Chicago mayoral election: Ja'Mal Green, Willie Wilson try to kick each other off the ballot

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The battle over the ballot in the Chicago mayoral race was coming into focus on Monday afternoon.

Monday is the deadline for candidates to file petition challenges to try and knock competitors off the ballot.

It appears that Mayor Lori Lightfoot will not face any petition challenges in her bid for reelection, and she is not planning to go after any of her challengers. But, some of them are going after one another, which could winnow the field before the Feb. 28 election.

Willie Wilson was one of the first candidates for Chicago mayor to file his nominating petitions last month, reporting more than 60,000 signatures.

But now, one of his competitors, Ja'Mal Green, said there are grounds to challenge the validity of many of those signatures. He pointed to page after page of Wilson's petitions, where the handwriting was so similar for different people that it raised suspicions.

"When we looked at the amount of fraud in the tens of thousands of signatures that were fraudulently signed, we just said we just had to do something about this," Green said.

SEE ALSO | Mayor Lori Lightfoot among candidates filing last-minute petitions for Chicago mayoral election

But, Green is himself facing signature challenges from Wilson.

"He doesn't have enough signatures. We went through them at the board, compared the signatures and the registration records on the petitions to what's on the board's records and he didn't have enough valid signatures of registered voters," Andrew Finko, Wilson's attorney.

Wilson is also challenging the petitions filed by Rod Sawyer. On Monday afternoon, Wilson's lawyer filed the objection paperwork at the Board of Elections. Candidates need 12,500 valid signatures from registered Chicago voters to get on the ballot, and Wilson's team claims Sawyer fell well short.

While the petitions filed by Chuy Garcia, Kam Buckner and Lightfoot did get reviewed, sources from other campaigns decided those challenges would not be worth the time or expense.

But, longtime Alderman Howard Brookins, who's retiring, said regardless of what the field gets winnowed to, he believes Lightfoot will make it to the runoff.

"I look with the number of candidates, with the people who have sufficient resources to run an incredible race, I look for a runoff and I believe she will at least make it to a runoff, absolutely," Brookins said.

And while the mayoral race, of course, gets the most attention, there will be plenty of challenges in the aldermanic races. One to watch will be the race to replace retiring Ed Burke in the 14th Ward. A Burke lieutenant is expected to face signature challenges in his race against a candidate endorsed by Garcia.