Photo caption: (l to r) Cornell Dantzler and Martina Hone
Aldermanic candidates Desmon Yancy (5th) and Ronnie Mosley (21st) won close runoff races after their opponents recently conceded.
With mail-in ballots still being counted and the races separated by several hundred votes, Martina Hone, Yancy’s opponent, conceded the race and Cornell Dantzler, Mosley’s opponent, also conceded.
In a concession statement on Monday, April 10, Hone said, “I continue to be grateful to my Hyde Park neighbors who got me to the runoff and overwhelmingly supported me in this race. I look forward to remaining actively engaged in the community and supporting Alderman-elect Yancy as he takes on his challenging new role.”
As of April 11, Yancy, who took 52 percent of the vote to Hone’s 48 percent, led his opponent by 423 votes with 677 ballots yet to be counted.
Hone reportedly conceded April 5, one day after the runoff election. She withdrew her concession after realizing there were 1,700 ballots left to count.
A community organizer and Kenwood Academy graduate, Hone campaigned on an agenda that pushed for economic development, housing affordability, police accountability, mental health access and community-based violence reduction programs. She has pledged full support to a South Shore Community Benefits Agreement and community-centered development in the ward.
Yancy received big donations from the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Yancy was endorsed by Alderman Jeanette Taylor (20th) and outgoing 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston. Although she supported Yancy, Hairston did not publicly endorse him after experiencing dwindling popularity in the 5th Ward in the final years of her 24-year aldermanic career. In 2019, Hairston won re-election by just 176 votes over political newcomer and activist William Calloway, who did not run this time around.
In the 21st Ward, Cornell Dantzler, a firefighter, conceded the race to Mosley, a community organizer endorsed by Governor JB Pritzker, the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Tribune. Pritzker and the CTU pumped big donations into Mosley’s campaign.
Despite their endorsements and big donations, Mosley struggled to beat Dantzler in the runoff race after a Crusader investigation revealed Mosley lied on his résumé and to the press, about having a bachelor’s degree in urban studies management from historically Black Morehouse College in Atlanta. Mosley later admitted he did not graduate from the school but attended for several years without obtaining a degree.
On April 10, Dantzler conceded the race to Mosley, who with 52 percent of votes led Dantzler by 655 votes. As of April 11, there were 807 mail-in ballots that had not been counted. Dantzler would need most of them to win the race.
Dantzler reportedly called Mosley to concede the race after acknowledging “the votes needed to win are simply out of range.”
Dantzler, 63, said in a statement, “I want to congratulate Alderman-elect Ronnie Mosley on his election victory and wish him the absolute best in his efforts to unite and push the 21st Ward forward.”
Mosley, 31, will be the youngest member of the Council when he is sworn in next month.
The aldermanic race is not over in the 29th Ward on the West Side, where incumbent Chris Taliaferro declared a victory on Wednesday, April 12. He leads CB Johnson by 318 votes as of April 11. That lead was smaller the day after the runoff, where Taliaferro and Johnson exchanged leads several times. With 543 mail-in votes outstanding, Johnson’s chances of winning are dwindling.
Election officials on April 11 received 427 returned mail-in ballots but it remains uncertain how many came from the 29th Ward, where Taliaferro so far has 51 percent of the vote. Election officials expect to count the fresh batch of mail-in votes by Wednesday, April 12, after Crusader press time for its print edition.
Election officials also said there are currently 34,595 outstanding mail-ballots that have not been returned. They will not be counted after the deadline April 18.
Johnson was endorsed by Congressman Danny K. Davis, who, according to multiple sources, had a falling out with Taliaferro over an undisclosed incident.
In other election news, with updated figures for mail-in ballots, this year’s runoff race generated the highest voter turnout since 2015. According to election data, over 38 percent of Chicago’s nearly 1.6 million registered voters cast their ballots in the April 4 runoff race, compared to 33 percent in 2019. In the 2015 runoff race between incumbent Rahm Emanuel and Chuy Garcia, the turnout rate was over 41 percent.
