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One of the things that made me decide to leave was what went on in the Fifth Ward in 1995. Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle and the near south chapter of IVI-IPO, of which Lois Dobry is the political action chair, were supporting Janet Oliver-Hill for alderman of the Fifth. Oliver-Hill and her family had been pretty close to Daley for a long time, so I wasn’t supporting her. I wanted to work for an independent, so I got involved with Barbara Holt’s campaign. She’s a teacher and was endorsed by former Fifth Ward aldermen Leon Despres and Larry Bloom, who was then about to leave office.
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On March 22, less than two weeks before the runoff election, Holt and Oliver-Hill were on a radio talk show together on WVON. I was at the station when a call came in from a guy I knew who was on Oliver-Hill’s field staff. He said that he was working for Oliver-Hill and that Holt’s campaign was being run by a Jewish overseer who hired black mercenaries. I was looking right at Oliver-Hill and she just sat there. She didn’t say a word to try to correct his statements or reassure Holt or voters who were listening and she didn’t say anything during the next ten days before the election. Steve Neal wrote about it in the Sun-Times on March 29 and the Hyde Park Herald had a front-page story about it on the same day. Still, Oliver-Hill had nothing to say. Lois Dobry and her husband Alan, who were the chair and treasurer of Oliver-Hill’s campaign, had nothing to say about it either. If they didn’t agree with it, they should have spoken up!
At the IVI-IPO board meeting right after the election, Marc Lipinski was going on about how we couldn’t prove that the Oliver-Hill campaign had put out the “piece of pink paper.” That’s true. But it was signed by a group that doesn’t exist, and I can tell you that the Holt campaign did not produce that leaflet. It reminds me of the trick that was played in 1991 during Toni Preckwinkle’s Fourth Ward aldermanic campaign against Tim Evans. But that time, Alan Dobry, who was then the Fifth Ward committeeman, was caught in the act of posting anti-Semitic pieces in broad daylight. Alan even posted the despicable literature on the door of Temple K.A.M. Isaiah Israel.
Then the judges decided that they were just unwilling to be so closely watched by poll watchers. So they announced that they were closing the polls. Since there were almost four hours before the polls were supposed to close, this was a real problem. At this point, an elderly lady, who was probably about 80 years old and had great difficulty walking, came in to the room to vote. The same judge told her that the polls were closed. The lady said, “Is it seven o’clock already?” We then told the judge that we would report her to the U.S. attorney for violating the lady’s right to vote if she did not reopen the polls right away. Jerry and I then went out of the room where the voting had been taking place to call the Board of Elections again. The board was shocked that the judges had done this and the board representative asked to talk to the judge. We told the judge that the board wanted to speak with her and the board person apparently told the judge to reopen the polls because she did so immediately after talking to the board. About a half an hour later two board investigators arrived. They told us they would be there to watch the voting for the rest of the day through the count. They sat right next to the judges’ table. We felt it was OK to leave.
