Will County Board member faces petition challenges

A longtime Will County Board member is facing two objections to his election petitions which, if successful, could knock him off the ballot for the June 28 primary.

Incumbent Herbert Brooks Jr., D-Joliet, is facing two objections claiming some of the signatures on his petitions belong to individuals who are not registered to vote in his district.

Opponents and eligible voters can file objections to a candidate’s petition to try to knock that person off the ballot for an upcoming election. Objectors typically claim a candidate collected signatures improperly. That could put the candidate below the required number of signatures needed to be on the ballot.

Brooks needed to collect signatures from at least 81 eligible constituents to be able to run again for the board, which he has been a member of since 2008 and previously served as speaker.

Joliet residents Jazmine Martinez and Gabriella Mejia were the two objectors to Brooks’ petitions. Martinez is also running against Brooks and two other candidates for two Democratic nominations to represent District 6 on the board. No Republican candidates filed to run in the district which includes much of Joliet, an area heavily tilted toward Democratic voters. So the two winners of the Democratic primary will run unopposed in the general election.

Brooks conceded some of the signatures on his petition were from individuals who no longer lived in his district.

“Shame on me because I don’t know my neighbors,” he said, adding the ineligible signatures were “an error on my part.”

Still, Brooks said he was confident he had enough signatures beyond the minimum so that if some were deemed invalid, he would still have enough to stay on the ballot.

“I know there can’t be that many errors,” he said.

Martinez expressed confidence in her challenge and said she has “a really good case.”

The county’s electoral board will rule on the objections. The board consists of Will County Clerk Lauren Staley Ferry, Will County Circuit Clerk Andrea Lynn Chasteen and Mary Tatroe, the civil division chief at the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office.

All sides agreed to have the objection to Brooks’ petitions examined on Monday at the Will County Courthouse.

On Thursday, the electoral board heard other cases, including seven objections to precinct committee person petitions. Precinct committee people are elected representatives of a party tasked with establishing relationships with voters in a specific area, or precinct. They are also tasked with electing the chair of each major party’s local organizations.

One notable objection was filed against the petition of Gloria Ledesma, who is running for precinct committeewoman as a Democrat in Joliet District 14. Ledesma is the wife of former Joliet City Councilman Alex Ledesma, according to Alicia Morales, a supporter and the Joliet Township clerk.

Joliet resident Trey Martin was the objector to Ledesma’s petition. He was represented by attorney Robert Wisniewski during Thursday’s hearing.

In the petition, Wisniewski alleged signatures on Ledesma’s petition were invalid because it appeared the same individual wrote the signatures for multiple people. State law requires each person to sign their own name on a candidate’s petition.

Morales circulated the petition for Ledesma that was being challenged, according to the petition. She called the objection “baseless” and added that since Ledesman was running to represent the “Hispanic community” in Joliet, it was “unfortunate” that someone objected to her candidacy.

The electoral board said it would also hear the objection to Ledesma’s petition on Monday.