Two questions on ballots in Calumet City are giving voters a fresh opportunity to choose sides in a long-running feud between two south suburban political rivals.
The referendum questions appear to be the latest volleys in a back-and-forth between Calumet City Mayor Michelle Markiewicz-Qualkinbush and state Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City.
Jones has served in the General Assembly since 2011 and represented the city’s 3rd Ward as alderman for 20 years, from 1997 to 2017. Markiewicz-Qualkinbush has been mayor since 2003.
The two have tussled over term limits and eligibility to run for office in multiple arenas. Their interests have clashed in council chambers, voting booths and the Illinois State Capitol.
Their dispute almost made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the high court in 2018 declined to hear an appeal of a federal appellate court ruling that favored Markiewicz-Qualkinbush.
“The city has wasted taxpayer dollars on a political agenda,” Jones said Wednesday.
Markiewicz-Qualkinbush did not immediately respond Wednesday to requests for comment.
Jones has announced his intention to challenge Markiewicz-Qualkinbush for mayor in the spring. But if approved, one of the questions on ballots would appear to render Jones ineligible to run for.
The question asks if city rules should be amended to prohibit candidates from running for mayor if they also hold an elected, paid office created by the state constitution. That would appear to apply to Jones, who is running uncontested for another term to represent the 29th District in the state legislature.
Jones said he believes the question is unconstitutional.
“These measures shouldn’t be on ballots,” he said. Even if approved by voters, they will not survive a court challenge, he said.
Numerous state legislators also hold other elected offices. For example, state Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, also serves as Calumet Township supervisor. Local ordinances cannot trump state laws and legal precedents that allow people to simultaneously hold multiple offices, Jones said.
The second question tweaks wording of existing restrictions that limit anyone from serving as Calumet City mayor for more than three full, four-year terms. Voters first approved term limits for mayor nearly four years ago by a margin of about 2-1. The new question specifies that the limits take effect with the April 6, 2021 election.
That’s an unnecessary question because state law already determines the effective date of term limits, Jones said.
“This is a way of confusing voters,” he said.
The limits approved by Calumet City voters in November 2016 prevented Jones from running for mayor in April 2017. In a sense, Jones victimized himself with a political strategy that backfired.
In summer 2016, Jones and supporters sought to collect signatures to place a citizen-initiative referendum on Calumet City ballots that fall. He wanted voters to approve a measure that would limit the mayor to three terms. He thought it would make Markiewicz-Qualkinbush ineligible to run for mayor in spring 2017.
However, the mayor and council allies learned of the effort and voted to place three questions on ballots that fall. The questions dealt with tavern hours, eligibility to receive both city and state pensions, and term limits for mayor and aldermen.
Illinois law prevents public bodies from asking more than three referendum questions on any given ballot. Jones filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “Rule of Three.”
Jones lost when the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June 2018 that the “Rule of Three” was constitutional. The restriction ensures that each question receives the attention it deserves, a panel of three judges determined.
“The proposal designed to eliminate Markiewicz-Qualkinbush from the 2017 election may or may not have been a political dirty trick, but Jones tells us that the city’s referendum definitely was a political dirty trick rather than a piece of neutral legislation,” the court wrote.
“That’s politics,” the federal appellate court said in its 2018 ruling. “Politics is a rough-and-tumble game, where hurt feelings and thwarted ambitions are a necessary part of robust debate.”
Markiewicz-Qualkinbush prevailed in federal court, but Jones scored points after he moved the battle to a place where his connections gave him an advantage — Springfield.
Jones supported legislation that sought to undo the restrictions that blocked him from running for mayor, and he prevailed. Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year signed into law a measure that prevented municipalities from counting years that a politician served before enactment of term-limit ordinances when determining eligibility to run for office.
The law used the legal term “proactive” to make clear that the clock starts once term-limit rules are adopted. For instance, if someone has served for mayor for two terms and a town votes to limit its mayor to two terms, the mayor can still run for two more terms after the limits are adopted.
The new law also specifies that term limits “shall only apply to terms for the same office.” Years served as an alderman, in other words, do not apply when considering whether one is eligible to run for mayor.
The legislation affected not just Calumet City, but other municipalities where voters had recently approved term-limit measures, including Crestwood, Dolton, Harvey and Hazel Crest.
Jones said he believes voters supported term limits in Calumet City because they thought they were voting to end Markiewicz-Qualkinbush’s reign.
Markiewicz-Qualkinbush began working for the city in 1977, according to her biography on the city’s website. She was a deputy clerk before being elected in 1985 to her first of five terms as village clerk. She was first elected mayor in 2003 to a two-year term and has won four, four-year terms since 2005.
Markiewicz-Qualkinbush ran as a Democrat in 2017 and defeated Larry Young of the Public Safety Party by a margin of nearly 2-to-1. She was uncontested in 2013 and 2005 and handily defeated a write-in challenger in 2009.
Jones said she has used political dirty tricks to bump other challengers from ballots over the years.
“I’m running to give people a choice,” he said.
More than 36,000 people reside in Calumet City. There were 22,971 registered voters in the city in 2017, according to the Cook County clerk’s office. Yet, only 4,294 ballots were cast in that year’s mayoral election for a turnout of 18.7%.
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.
