Wheeling board race to be decided Tuesday, April 14
The Cook County clerk's office will canvass the Wheeling election returns next Tuesday, April 14, when finally the winner of the third village board seat will be determined.
Wheeling residents know they returned trustees Dave Vogel and Ray Lang to the board on April 7, with 1,148 votes and 1,016 votes respectively.
The third seat is tangled up between Mary Papantos, who was on the ballot, and Trustee Joe Vito, who was a write-in candidate. Papantos finished the night with 835 votes, but the 858 write-in votes will not be examined until April 14. If they were all cast correctly for Vito, it would give him a 23-vote edge.
Still, there are mail-in ballots being counted today that could change the totals and eight provisional ballots will also be looked at, said Cook County clerk's office spokeswoman Courtney Greve on Wednesday. Mail-in ballots will be accepted for up to two weeks after Election Day, so the race could conceivably still not be decided after next Tuesday's canvass.
Greve's advice to candidates still in limbo after Tuesday night is "don't overanalyze," since it will take time to determine the winners - but new boards aren't going to be seated for several weeks anyway.
She said the canvass doesn't just look at the write-in votes, but examines the totals from every precinct, to make sure election judges reported them correctly.
Reached early Wednesday morning, Vito said he is "very optimistic," given the large number of write-ins. Papantos, meanwhile, is eager to see the results of the mail-in ballots.
In December, trustees Bob Heer, Vogel and Lang filed to run for re-election and Papantos filed as a challenger.
But after Heer died suddenly, there were three candidates running for three seats - an uncontested election that looked like a lock for Papantos. She has run for village board unsuccessfully twice before.
The race turned competitive again when Vito, an attorney, filed as a write-in candidate. He had been appointed to Heer's seat by Wheeling Village President Dean Argiris, to hold it until Tuesday's election.
Vito mounted a serious campaign, teaming with veterans Vogel and Lang on a slate backed by Argiris.
Papantos, meanwhile, was supported by residents opposed to a runway expansion at Chicago Executive Airport. She is the only candidate openly against the expansion of CEA, which is jointly owned by Wheeling and Prospect Heights.
She's also a member of Citizens Against Runway Expansion, a group of airport neighbors who protested CEO Charlie Priester's claims that extending the main runway will keep Chicago Executive relevant with corporate fliers.