West Side incumbents fending off challengers in 24th and 29th ward runoffs

Two West Side incumbent aldermen — one seeking his third term and the other looking to get elected to her first — are fending off a pair of challengers who are short on public experience but have long ties to the neighborhoods they want to represent.

Both opponents looking to defeat Ald. Monique Scott, 24th, and Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, respectively, have steep hills to climb to oust them in the April 4 runoff.

In the 24th Ward, which includes North Lawndale, challenger Creative Scott received only about 15% of the vote to Monique Scott’s 45%. In the 29th Ward, which includes parts of Austin north to Montclare, former Chicago police sergeant Taliaferro was forced into a runoff by just a few dozen votes, though community activist CB Johnson received nearly 40% of the vote in the first round.

The incumbents also have significant fundraising advantages.

Monique Scott this year has raised $135,000, on top of the $107,000 she had in the bank to start the year, state campaign finance records show, while Creative Scott, who is no relation, hasn’t reported raising any money this year and only had $18,800 in the bank, most of which came from money he lent his campaign.

In the 29th Ward, Taliaferro has raised $90,000 this year on top of the $17,000 he had in the bank. Meanwhile, Johnson hasn’t submitted any campaign contribution filings to the Illinois State Board of Elections, which is a sign he hasn’t raised any significant money or is in violation of election law. He is seeking contributions on his website.

Johnson told the Tribune he planned to share the reports soon.

The incumbents say experience and inside knowledge of how city bureaucracy works will help them complete construction projects and foster trust between communities and police. But the challengers argue it’s time for outsider perspectives because their opponents haven’t been visible enough.

Still, all four candidates share many of the same priorities. They want to make the ward cleaner, safer and open to more development for businesses.

Both wards saw low turnout during the February election. In the 29th Ward, 30.67% of registered voters cast ballots, while only 25.85% voted in the 24th Ward, among the lowest turnout rates in the city.

A main theme of the 24th Ward race is Monique Scott fending off accusations she got the job due to favoritism.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot last year appointed Monique Scott, 51, to the City Council to replace her brother, Michael Scott Jr., after he stepped down to work as director of industry and community relations for Cinespace Studios, which operates soundstages on the West Side where shows such as “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.” are filmed. Her father, who is now deceased and was a close ally to Mayor Richard M. Daley, was president of both the Chicago Board of Education and the Park District, where Monique Scott later worked.

She said her family history and living in the ward for generations is part of why voters trust her.

“Lawndale is all I know,” she said.

But opponent Creative Scott, 50, who legally changed his name years ago and said it wasn’t to confuse voters that he was a member of Monique Scott’s family, said her appointment by Lightfoot was “unfair for the community,” an accusation Monique Scott sloughs off by saying she earned a graduate degree and worked as both a business owner and a city official.

One issue both Scotts agree on is the need to tackle crime in the ward.

Monique Scott views the problems the ward faces as connected parts of historic disinvestment that must be addressed together. To take on problems like violence, educational shortcomings, health disparities and a lack of affordable housing, the area needs more investment, she said.

She said in her nine months in office she helped close deals to build new business and housing developments and said she’s close to bringing a new grocery store to the ward, at Ogden and Albany avenues. She said she also hopes to attract a children’s “discovery center” and expects the city to soon invest millions of dollars in nearby public schools.

“There’s some amazing things that are happening in North Lawndale that I’m proud to continue. If those hands switch, we don’t know if we’ll have that same momentum,” she said.

Still, North Lawndale has some of the highest rates of violence in the city. She praised the work of violence prevention groups operating in the neighborhood, where rates of homicides and shootings have dropped over the last year.

Monique Scott said she would address violence by connecting anti-violence programs like Chicago CRED and UCAN with continued city funding and grants. She also would build gardens on abandoned lots in particularly violent areas, in an effort to reduce young people’s “idle time,” she said.

But her opponent — who owns the Creative Salon barbershop on 16th Street and is a firearms training instructor — said his experience training residents on situational awareness and self-defense in concealed carry license classes helps him understand violence and come up with new solutions.

“My job is to bring unity, to bring a bridge between the law enforcement and the youth,” he said. “It seems like nobody is willing to do that.”

Creative Scott said if elected, he’d start a violence prevention program. He said he has used his public safety classes in the past to work with children who have gotten in trouble, but that he would like to make a longer program with stipends in an effort to “change the mindset.”

This isn’t Creative Scott’s first run for alderman. He ran in 2019 and came in second, far behind Monique Scott’s brother. But he noted that since that loss he’s hosted a barber training program for kids in the ward and also helped give away thousands of items such as masks and socks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to crime, both candidates also have said they want to focus on cleaning up the ward, which Creative Scott called “filthy.”

“I am the last hope for the 24th Ward,” he said. “I’m more proactive in the community and I’m more valuable in the community.”

Monique Scott said spurring residents to buy some of the 900 city-owned lots in the neighborhood to generate more ownership will help clean up the ward, as well as organizing neighborhood cleanups.

“Because how do you invite people in your community when it looks like it’s been ravaged by a war,” she said.

Getting more money from the city will be an important way to make the ward cleaner, she added. Because of historic disinvestment, the money equally allotted to wards for typical maintenance issues can’t cover the many fixes North Lawndale needs, she said.

In the 29th Ward, incumbent Taliaferro has served two terms as alderman for the western part of the sprawling Austin neighborhood, along with Galewood and parts of Montclare. During the first round of voting in February, he won 49.8% of the vote while 40.8% went to Johnson, who runs a small construction company and the nonprofit Campaign for a Drug Free Westside.

Taliaferro, 57, touted his efforts to bring jobs and economic development to the area as a reason voters should give him a third term. He’s helped push along plans to build the Aspire Center mixed-use community space and a new $70 million outpatient care center, among other projects, he said.

He named reducing violence and crime as his top priority and said his experience as a police sergeant helps him understand how to communicate with officers.

“The greatest thing we can do is support our police officers and our police department,” he said.

Taliaferro said he wants to push for more block clubs in the ward, downsize police beats and concentrate them on the ward’s most violent areas and increase penalties for crimes that are committed near senior residences.

He also chairs the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, where he recently pushed the Chicago Police Department to further investigate the ties of several officers to white supremacist hate groups.

An important part of his job has been connecting residents with city services, he said. He would also like to increase mental health treatment on the West Side and continue to use participatory budgeting to allow residents to vote on how some ward discretionary infrastructure money is used, he said.

Taliaferro pointed to his time learning how the City Council works as a reason why voters should reelect him.

“It’s very easy to say, ‘We’re going to do this and do that,’ and ‘I’m going to bring this and bring that,’ and not understand how to bring it,” he said. “I think our community loses that experience if I’m not elected.”

The crime trends affecting the neighborhood vary. Compared with 2016, Taliaferro’s first full year in office, there were fewer fatal and nonfatal shootings and robberies reported by Chicago police in 2022. However, the ward has seen higher rates of violence during some of the eight years Taliaferro has been in office.

Taliaferro said Johnson, his challenger, “hasn’t been present” in the ward and didn’t intend to run until he was pushed by other politicians, including Taliaferro’s former backer, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago. Johnson previously lost bids for the aldermanic seat in 1999 and 2011.

Johnson acknowledged some leaders asked him to run, but fired back that the decision of Davis and others to no longer support Taliaferro was telling.

“All the people who helped you get this seat, none of them are around you anymore,” he said.

He alleged Taliaferro hasn’t been accessible to the community and said Taliaferro’s run for Cook County judge last year showed he wasn’t dedicated to the job of alderman. Taliaferro lost the election and said he has no intention to run for another office besides alderman.

Johnson, too, identified violence as a major issue in the ward, saying his 85-year-old mother can’t safely walk down the street anymore.

“You can’t just sit out on the porch like when I was growing up,” the 62-year-old said. “Crime is at an all-time high, service is at an all-time low.”

Johnson also said the ward was “filthy” and said he’d clean up the ward by working directly with property owners and local city service officials.

Johnson said he would try to establish more block clubs, work with police leaders, build trust between officers and residents and establish more programs for young people. But instead of plans, he’s focused on how he’d run the office.

“I don’t have an agenda besides to represent the people of the 29th Ward, the whole 29th ward,” he said.

jsheridan@chicagotribune.com