Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor. – Clint Eastwood
With the ink barely dry on those newfangled Kane County paper ballots, The First Ward is already hearing about the 2027 mayoral shenanigans that will soon beset The City We Used To Watch. As is almost always the Elgin case, they bear no resemblance to any reasonable political reality. Though to be fair, the term “reasonable political reality” has lost most of its meaning.
The premise starts with the prospect that 76-year-old Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain likely won’t seek a fourth term. If, per 2023, Dave decides he doesn’t care for the opposition, he could run again, but that would be a rather daunting prospect at age 78. I’m not saying he isn’t up to the task, but I’m just 66 and the thought of being mayor of anything makes me want to take a nap.
And whenever a long-term incumbent threatens to retire, the electoral possibilities seem endless in the minds of those chomping-at-the-bit challengers. Iit’s in that very vein that two rather surprising Elgin wannabees are currently jockeying for that pole position.
The first is a surprise in that, after getting raked over the coals for his inability to file a campaign finance report and subsequently losing to Mayor Dave by an embarrassing 16 points, City Council-bleep Corey Dixon still believes he has a shot. Yeah! And I have a Chicago Street Fox River Bridge I’m willing to part with dirt cheap.
But I wouldn’t put the possibility past him because he’s been notoriously silent since he got pantsed by the Mayor and pathological liars are capable of convincing themselves of almost anything. Some neuroses do have benefits.
But even Dixon knows he can’t win if co-Council-creature Tish Powell throws her hat in the ring – as is her current intent. And Powell similarly knows she’s toast if her almost-former ally decides to run again. So, to say our dynamic duo won’t be inviting each other over to Christmas dinner would be the mildest of merriment understatements.
It would seem that Powell is clinging to the traditional political entitlement belief hat, after progressives Carol Rauschenberger, and Dixon lost, it’s her turn to run. But as much as I’d like to see Pete and Repeat duke it out in a winner-take-all cage match, neither one of ‘em has a shot in hell. Worse yet, unless a true consensus builder like the late Bob Gilliam comes along, or a precision asteroid strike wipes out the opposition, no black man or woman will be elected mayor of Elgin anytime soon.
Before you hit the “send” button, I’m not saying a black man or woman shouldn’t be mayor, I’m saying they’ll never be elected mayor. It’s simply a matter of doing the math.
Though it rarely happens, before seriously considering a local office run, it would behoove the pre-candidate to download the appropriate spreadsheet from the County Clerk’s website and review previous races, precinct by precinct. How else could they determine how many votes it takes to win, and where those votes will likely come from.
If you can’t come up with a mathematical road to victory, then there’s no point in running.
That’s exactly what I did when I helped Dixon win his first term. (I’m still doing Hail Marys for that one, too.) What jumped out at me was the vast difference between at-large and ward-based voting.
Elgin’s liberal constituent plurality makes it far easier for progressive candidates like Powell, Dixon, and Rauschenberg to win a city council seat. All they have to do is finish in the top four. When you consistently have 10 to 12 candidates running for the same four seats, it gives anyone with half-an-electoral-brain the upper hand.
But it’s another proposition entirely when they have to face a single opponent as Rauschenberger and Dixon swiftly discovered. Despite a well-regarded political last name, Rauschenberger got just 34 percent of the 2019 mayoral vote when the worst candidates get a third of the ballots just for showing up.
Dixon did a little better at 42 percent in 2023, but that’s because, despite his profusion of tragic flaws, Corey does know how to campaign.
But even if that mano-a-mano dynamic wasn’t a major impediment, per our previously noted number crunching, the question I’d ask any black Elgin mayoral contender is, “Where are your votes?”
The City In The Suburbs current populace is comprised thusly:
- 47.3 percent Hispanic
- 37.6 percent White
- 6 percent Asian
- 5.1 percent black
Even Asians outnumber African Americans!
As long as they maintain their current progressive ideological penchant, the best any black candidate can do is get 50 percent of the white vote, 60 percent of the black vote, 30 percent of the Asian vote, and 10 percent of the Latino vote – if they’re lucky.
That means, in order for Dixon or Powell to prevail, they must build a consensus with Hispanic voters. But not only have they failed to display any capacity to do so, the overly self-important Elgin black caucus has gone out of their way to alienate those voters.
The most blatant example of this summary rejection is then community task force on policing chairman LeJewel Crigler’s official 2020 video tirade/meltdown. In her political career ending screed, she dismissed the City’s predominant Hispanic population as “unimportant,” and if the Elgin Latino friends who sent me that video are any indication, they won’t forget about it anytime soon.
So, while I fervently hope Powell AND Dixon run from a self-serving journalistic I-can’t-wait-to-write-about-it perspective, the truth is that neither one will ever take that center dais seat. We can argue political ideology, race, identity politics, failed candidacies, political upsets, and all manner of Machiavellian machinations until we’re blue in the face, but if the votes aren’t there, you can’t win.
And the numbers ain’t gonna be there for any black Elgin mayoral candidate for quite some time. End of story!
