donate to his campaign fund.

“Before, I’d pay for jumping jacks at community events, or buy beverages or piñatas,” he said. “So this time I’m asking people to donate straight to the community events or groups. They can buy the beverages for them directly. I think it’s better to do it that way, especially since I’m not running for anything right now.”

As for the HDO . . .

“There's a misconception about that," he said. "Those folks helped me when I first got elected, and they helped other elected officials as well. But the way I see it is that you’re really on your own. Me, I’m a businessman. I could always go back to that. I can fend for myself quite nicely.”

To many observers (including me), one of the biggest surprises of Tuesday’s election was the resounding victory of 12th Ward alderman George Cardenas. The Daley loyalist was targeted by the Chicago Federation of Labor after he switched his vote on the big-box minimum-wage ordinance to help sustain the mayor’s veto; Carina Sanchez, his union-backed challenger, received more than $159,000 from organized labor, accounting for almost all of her campaign funds.

And unions went after Cardenas for another reason: he looked weak.

Four years ago, Cardenas won his seat with the aid of the Hispanic Democratic Organization. His opponent, then incumbent Ray Frias, dropped out of their runoff election, saying he'd lost the support of the ward's voters. But after federal investigations into rigged hiring at City Hall—some of it tied to the organization and its leaders—the HDO was generally written off as too crippled to play a significant role this time around.

Despite the conventional wisdom, however, Cardenas won reelection outright, capturing 59 percent of the vote to Sanchez’s 28 percent—though only 4,372 voters cast ballots in the ward, the second-lowest total in the city.

On Friday, Cardenas said he knew he would win all along because he had delivered services to his constituents. He was evasive, though, when I asked him if he’d relied on HDO troops.

“There’s a big misconception about what that means,” he said. “Do you know what [the HDO] is? I don’t know. I have my volunteers. There may be people associated with HDO, but it doesn’t matter who they were associated with, because at the end of the day, it’s about whether you’re doing a good job."