On behalf of the Chicago Sun-Times, the conservative firm We Ask America is out with the first media poll of the year for the very crowded Feb. 26 nonpartisan primary for mayor of Chicago. Note that, in the very likely event that no one takes a majority next month, there would be a runoff April 2. While the race is nonpartisan, all the notable candidates identify as Democrats.
- Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle: 13
- Former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley: 12
- Former Chicago Board of Education president Gery Chico: 9
- Businessman Willie Wilson: 9
- State Comptroller Susana Mendoza: 9
- Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown: 5
Quite a bit happened while this poll was in the field Monday through Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Chicago Board of Elections ruled that Brown did not have enough signatures to make the ballot, and she announced she would not appeal. (Nine candidates took less support than Brown in this poll.)
On Wednesday, two other big stories broke involving powerful Alderman Ed Burke, who has indicated this month for attempted extortion. The public learned that Alderman Danny Solis, an ally of Mendoza, had secretly recorded more than a dozen conversations with Burke to help federal investigators build the case against his colleague, and that the feds had previously been looking into Solis. It also emerged that Preckwinkle had hired Burke’s son for a nearly $100,000 per year post at a time when the younger Burke was facing two internal investigations by his previous employer.
It’s worth highlighting that this is the latest poll to find Wilson unexpectedly close to making the runoff. A few days ago we saw a survey from David Binder Research on behalf of the charter school advocacy group INCS Action, which is not affiliated with any of the candidates, that had Preckwinkle at 15, Mendoza and Daley each at 9, and Wilson at 6. A PPP survey for Preckwinkle’s allies at the SEIU Illinois Local 1 had her at 15, Daley 12, Chico 11, Wilson at 10, and Mendoza and former Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas each at 9.
Wilson has been involved in politics for a few years, and he’s never come across as a very serious candidate.
Wilson ran for mayor in 2015 and took a distant third-place with 11 percent of the vote, but Wilson was not deterred by that poor performance. He soon launched a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but to the surprise of no one who wasn’t named Willie Wilson, his campaign attracted almost zero attention or votes.
Last year, Wilson threw in his lot with GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and his decidedly underdog re-election campaign. Actually, he did more than just support Rauner. In July, Rauner attended an event where Wilson, who was already running for mayor again, handed out $300,000 in cash from his charitable foundation, including $100,000 that had been donated by Rauner himself. Wilson and Rauner had recently both addressed a church congregation in Chicago's South Side, and Wilson gave out the cash to passersby after the event.
Politico wrote at the time that election experts said Rauner likely didn't break the law, since he wasn't actually present when Wilson dispensed the cash. An analyst with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan group that monitors state campaign finance activity, also said that there wasn’t anything illegal about Wilson giving out money to help people even if there were “ethical questions that need to be asked.”
Rauner argued the event was to help people pay their property taxes instead of a campaign event and that he didn’t know Wilson would hand out cash, and the governor condemned Wilson for doing so. In any case, Rauner went on to lose 54-39 for a multitude of reasons that had nothing to do with Wilson.
While it feels like this incident alone should be disqualifying for Wilson, no one seems to be bringing it up much on the campaign trail at the moment. And in a primary this crowded, it’s very possible that Wilson, who has already invested about $1 million of his own money into his bid, can advance through a runoff, especially since no one’s devoting much time to attacking him. It’s a lot harder to see Wilson winning in a one-on-one runoff against pretty much anyone, though as we’ve seen this month, Chicago politics is nothing if not unpredictable.
The We Ask America poll also takes a look at a few potential runoff matchups, though none of them involve Wilson. They find Mendoza defeating Preckwinkle 44-35, while Daley holds a narrow 40-38 edge against Preckwinkle. They also test Mendoza against former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy (who took just 4 percent in the primary portion of the poll), and finds her ahead by a wide 54-24 margin.
