Soon after Jason Farbman filed his Green Party candidacy for state representative from the 14th District, the regulars in Rogers Park did what they usually do to independents who dare to challenge their machine. They brought in the lawyers and took Farbman to court, hoping to have him bounced from the ballot for violating some technicality. To their surprise, and the delight of his backers, Farbman isn’t just fighting back–he’s exposing an embarrassing election-law blunder on the part of his Democratic opponents.
He settled in Rogers Park, found a job at a restaurant in Evanston, and decided to get involved in Green Party politics: “I went to their Web site and found this little notice that said, ‘Want to be a candidate? Want to run?’” He sent an E-mail to the site and soon found himself talking with Weinberger, who encouraged him to challenge Osterman. “Harry’s a machine politician in a neighborhood that’s not really a machine neighborhood,” says Farbman. “Mayor Daley put him in office because of his family connections. He hasn’t really done anything. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but having him represent Rogers Park is a big waste. In Rogers Park we should have a representative with progressive points of view as opposed to the usual watered-down, mainstream crap.”
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This isn’t the first time the Democrats have challenged signatures supporting independent candidates. It’s one of those time-honored political coming-of-age rites most independents must endure–along with getting their campaign posters destroyed and their canvassers taunted. Weinberger had undergone the rite in the summer of 2000, when he battled Democrats–again represented by Kasper–who were trying to bounce Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, from the Illinois ballot.
On Sunday, July 14, he found himself at his desk composing a motion, due the next day, asking the Board of Elections to dismiss Allen’s complaint. “I had done all this legal research, and I was going to write that the case should be dismissed because Allen has asked the board to overreach its authority,” he says. “But as I got ready to write, something seemed strange. In her objector’s petition [Allen] says she lives at 5431 N. Lakeview. And I kept thinking, Lakeview, Lakeview–where the hell is Lakeview? Suddenly right there it dawned on me–there is no Lakeview. Not in my district anyway. There’s a Lakewood up here. But Lakeview–where her petition says she lives–is south of my district, by Fullerton and Diversey. You have to understand the situation. It’s 11 at night and I’m flying high on Pepsi. I want to jump up and down and scream hallelujah, because this is everything I can hope for. They have all these lawyers, all these supposed experts who supposedly know the election law inside and out–all these people who are endlessly trying to screw me and all the other independents on bizarre election-law stuff that only a nerd would understand. And they got it wrong! I still can’t believe it. Can you imagine all the thousands and thousands of signatures they’ve tossed out over the years for having the wrong address? Can you imagine all the independent campaigns they ruined with this tactic? The enormity of it all hit me there and then. If [Allen] doesn’t live where she says she lives, you gotta throw out her objection. Hey, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.”
Osterman has distanced himself from Allen’s objections. “She’s a family friend,” he says, but adds that he had nothing to do with her case against Farbman. “She probably told me about it, but I didn’t ask a lot of questions–that’s her business,” he says. “Do I support her efforts? Put it this way–I think the Democratic Party should have the ability to look at the petitions of other candidates.”
