Update 3/19: After the publication of this story, the Chicago Board of Elections reported that, upon a final vote count, Sixth Ward alderman Roderick Sawyer was three votes short of the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win reelection. Sawyer is in a runoff against Deborah Foster-Bonner.

           In the southwest-side 13th Ward, incumbent Marty Quinn trounced 19-year-old challenger David Krupa with nearly 86 percent of the vote. This is about what happened in 1991, the last time a candidate dared challenge an incumbent backed by Michael Madigan, the Illinois state house speaker and 13th Ward Democratic committeeman of 50 years’ standing. In that race, the incumbent 13th Ward alderman, John Madrzyk—a City Council wallflower, just like Quinn—won with 85 percent of the vote. Indeed, the staying power of Madigan-backed incumbents seems to be unaffected by fluctuations in turnout. While 73 percent of those in the ward voted for alderman back in 1991, last week just 44 percent of the voters bothered to cast a ballot—still, it was the fourth-­highest turnout rate in the city.

Incumbents lost

           This means four new faces grace the council—so far. We’ll definitely have four more after runoff elections are decided in wards where the incumbent isn’t running for reelection. Ten other runoffs will be between incumbents and challengers. And some are shaping up to be titanic clashes between supermonied establishment candidates and political newcomers.

Runoffs

           In the nearby 16th Ward, incumbent and Progressive Reform Caucus member Toni Foulkes (who’s never not faced a runoff, neither in her time as alderman of this ward since 2015 nor as alderman of the 16th Ward before the boundaries were redrawn) also faces a familiar challenger. Stephanie Coleman is running for a second time, with funding from Governor J.B. Pritzker, charter school operators, and Greg Mathis, of daytime courtroom drama Judge Mathis fame. She actually finished first, with 44 percent of the vote, to Foulkes’s 33 percent, but the 16th Ward had the lowest turnout in the city—just 22 percent. Numbers so low could indicate a general disinterest in either candidate. Foulkes enjoys both name recognition and backing from an alphabet soup of labor groups.