Glenview Electoral Board Hears Challenge To Teen's Candidacy

GLENVIEW, IL — The Glenview Electoral Board heard opening arguments Wednesday in its review of a challenge to the nominating petitions filed by Benjamin Polony, a 19-year-old independent candidate seeking a seat on the village board in the April 2 election.

Four residents – Elizabeth Brown, Kathleen Gazda and Judith and Paul Traynor – filed objections to Polony's petitions on Dec. 24, the final day for objections to independent candidates, in hopes of removing the University of Illinois at Chicago undergraduate from the ballot.

That triggered a meeting of the village's three-member electoral board, which includes Village President Jim Patterson, Village Manager Matt Formica, in his capacity as village clerk, and Debby Karton, the senior trustee on the village board.

The objectors' petitions claim dozens of signatures are "not genuine" or correspond to voters not registered at the listed address. In a few cases, the objections say the signers' addresses are missing or incomplete or reside outside village limits in unincorporated Glenview.

Polony is campaigning for one of three trustee seats on the ballot this year. He faces two full slates of candidates, each putting forward a trio of candidates for the first time since 2001. Incumbent Michael Jenny, Mary Cooper and Chuck Gitles are running as the Citizens for Glenview, affiliated with the caucus of Glenview that has nominated Patterson and all six sitting trustees. (Citizens for Glenview Party campaign manager Paul Detlefs said the caucus had nothing to do with the challenge to Polony's petitions.) Meanwhile, Tom Greenhaw, Dia Morgan and Cathy Wilson are running as part of the new Better Government in Glenview Party.

The Glenview Journal reported one of the objectors, Kathleen Gazda, shares an address with Kate Gazda, who circulated petitions on behalf of the slate of candidates from the Better Government in Glenview slate. Wilson said the group would not have any comment "due to the fact that it is going through a legal review process."

"It would be quite a shock to me that this non-incumbent party would be behind this after I had spoken with a member of their slate back in October and they told me every person has a right to be on the ballot," Polony responded on social media. "Just politics in Illinois as usual!"

Polony was represented at the Jan. 2 electoral board hearing by his father, Chicago-based attorney Richard Polony, who specializes in commercial litigation. The four objectors to his nominating petitions were represented by Evergreen Park-based attorney Mary Ryan Norwell, a former prosecutor who ran for judge in 2004 and school board in 2016.

Norwell asked the board to strike Polony's name from the ballot because of "irregularities and insufficiencies" in his petitions, Pioneer Press reported.

Polony's father said many of the signatures were collected at Village Hall from residents shortly after they voted in the November election.

“To say those signatures were not registered voters or were forgeries was a surprise," Richard Polony said, according to Glenview Announcements. "Some of those individuals were our own neighbors. We know them personally and yet their signatures were objected to.”

The lone independent candidate in Glenview's previous village board election, firefighter Vincent Spalo, fell 945 votes short of the nearest caucus-slated candidate for trustee. Fewer than 4,000 votes were cast in Glenview in the April 2017 election, with less than one in 10 of the village's registered voters taking part. Patterson said a minimum of 196 valid signatures were needed to appear on the ballot, the Journal reported, corresponding with 5 percent of the ballots cast in the last municipal election.

According to Polony's campaign, Spalo's signature is one of the more than 160 challenged by the objectors, and all but four of the challenged signatures are registered at the addresses shown. He submitted more than 290 signatures at village hall on Dec. 17 and could have turned in no more than 315, his campaign said.

"This challenge has truly shown me Glenview corruption at its finest," Benjamin Polony said ahead of the hearing. "My opponents simply have filed false objections to my petitions in an attempt to scare me off the ballot in order to maintain the status quo. It is extremely disheartening that a lovely town like Glenview can be shamed by those in power."

The Polonys also noted that they had not received a formal notification of the electoral board hearing before it started. They said they only learned of the hearing time and date through inquiries from Glenview Patch. (Village staff provided Patch with the objections to Polony's petitions less than an hour before the hearing began.)

Village Attorney Eric Patt said the board sent out certified letters to both parties in the case on Dec. 29, Pioneer Press reported, but delays in mail service during the New Year's holiday may have prevented delivery before Jan. 2.

The electoral board plans to schedule a records check with the Cook County Clerk's Office to compare signatures and addresses with registered voters and set a deadline next week for responses to any motions to dismiss. Early voting in the consolidated municipal election begins March 18.

Related:

• 19-Year-Old Glenview Trustee Candidate's Signatures Challenged
• 7 Candidates Running For 3 Seats On Glenview Village Board