Ex-top cop Garry McCarthy secured his spot on the ballot on Monday when fellow candidate Paul Vallas dropped a challenge to his petition signatures, saying it would be “cumbersome and expensive” to follow through.
“We looked through the sheets and found enough bad — just plain bad, fake signatures, that we thought ‘we shouldn’t let this get away unchecked,’” Vallas, the former head of Chicago Public Schools, said in a statement.
But McCarthy celebrated the news, and called Vallas’ challenges “pathetic and an annoyance” and “old-style Chicago politics.
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Vallas and McCarthy announced their candidacies earlier this year, before Rahm Emanuel announced he wouldn’t seek a third term. Of the 55,000 signatures McCarthy submitted, Vallas challenged 45,000 that he said were “fraudulent or from unregistered people.”
Candidates are required to submit 12,500 valid signatures of registered Chicago voters to appear on the ballot on Feb. 26.
By dropping the challenge, McCarthy will not have to prove his claims.
Vallas said at the end of the day his campaign’s goal of getting on the ballot unchallenged was accomplished.
After Jerry Joyce dropped his challenge to Bill Daley’s petitions last week, his path to the ballot was also cleared. In addition to Vallas, other candidates not facing challenges include Joyce, Vallas, Willie Wilson, Toni Preckwinkle, Gery Chico, Sandra Mallory, Amara Enyia, Bob Fioretti and John Kozlar.
