Joe Berrios Knocks Assesor Hopeful Off the Ballot
Berrios knocks out reformer
By STEVE RHODES
Updated 1:04 PM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009
The Machine will assess your taxes.
Barring a surprise Republican insurgency, Cook County Democratic Party Chairman and Machine Monster Joe Berrios will be the next Cook County Assessor. He will value your property for the purposes of taxing it to fund government operations and Machine shenanigans.
The hopes of reformers were dashed on Thursday when Berrios forced challenger Andrea Raila off the ballot by challenging the validity of her petition signatures. Which is Berrios's right to do, but Railia decided that defending her petitions would become too costly.
As reported by Ben Joravsky at Clout City, Raila gathered more than 12,000 signatures on her petitions. She only needed 8,147 to get on the ballot, but the rule of thumb in these parts is that you generally need twice as many as required to be safe when your petitions are challenged.
But defending a challenge is costly, and sometimes the barriers to getting on the ballot are set higher than we might want in a democracy in order to protect candidates like Berrios.
Berrios is also challenging the petitions of three other lesser candidates who also don't stand a chance.
So hold on to your pocketbooks.
Because Joe Berrios is on his way.
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Nov 6, 2009 8:05 AM CST
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