With four weeks to go until the April 1 election, Evanston City Council candidates Candance Chow, a challenger, and incumbent Tom Suffredin have thrown shots at each other, each accusing the other of unethical actions in the past or present.
Chow and Suffredin, who do not have glaring policy differences in their approach to Evanston government, are vying to represent Evanston’s 6th Ward. Suffredin was elected alderman of the ward in 2017 and is running for his third term.
Suffredin, a registered lobbyist with the state of Illinois, was criticized by Chow in early February when she called him a “walking conflict of interest” because of his dual role as an alderman and lobbyist. Meanwhile, Suffredin said an investigation showed Chow violated Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s ethics policy in her 2018 campaign for state representative, which she lost. Chow was the president of District 65’s school board at that time.
According to Illinois law, lobbyists are permitted to run for elected positions. Suffredin’s father, Larry Suffredin, is also a lobbyist and has held elected roles in Cook County.
David Melton, president of the good government group Reform for Illinois, said his organization doesn’t have a formal position on lobbyists acting as elected officials, “although (Reform for Illinois) generally supports greater limitations on lobbyists.”
“However, speaking for myself, I don’t think that mixing a lobbyist career with an elected political career is a good idea. The potential for conflicts of interest are simply too great,” Melton said in an email to Pioneer Press. “However, this can pose a practical problem for elected officials whose official duties are only part-time, so some exceptions may be warranted, if buttressed with sufficient other protections.”
In January, Chow, with assistance from Andrew Ross, former Governor Pat Quinn’s Chief Operating Officer, called for the Evanston City Council to ban elected officials and employees from lobbying on behalf of private clients.
Suffredin downplayed the conflict of interest accusation at a Feb. 9 candidate forum in Evanston. “It’s to be expected; we’re in the middle of a political campaign,” he said.
“I’ve never had an ethics complaint filed against me. I’ve been an attorney and a lobbyist since 2006. Never had an ethics complaint filed against me in either one of those positions,” Suffredin said.
“I want it to be clear, the only person who’s ever been found to have committed a violation of ethics as an elected official is in my race, and it’s Candance Chow,” he said.
An investigation
Suffredin referred to a 2018 violation of the District 65 ethics policy that an investigation found was made by Chow’s campaign for state representative for Illinois’ 17th District, in which Chow ultimately lost to Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz in a crowded Democratic primary.
In that campaign, Chow was investigated for having her campaign send emails to school district employees at their work email addresses.
The law firm of Franczek Radelet, which conducted the investigation, concluded in its findings, which are included in a May 31, 2018 executive summary to the District 65 Board, that Chow’s campaign violated the district’s ethics policy by utilizing her District 65 email address for political activity and, even though some of her emails came from a non-District 65 account, they arguably violated the ethics policy because the emails concerned political activity and were sent to District 65 employees at their work email addresses.
The investigation report did not recommend the Board take any action against Chow because “the Board has limited authority under law to discipline fellow Board members.” It also said her actions appeared to be the result of carelessness rather than intentional misuse of district resources.
Chow’s 2018 campaign was also criticized for using “misleading” mailers which could be misunderstood as an endorsement from the Illinois Education Association. In that election, the IEA endorsed one of Chow’s opponents, Mary Rita Luecke. Luecke said the mailer didn’t directly endorse Chow, but that it inferred it, according to previous reporting.
At that time, Chow’s campaign received a cease and desist letter from an attorney demanding that the campaign no longer use the Illinois Education Association’s name and logo.
Chow, in an interview last week with Pioneer Press which Ross attended, said that using work emails to communicate about her campaign was a “rookie mistake.”
“The mailer was misinterpreted, I think, I don’t know,” Chow said. “Honestly, it was seven years ago. I’m not even sure what the mailer said.”
When asked what was different from Chow’s previous campaign and her current one, she said, “There isn’t a difference (in the campaign.) The campaign is about doing the work. It’s about putting in the work.”
Accusations
Since the Feb. 9 Evanston candidate forum, Chow’s campaign has fired away with more allegations of unethical behavior.
Recently, Chow’s campaign said that in 2017, Suffredin received a $250 donation from Michael Hoolihan, which Suffredin recently acknowledged. In 2022, Suffredin voted in favor, in the Evanston City Council, of hiring Hoolihan’s lobbying firm as Evanston’s lobbyist.
Chow’s campaign also accused Suffredin of receiving donations from individuals who have themselves been in political conflicts of interest or displayed questionable ethics, as described by Chow, including Shaw Decremer, a confidant of Michael Madigan who was ousted for “inappropriate behavior;” and former State Senator Tom Cullerton, who was sentenced to a year in federal prison for embezzlement.
Suffredin, however, didn’t see the donations as Chow did. “I don’t think there’s a conflict of interest in accepting political contributions from people within your professional network,” he said.
In a press release, Chow said, “Tom Suffredin says being a lobbyist and an elected official is legal, but it doesn’t make it right and is against everything Evanston represents. I won’t have to regularly think about recusing myself from votes. I won’t accept questionable campaign contributions. I won’t get paid to put the interests of Evanston last.”
Shared policy ideas
When it comes to his vision for the sixth ward, Suffredin told Pioneer Press that he hopes to see more collaboration between city departments to address issues faced by residents.
He said city government often operates in silos, making it harder for residents to get services.
Suffredin said one of the bigger challenges the next City Council will have is its budget. “The reality of our spending is that it’s not sustainable, so we’re going to have to really prioritize the spending side of it as it pertains to revenue,” he said.
When asked if he was thinking of expenses the city could cut, Suffredin said he didn’t have any set cuts in mind for any department in particular. “That’s a discussion that the council will have to have… the choices that will be available to us will be either doing existing things less, eliminating things altogether… or (if) the council discussion leads to, we want to continue all of these things at the level that we do, then we’re gonna have to talk about revenue exclusively.”
Suffredin said he wouldn’t be in support of proposals to raise property taxes or raised fines or fees for parking and the like.
Suffredin’s vision for commerce on Central Street, one of the ward’s main arterial roads and business districts, is for more restaurants on par with restaurants in nearby Wilmette and Skokie.
Chow’s vision for the ward also included more business on Central Street, saying she is the co-founder of a business that empowers women and professionals of color to advance their careers.
“I think there’s opportunity for mixed-use business and residential,” Chow said, adding that she would like to see business incubators in the business district as well. “I have a vision for leveraging relationships with Northwestern (University) and Kellogg to be able to offer more of that type of that direct support to businesses to help them thrive, and creating an identity for each one of the districts.”
Chow said such a business-forward approach would also avoid burdening taxpayers “with additional taxes to kind of fill the hole that’s been created” by the city’s deficit.
