In Champaign, a prior staff member of the City is attempting to dismantle the candidacy of one newcomer to the political arena.  Rochelle Funderburg, who was the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Champaign from 1988 to 1996, filed a formal objection against the District 3 City Council candidacy of Justin Michael Hendrix with the City Clerk on December 2^nd.

The source of the objection, the makeup of the electoral board meant to hear the objection, and the relationships of the candidate opposing Mr. Hendrix, have raised a lot of questions.

Funderburg (currently an attorney at Meyer Capel) used to worked closely with the current City Attorney, Frederick Stavins, who has been making the arrangements for the Hendrix objection hearing on Monday.  Naturally, Stavins also has a close working relationship with the Mayor of Champaign, Deborah Feinen, and Feinen is slated to sit as Chair on the three-person electoral board that will hear the petition against Hendrix.

The candidate running against Hendrix for the City Council seat in District 3, Daniel Iniguez, is Mayor Feinen’s personal fitness trainer, and the owner of Raw Fitness in Champaign.  Feinen also circulated candidate petitions for Iniguez and she personally acquired more than a third of his signatures (more signatures than Iniguez acquired for himself).  Even Champaign City Council members Angela Brix and Evangeline Pianfetti, and City employee Emily Renshaw were recruited to gather signatures for Iniguez.  With all the institutional subsidies provided to him, Iniguez only gathered a third of the 157 signatures in his petition.

Hendrix, on the other hand, gathered 172 signatures all by himself – an incredible undertaking during a pandemic.  Hendrix said he collected the signatures over a period of four days.  In the C-U area, door-to-door canvassing for petition signatures typically yields about ten signatures per hour, but COVID has complicated the process.  Only one of Hendrix’s signatures was acquired by a friend, bringing the total count to 173.  His efforts at gathering signatures may all be in vain if the team of seasoned politicians working to disqualify him are successful.

Funderburg argues that Hendrix should be removed from the ballot because he failed to enter the date of the election on his statement of candidacy.  This would seem to be a rather shallow point since the election date was entered on all nineteen signature pages included in his petition packet.

Funderburg then goes on to argue that many of the signatures on Hendrix’s petition should not be allowed, and makes a litany of claims about voter registration status, missing apartment numbers, and the format of names.  Funderburg appears to be availing herself to every possible argument in order to invalidate signatures.  In total, her objection attempts to invalidate 107 of the 173 signatures, knocking Hendrix below the 101 signature requirement.

To achieve this, Funderburg goes as far as to pick at the legibility of some of the signatures on Hendrix’s petition, which is an interesting argument to make since it is probably the case that most cursive signatures are difficult to read.  In fact, Check CU reviewed all 157 signatures within the petition packet of Daniel Iniguez and found that 94 of them could not be fully deciphered.

In response to the claims that some of his signatories are not in alignment with voter registration records, Hendrix has pointed out that the Champaign County voter registry is not up to date, and that Funderburg has made numerous errors in her claims.  Examples of such errors include claiming that two signatories are the same person (when they are actually siblings), and discarding signatures based on petty differences such as an apostrophe in the spelling of a name.  Check CU further noted that even Daniel Iniguez alternates between “Daniel” and “Danny” on his official petition forms.

Hendrix said he collected his signatures honestly, by himself, during a pandemic.  “I feel attacked”, said Hendrix, who also noted that he collected many of his signatures from black neighborhoods in District 3 – neighborhoods avoided by the other candidates. Hendrix feels that he should be allowed ballot access just like everyone else.

“I am a native son of Champaign, Illinois, born and raised. I have personal experience as a community engineer. I have been the voice for the unheard in the city streets. I have provided food, clothing, and health precautions to our communities, even personal necessities to our most vulnerable during the pandemic.”

A Champaign Electoral Board Hearing will take place at 10:30am on Monday December 7^th, 2020 wherein Rochelle Funderburg and Justin Hendrix will be allowed to argue their positions.  The Illinois Election Code indicates that the electoral board shall be composed of the mayor, the clerk, and the council member who has served the greatest number of years on the council.  Thus, the electoral board will be:

• Deborah Feinen (Mayor of Champaign)
• Marilyn Banks (Champaign City Clerk)
• Tom Bruno (at-large Champaign City Council member)

Given Feinen’s obvious bias in favor of Daniel Iniguez, it is remarkable that the City of Champaign is content with her chairing the electoral board.  This would seem to be a major blunder on the part of Fred Stavins, since a biased ruling by Feinen would almost certainly warrant a lawsuit.  The fact that Feinen seems to have recruited two City Council members to gather signatures for Iniguez also raises some interesting Open Meetings Act questions about the nature of that arrangement.  Tom Bruno also appears to have a relationship with Funderburg which would make his position on the board questionable.

The third candidate also running in District 3, whose name raises even more questions about conflicts of interest, is Matt Sullard – an attorney working in the State’s Attorney’s Office for Julia Rietz. Check CU will endeavor to cover that candidate in another article.

Related documents:

Rochelle Funderburg vs Justin Michael Hendrix Objection to Petition 2020-12-02

City of Champaign Electoral Board Agenda 2020-12-07

City of Champaign December 2020 Electoral Board Rules of Procedure

Rochelle Funderburg vs Justin Michael Hendrix Objection to Petition Call to Meet and Attachments

-Christopher Hansen, Urbana