Wayne T Williams, who currently serves as the Cunningham Township Assessor, has filed a formal objection against a rookie candidate volunteering to serve on the Urbana City Council. Meghan McDonald, who is running for the Ward 5 City Council seat (currently served by Dennis Roberts) now must defend her candidacy against a couple of minor technicalities raised by Williams.
There are currently two Democratic candidates running for the Ward 5 City Council seat: Meghan McDonald, and Chaundra Bishop. Chaundra Bishop recently ran for Champaign County Coroner, with the full backing of the Democratic Party. However, she had questionable qualifications for the Coroner’s Officer and became the only Democrat who ran for a county-wide seat to lose in the November election.
Despite having little to no previous engagement with City of Urbana issues, Bishop quickly turned her attention to the 2021 Urbana City Council election. Meghan McDonald, on the other hand, has been highly engaged in Urbana City Council meetings throughout the year, and this is her first time ever running for office.
Wayne Williams, who lives with and is partnered to Chaundra Bishop, is currently running unopposed for reelection as the Cunningham Township Assessor, a position which pays a salary of $69,009. Williams made headlines in 2018 when he hired Champaign County administrator Joseph Meents, who was facing felony charges of official misconduct at the time. After significant backlash, Williams eventually fired Meents, who pled guilty to the theft charges (coincidentally, Meents was finally discharged from probation by Judge Roger Webber just earlier today).
Williams’s six-page objection against McDonald alleges that some of her petition signature pages list “’Alderman’ but fails to specify which Aldermanic District the Respondent Candidate seeks nomination in.” Williams goes on to argue:
“placing [Meghan McDonald] on the ballot despite failing to inform voters of where she was actually running frustrates the rights of voters to make a meaningful choice as to their options in the Consolidated Primary Election.”
Williams’s claim is rather curious, given that McDonald is running for Alderman in Ward 5 and was therefore restricted to collecting signatures only from registered voters in her ward. Voters registered in Ward 5, by law, could not have signed Urbana City Council petitions for any other ward. Most would consider this to be common knowledge. This puts Williams in the tenuous position of arguing that Ward 5 voters were too dumb to realize what they were signing, despite how obvious it must have been that McDonald was running for Ward 5 – not a good look for Williams and his partner Bishop, who are both seeking votes in the upcoming election.
In his objection, Williams cites the 1998 case Zapolsky v. Cook County Officers Electoral Board to support his argument. However, Zapolsky v. Cook County dealt with an electoral board decision wherein the petitioner failed to indicate which of multiple at-large vacancies they were running for. The court determined that it may have been unclear to voters which seat the petitioner was seeking. “At-large” voting means that the entire voting district casts votes for multiple candidates, and the ones with the most votes win the seat(s). The Zapolsky case also dealt with vacancies of elected positions due to early resignations, rather than with the terms of a standard election. The McDonald case in Urbana is fundamentally different because McDonald could only legally run for Ward 5 and Ward 5 voters could legally only sign petitions for one possible ward: Ward 5. Urbana doesn’t even have any at-large positions.
Williams is not claiming that McDonald’s signatures came from any voter not registered in Ward 5. He is simply arguing that those voters who reside in Ward 5 and are registered in Ward 5, were confused as to which ward they were signing for. Williams has also not made any claim that McDonald did not acquire enough signatures.
Williams goes a step further in his objection and claims that even signatures on pages marked, in his words, “Urban City Council Ward 5 Alderman” should not count, because no such office exists. In this case, “Ward 5” is clearly indicated, but notice the missing “a” in “Urbana”. Williams appears to be focusing on McDonald’s unclear hand-writing on one of the forms, though it is not obvious that Williams’s reading of the text is the correct one:
Williams’s objection claims his motivation is purely in the public interest:
“The Objector’s interest in filing this Petition is that of a voter desirous that the laws governing the filing of nomination papers for the office of Alderman of the 5th Ward of the City of Urbana, Illinois are properly complied with, and that only qualified candidates appear on the ballot for said office.”
Williams’s relationship with Chaundra Bishop would seem to make such a claim somewhat dubious.
Check CU reviewed all one hundred and eighty-five signature pages submitted by the twenty-four candidates currently running in Urbana. The types of “irregularities” that Williams has objected to (unclear handwriting, failure to clearly mention “Urbana” in the office box, failure to list specific ward in the office box) on McDonald’s petition occur on a total of eighty-four signature pages belonging to twelve different candidates. No other voter in Urbana thought it reasonable to submit similar objections. Williams did not submit objections against any other candidate with similar petition “irregularities” and did not submit an objection against Verdell Jones III, whose petition presents a far more legitimate problem.
Williams’s objection was authored by Chicago attorney Abraham T Matthew, who also helped gather signatures for Bishop’s candidacy in November. Wayne Williams also gathered signatures for Bishop. In fact, Williams collected more signatures for Bishop’s petition than Bishop collected for herself. Christopher Stohr, a well-connected Democrat who serves on the Champaign County Board for District 10, also collected more signatures for Bishop than Bishop collected for herself. In turn, Chaundra Bishop served as a petition circulator for Wayne Williams’s run for reelection as the Cunningham Township Assessor.
Abraham Matthew also authored an objection to the candidacy of Verdell Jones III, who is running against Diane Marlin for mayor. Marlin donor Michael Langendorf filed the objection against Jones on the same day that Williams filed his objection against McDonald.
It is also notable that the notary public who stamped Williams’s formal objection, Philip A Fiscella, donated funds to Diane Marlin’s 2017 mayoral campaign committee, “Citizens for Marlin”. In the end, perhaps irony will get the best of Mr. Williams, as he nearly submitted his objection for Cook County instead of Champaign County, and with illegible writing in the notary section. Under Williams’s level of scrutiny, one might argue that his formal objection has been improperly filed and is therefore null.
It would seem difficult for anyone to genuinely argue that Williams’s objection was bred by anything other than personal political motivation; a concerted effort by seasoned politicians to have a new volunteer removed from the ballot, all based on a frivolous complaint that gives no honest consideration to the best interests of the voters of Ward 5.
Just four months ago, Williams filed a speculative objection against Libertarian candidate Brad Bielert, who ran against Carol Ammons for State Representative. That objection was quickly dismissed by the electoral board.
An Urbana Electoral Board Hearing will take place at 1:30pm on Monday December 7th, 2020 wherein Wayne Williams and Meghan McDonald 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 panel will be politically charged:
- Diane Marlin, Mayor (currently running for reelection)
- Phyllis Clark, City Clerk (appointed by Marlin June 8, 2020, and currently running for reelection)
- Dennis Roberts, Ward 5 Alderman (currently running against Marlin for Mayor)
The hearing will take place in the City Council Chambers. The City of Urbana has posted an agenda for the December 7th hearing, but has not given any Zoom links or instructions for the public to attend and participate. The agenda also indicates that the City plans to violate the established and recorded public input rules in Urbana City Code Section 2-4, by reducing speaking time to three minutes per person, and no more than thirty minutes in total (UCC Section 2-4 calls for five minutes and two hours).
UPDATE 2020-12-05: CheckCU has been informed that the composition of the electoral board may be different than what has been posted here, and that is currently being researched. Also, after this article was published, the City issued an amended hearing agenda. The new agenda removes the (seemingly unlawful) public input restrictions stated in the original agenda, but remains silent on the what rules will be observed by the hearing body. The new agenda also provides a Zoom link for the public to attend the hearing remotely.
Related documents:
Wayne T Williams vs. Meghan McDonald Objection to Petition, stamped December 2, 2020
The City of Urbana December 7th 2020 Electoral Board Hearing Agenda
The City of Urbana December 7th 2020 Electoral Board Hearing Agenda – Amended on 2020-12-05
Zapolsky v. Cook County Officers Electoral Board Opinion
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
CORRECTIONS:
The original version of this article implied that Wayne Williams could have submitted objections against City Council candidates running in other wards, which is not the case. He could have, but did not, submit objections against Urbana-wide candidates.
The original version of this article indicated UCC Section 2-5 whereas it should have indicated 2-4.
Wayne Williams has pointed out that his salary is not “$70k” as the original article indicated, but $69,009. This salary is set to increase, but at the moment, $69,009 is correct, so the article has been changed to reflect that number.
The petition to disqualify McDonald looks like petty political sabotage, and that’s just sad. I don’t think Mr Williams is doing his partner a favor by sniping at her opponent. Let’s have a fair race, and let voters decide the winner.
I will add, too, that Mayor Marlin ought to recuse herself from this matter due to her well-established bias against Ms McDonald.
I have attended every Urbana City Council meeting since early May of this year, and I, along with the collective of politically engaged Urbana residents also in attendance, have witnessed Mayor Marlin disrupting, again and again, Meghan McDonald’s free speech right during her frequent public input commentaries – in which she has been consistently critical of city leadership for its wrongdoing and mishandling of the unjustified violent and racist attack and arrest, by the Urbana Police Department, of Urbana resident and domestic violence survivor, Aleyah Lewis.
Mayor Marlin has on numerous occasions demonstrated blatant bias against McDonald, singling her out for censure, interrupting her, and shutting her down mid-utterance.
Among other memorable statements made by Ms McDonald during public input, she has promised Mayor Marlin that she will be “voted out of office.” This may or may not occur, but one thing is certain: the context and history between the mayor and McDonald make it unethical for the former to be adjudicating a petition for political disqualification relating to the latter.
No reasonable person could trust that the mayor is capable of impartially overseeing any hearing to which Ms McDonald is a party.